Testing design concepts for a new financial product

Project description

A client who is developing a financial and investment service in the format of an application and a web platform asked our help in choosing the best logo for their product.

The client developed design concepts in advance, tested them on the potential audience and provided us with 38 ready-made design solutions within 6 broad design concepts. Our task was to test the proposed options and choose the logo variant that best suited the FinTech product being developed.

It is worth noting that in this case, the client took a rather responsible approach to developing a logo for his product. In many cases, when developing logos, companies give designers a terms of reference without relying on any research, and then just subjectively choose the option that seems most attractive to them. This approach is short-sighted, since not always the most visually appealing design solution is the best for a particular product. Such an approach ignores users’ associative perception, which leads to negative consequences. Subjective judgments should not be the basis for making decisions.

Good design ideas are based on the use of product perception features, the ability to form the right associations, actualize the right images in the mind and imagination, and evoke certain emotions. This requires special preliminary studies.

Main goals of the project 

Our main goal was to choose the best logo for the client’s product out of the 38 proposed. The the best of the proposed logo can be considered the one that evokes associations in potential users similar to the positioning of the product (finance, IT, etc.), and at the same time is considered attractive by users.

Methodology used

To meet the client’s objective, we conducted a quantitative study in the format of an online survey. The survey involved 609 residents of Belarus aged 18 to 55 who have average or above average income and are interested in investment activities.

Under the given conditions and goal, we had certain limitations. First, the respondents were simply physically unable to compare 38 logo options at once. Secondly, people in general cannot assess themselves and their perceptions correctly and objectively. For example, we can’t assess a person’s intelligence by asking the question “Are you a smart person?”, similarly we can’t conclude which design is better by asking questions like “Which design option would you be more likely to buy the product in?” In the first case, the opinion is likely to simply not correspond to reality, and in the second it can generally lead to erroneous and harmful decisions for business.

To overcome the named limitations, we used a rigorous scientific approach, as we always do. Sophisticated multivariate statistical methods were used to objectively assess perceptions and circumvent direct questions. In order the respondents are able to compare all 38 logos, we used the MaxDiff method of choosing the best option by comparing all the possible options with each other – each participant was shown 19 shows of four logos in random order, from which they had to choose the most liked and least liked (19 sets of 38 logos in each were formed beforehand). In addition, we developed and calculated special indices to determine the best options for the huge data arrays we encountered.

What made our study unique was that we were able to extract and process huge amounts of data from a very short questionnaire that took respondents no more than 10-12 minutes to complete. Rarely do comparable studies achieve such a ratio of time spent by respondents to the amount of valuable data extracted. 

Main results of the project

As a result of the study, the client was given a 78-page report with a detailed assessment of the perception of each of the proposed concepts. The best logo option out of the 38 proposed was recommended.

It was interesting that in a comprehensive assessment of logo perception, a rather unexpected option turned out to be the best. The logo that was perceived by respondents as the most attractive was not associated with the FinTech product, while the logo that most coincided with the positioning of the client’s service seemed completely unattractive to potential users. This fact once again underlines the importance of prior research and a rigorously scientific approach to logo design.