Kambrica brought us great value by helping us put ourselves in our clients’ shoes and incorporate UX logic into the transformation of the way we deliver service.

Value Proposition Manager

Multinational insurance and financial services company

* This project is presented in anonymized form, under corporate confidentiality agreements.

When the project walks into a meeting and comes out turned into a budget-burning machine

When a corporate organization starts a digital project, the problem walks into a meeting and comes out turned into a huge structure of resources, platforms, and months of development. Not because it’s really necessary, but because the industry’s incentives are set up that way.

Software factories bill for project growth: more teams, more hours, more complexity. Never less. In this case, the organization started meetings with a conclusion already made: “we need an App.” Users called to inquire about information on their financial products and didn’t use the existing website, which “had gotten old.”

Faced with this request, agency salespeople rubbed their hands: “Of course you need an App!” And it has to be for iPhone, Android, and tablets. With a modern backend, QA, DevOps, multiple teams, and several months of execution. In minutes, an idea had turned into a team of 12–14 people.

We did something different: we reduced the problem before scaling the structure. Because executing the first interpretation of the problem quickly is not agility: it’s waste at high speed. And avoiding it took us just one hour.

A single meeting is enough to untangle the project

Applying our XDM (Experience Decision Making) methodology, we worked by separating three layers that in most projects appear mixed from the start: facts, interpretations, and solution proposals.

That analysis revealed a piece of data no one had considered: the frequency of user inquiries was between six months and two years. That invalidated the hypothesis of developing an App: the data showed that users’ phones “filled up” every three months… suggesting they delete the Apps they didn’t use.

The project then had to contemplate a first stage of strategic UX research to understand why users rejected the existing site and preferred to call. Without that information, any initiative was a blind bet.

The client thought the site was “old” and “ugly.” Perhaps they were right. But the real answers were in front of the screens.

While the interface (UI) lives inside the screens, what users experience (UX) is what happens in front of them.

That was the focus of the strategic research that, in just two weeks, revealed the underlying problem: the site showed less than half of the information users needed for their decision-making processes. That’s why users called.

The interface wasn’t failing for technological or aesthetic reasons.
It was failing because it didn’t answer the questions clients had.

Something no agency had set out to address, perpetuating the trap of every RFP.
After 4 to 6 months, the client would have received exactly what they asked for. But it wasn’t what they really needed.

Reduce complexity and uncertainty before starting execution

Our methodology starts from a fact: large projects don’t fail for technical reasons. They fail because complexities are revealed and addressed only when the whole structure is already in motion.

That’s why we work by clearing UX, institutional, and technological complexities from the start of the project.

Because true agility is not executing the first plan that seems to make sense in a hurry: it’s having the flexibility to change direction when new evidence appears.

1. UX complexities: the distance between the Business and people

To identify and reduce this distance, we work by surveying real decision-making processes, understanding what information users need, how they interpret it, and what processes or support tools they end up turning to.

That allows us to redefine the information architecture, visualization criteria, and product priorities before crystallizing UI design and development decisions.

2. Institutional and political complexities

In corporate projects, much of the friction appears when the solution is already advanced and internal rejections begin: branding, marketing, compliance, stakeholders.

That’s why from day one, we create a political map of all affected areas. We incorporate them early into the project in parallel tracks, clearing all risks (such as inconsistencies between manuals and internal criteria) before they impact the project.

Our result is projects without political rework or endless approval cycles.

3. IT complexities: technical feasibility

In the Banking, Finance & Insurance industry, there is a critical technological layer of legacy systems, whose owners must be involved from the very beginning. In this case, the amount of financial information involved generated waits incompatible with the experience the product needed to deliver.

Our solution was to build an intelligent, agnostic front-end engine, capable of reusing information already obtained, reducing unnecessary roundtrips, and performing progressive data loading without blocking navigation and use of the system.

That allowed us to solve performance without degrading experience, nor adding more architectures to an already highly complex stack.

Results

While agencies proposed huge and expensive structures to “fulfill the request,” Kambrica exceeded the goals with a small team, strategic focus, and clear direction.

Because our incentives are not set on placing people or selling hours, but on solving the right problem.

In this case, the project didn’t need an App, nor a cutting-edge technology platform. It needed to understand what was failing between the organization and its clients.

Without diagnosis and direction, speed only scales the error.

Most organizations don’t need more speed.
They need better diagnoses before scaling structures, budget, and complexity. That’s what we do.

If you’re responsible for the success of products or projects and suspect that the problem at hand is being misinterpreted, let’s talk.

We can help you see it before cost, complexity, and political risk keep growing.

The entry Banking, Finance & Insurance was first published on Kambrica.

The hypermarket Jumbo, part of the Cencosud chain, needed to streamline its online shopping process to boost site conversions.

We designed a new online shopping process that allowed for the presentation of a greater number of products in a more attractive and recognizable manner, making it easier to purchase multiple items. This positively impacted the number of items per purchase and the average ticket size.

Before and After

Areas of Work:

• Using a user-centered design methodology, we conducted contextual interviews to observe users making purchases in their usual environment. This allowed us to identify various factors that caused friction during the shopping process.
• Based on our observations, we created a functional prototype, on which we conducted usability tests to validate that the new design satisfied the users needs.

The entry Jumbo a Casa was first published on Kambrica.

In 2010, Santander Río bank needed to migrate the request for its products from the physical to the online channel. Up until that point, very few customers were willing to apply for credit cards online.

The reasons: low trust in the online channel and forms that required information users didn’t understand or weren’t willing to complete.

Areas of work:

We redesigned all the application forms, following best practices in usability and accessibility.

• Conducted UX Research to evaluate existing processes, user motivations and interests, opportunities, and areas for improvement.
• Redesigned the process for applying for credit cards and banking packages, following best practices in persuasion, usability, accessibility, and responsive design.
• Redesigned internal Knowledge Management systems.
• Conducted interviews with the Call Center to learn about best sales practices, which were then applied to upselling processes.

The entry Santander Río was first published on Kambrica.

The Office of Judicial Affairs at Stanford University selected us for our ability to provide design and development that met Section 508 standards: making it accessible to all individuals, regardless of their technical, cognitive, or physical abilities. This earned recognition from a panel of experts at the prestigious South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival in 2004.

The information architecture and content strategy recommendations were made considering the use cases where faculty and students must access the site: sensitive topics related to violations of the university’s honor code, such as plagiarism, substance abuse, or sexual harassment.

The HTML/CSS development not only resolved accessibility issues with the same code but also included special styles for different resolutions and printing, automatically selecting them when printing the page or generating PDFs.

Thanks to this responsive approach, the site became the single repository of official information for all formats, eliminating maintenance issues related to information across multiple formats and requiring the responsible staff to document and train on a single platform.

Areas of work:

• Consulting
• Accessibility
• Information Architecture
• Interface Design
• Front-end Development
• Validation with users with disabilities

The entry Stanford University was first published on Kambrica.

Since 2012, we have partnered with the Digital Product teams of the Telefónica Group, designing and improving the web and mobile user experiences with which millions of people interact.

We’ve improved the usability of fixed-line, mobile, and internet purchase processes to increase sales, reduce call center volume, and optimize processes.

Our work included the development of promotional landing pages, improving customer service processes, and enhancing product and offer communications to improve understanding and capture of the value proposition.

• We reduced support costs and decreased user frustration.
• We contributed to the maturity of the digital product teams in UX, impacting other areas of the company.

How We Helped

• We redesigned the homepage for fixed-line and mobile services.
• We improved the site navigation flows.
• We redesigned the purchase flow for mobile phone plans.
• We redesigned the purchase flow for internet plans.
• We redesigned the purchase flow for fiber and TV plans.
• We designed and enhanced the impact of promotional landings: portability, Hotsale, Multiply, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc.
• We improved the discovery, acquisition, and upselling processes for phone lines, internet, and mobile lines.
• We improved the self-management processes for large clients.
• We enhanced the quality of information in the Customer Service section.
• We conducted usability analysis and communication needs assessment for the launch of the redesigned Movistar app.
• We conducted usability analysis and provided actionable improvement proposals for critical business processes.
• We performed qualitative and quantitative analysis of page performance and specific flows.
• We created the first usability manual for the company, aligning all departments.
• We developed tools to reduce costs and time in decision-making, design, and development processes.
• We facilitated workshops with stakeholders to define product vision and ease decision-making for product and design.
• We provided training on Lean UX methodology, user-centered design, and Design Thinking.

The entry Movistar was first published on Kambrica.

Wayra, the tech project accelerator from the Telefónica group, operates in 12 countries across Latin America and Europe. Each year, it selects a small group of startups to provide with funding, workspace, and access to a global network of mentors, experts, and investors.

As part of its acceleration program, we offer consulting, mentoring, and training to startups in Lean UX methodologies, UX design, user-centered design, usability testing, qualitative interviews, A/B testing, task prioritization, identifying business opportunities, and evaluating solution scalability, among others.

Areas o work:

• We have provided consulting to over 35 startups participating in our UX and agile methodology training program for digital product development.
• We collaborate with startups from various sectors, including fintech, medtech, agritech, entertainment, marketplaces, apps, e-commerce, IoT, and smart cities.
• Through the “Lean UX” program, we help startups identify and refine their value proposition, understand their users to align the product with their needs, improve product usability to attract more customers, achieve consistent growth, and reduce costs.
• We developed an iterative work process that allows each startup to refine its product with each iteration, adding more value to the business, its end users, and investors.

The Lean UX program helped entrepreneurs test their products in real environments, creating high quality services with shorter time to market.

Lorena Suárez, Wayra Business Development Manager

The entry Wayra Argentina was first published on Kambrica.