Ishii: Within the financial industry there is growing concern that unless banks build their services more closely around the customer experience, they run the risk of becoming a one dimensional “infrastructure” industry. We at Sony Bank knew we needed to provide customers with a further-reaching, integrated service that would go beyond just “saving” and “growing” money, something that would incorporate the experience of “using” money in practical settings.

When we got into actually designing the new Sony Bank WALLET offering, we wanted to bring in all the elements we could—including customer behavior and the user experience—and design a high-quality customer touchpoint. Instead of just concentrating on graphics and other decorative enhancements, we were going for a card and app that would reflect the user experience (UX) design and the whole service design, too. That's why we decided to ask the Sony Creative Center to handle the design. The designers there were really tuned into the basic approach.

Maesaka: We spent a lot of time poring over bills from around the world, trying to locate the visual elements that made paper bill look like bill. Eventually, we decided to build our design around two key elements: the distinctive colors that different currencies used and the detailed patterning schemes that adorned the bills. Another conceptual component was the element of “speed,” which we captured in the random widths of the different stripes on the card. Debit cards all offer real-time transaction functionality, so we wanted to avoid using a layout with any static, “fixed-interval” patterning that might go against the whole idea of immediate, on-the-spot action. We also decided to use a matte finish to give the card a more paper-esque feel, and provide a sense of finesse and refinement the user could enjoy every time they took the card in their hands. From the look to the texture, we tried to get the card to encapsulate the whole user experience.

Then there was the printing. We decided to put the stripes and the patterns over the base color layer, with a layer of glitter under the patterns to give the card a light-reflective element—kind of like a hologram on the bill—and a layer of gray on top to make the letters and numbers easier to read. We knew that a five-layer structure would be hard enough to pull off, but the matte finish is where we ran into a snag: the printer initially rejected our proposal, saying that a matte finish debit card was unheard of. This is Sony, though—we thrive on setting precedents. Once the people at the printer saw how committed we were to breaking new ground, they were on board. When everything was finished, we had exactly what we were looking for: a high-quality design with a consistent story running all the way through it, a distinctive visual presence that’ll always separate the product from the pack—and Japan’s first-ever debit card with a matte finish.*

* As of February 2016; based on Sony Bank data

Maesaka: Branding is another important part of getting customers to understand what a product all about—and if our team didn’t have a shared awareness of the core philosophy behind the WALLET card, the target audience would end up getting a different picture of the concept. To solidify the basic themes we were working with, we made a brand booklet that laid out the user experience and the underlying story in a visual format.

Ishii: The brand booklet was a huge factor—it spoke directly to people who weren’t involved in the design process, gave them a clear idea of the story, established the conceptual stance, and played a big role in building a consensus at Sony Bank. The persona and the customer experience only had vague outlines and contours until we laid eyes on the booklet, which pulled everything together with a visual clarity that made it easy to see exactly where we needed to head with the project. It brought the card to a more personal level—all the people on project team started looking at the service in terms of what they’d do if they were the users. It was amazing to see the business really start accelerating after the branding took shape.

Maesaka: Visualizing things from the customer perspective is what we do. It’s really gratifying to know that the ideas we came up with on the visual side made a difference on the business side of things, too.

Ishii: There are two basic dimensions of developing and releasing a new product: the abstract side, where you plan the business out in conceptual terms, and the concrete side, where you get specific about actual design elements. The thing that really made the WALLET collaboration a success was how the team managed to go back and forth between the two dimensions, always working to keep the two sides locked together and making sure that we always kept the bigger picture—the provider perspective and the customer standpoint—in mind. Good business isn’t a one-or-the-other thing; you need both elements if you want to succeed. The project got us to go back to our roots, look at things with fresh eyes, and take an approach to business from the customer perspective.