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RSS FeedSeptember 18th, 2011
Leading Financial Institution with Nice GUI and No Transaction Analysis
Here is my full Bank of America screenshot. Let everyone be aware that I use BoA, I am a Novec customer, and how much I spend each month on electricity (although, although, there is a twist to that).
As you can notice, using a spiffy UI, I can easily find transactions using a keyword (Novec). That is cool as ice. I like that. (In Jim Carey voice: I like that a lot.)
However, do notice two payments going out for each bill that I receive. One might think that using some advanced (or rudimentary) transaction analysis, the bank might find that to be rather odd. (Might is the operating word in the previous sentence, used twice for effect.) Data anomaly techniques have been around for a while. Still, this goes on. 
Ok, now back to my tease from the beginning – my electricity spending each month has not been disclosed by these numbers. Why? Well, the way it works is that although the payment is being made twice, the receiver Novec, does credit it correctly, therefore bringing some credit balance forward each month. (If you like a Math problem, you can try to solve for the actual numbers. 
)
Still, the lack of simple transaction analysis by a leading financial institution is rather surprising.
August 22nd, 2009
Good Morning Mr. Arora!
As I walked into my friendly Bank of America this morning, Sara greeted me cheerfully, “Good Morning, Mr. Arora!”. She had dutifully helped out couple of people ahead of me in the line, and as always she knew that I was there merely to drop something off, and I was out in about 30 seconds.
Sara is the official greeter. She doesn’t help people with actual transactions, rather she helps people enter their name in a line for people who are not merely doing operations that can be helped by a teller. So, I basically see her every month or so. It is a testimony either to the person, or to the institution that she remembers the name of all customers (or at least some of the ones!).
This efficacy 
and professionalism in people services is also matched by an amazing Bank of America website, that has for years now been setting the stage in terms of security. They were one of the first ones to implement SiteKey, which guards against phishing and helps in authenticating the webserver to the user (as opposed to authenticating user to the webserver, which everyone does by using a username and password).
Ok, this is where the complements officially end. Overall, their website is pretty good. The area of transfers, not so much. This is what I typically have to do:
1. Click on Transfers (which is a tab parallel to Accounts) This brings me to “Make a Transfer” subtab.
2. Click on “Review Transfers” subtab.
3. Click on “Recurring Transfers” subsubtab.
Clearly, that is a click or two too may. In his legendary book, Steve Krug hammers this point time and again: Don’t Make Me Think! But for some reason, this flaw has managed to persist in the BoA website for long. The problem isn’t of course just of the clicks. The main problem is that every single time I need to think through and find which link to click. Well, let us just hope that BoA usability team (I am sure they have one) will take notice at some point of time, and make some changes.
October 15th, 2008
A bug on Bank of America production website
As a BoA user, I observed something that absolutely fascinated me:
When you see the <% Page.getLabelText(strChangeRecurringTransfer,”Duratin_label”,null %>, you have to have to wonder:
Does this application have any user testing?
You can also wonder if the bug is that “Duration” is misspelled, but now you are in the left, right and center of speculation arena.
Of course from many other perspectives, the BoA website is great, functionally and otherwise.