Insights Unlocked AI is changing banking. Can UX design keep up?
Episode web page: https://bit.ly/3V1gzkD
Episode summary:
In this episode of Insights Unlocked, Lija Hogan, principal experience research consultant at Auros, chats with Meg Roebling, director at Citi, where she leads user experience for consumer credit cards across the bank’s retail partners, about AI in UX research and why human judgment still matters as research gets faster. Drawing on more than 20 years in digital design, much of it in financial services, Meg shares what has changed about research since the dot-com boom and which battles researchers are still fighting.
Meg explains that the case for research has been won in principle but still loses to competing priorities, and why tying it to the funder's own goal, such as risk mitigation at a bank, is "usually a winning argument." She walks through her start-small approach: answer a simple question quickly, show the win, become the go-to person, then tell the story with a verbatim clip that makes a user's struggle real for stakeholders. She also lays out where AI synthesis falls short. It surfaces themes but misses nuance, contradictions, body language and important outliers, flattens results and still hallucinates.
The conversation also touches on designing trustworthy AI experiences in financial services, from chatbots that paper over poor information architecture to why screens still matter for complex, multi-step flows. Meg makes the case for transparency and enhanced security as people hand purchases to AI agents, explains the personalization bargain most customers accept, and argues that teams need to start designing for agents now. Lija and Meg also discuss keeping humans in the loop at every gate of an AI-driven product development lifecycle, the central agent registry at Citi, and Meg's updated advice for leaders: match your approach to your organization's research maturity and invest in measurement and rapid research.
You'll learn:
Why research still loses to competing priorities, and how to tie it to the funder's goal
How small, fast wins and verbatim clips build buy-in for research
The gaps in AI research synthesis that humans still need to catch
Why chatbots shouldn't cover up poor information architecture
Principles for designing trustworthy AI experiences in financial services
How to keep humans in the loop in an AI-driven product development lifecycle
How to match your research investment to your organization's maturity
Resources & links
Meg Roebling on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/megpullisroebling)
Lija Hogan on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lija-hogan-894769/)
Learn more about Insights Unlocked: https://www.usertesting.com/podcast