Too many jobs, similar priority
Trust, transactions, instant actions, and growth content compete on the same screen.
Offerings before attention needs
The interface reflects product structure more clearly than the urgency of user jobs.
A layered attention system
Context → Trust → Core → Quick → Growth, each with a distinct role.
Preserve the mental model
Change hierarchy and placement without forcing frequent users to relearn Home.
Research without internal access
Signals point to friction. They do not prove prevalence.
Three sources were used for different jobs: market data established the behavioral context, competitive patterns revealed learned expectations, and public reviews exposed recurring breakpoints.
Mobile transaction volume growth
Average annual growth cited for 2021–2025. This raises the cost of friction because mobile banking is now habitual behavior.
Banking and fintech benchmark
Compared balance presentation, visibility control, navigation, QR access, and transaction patterns.
UI/UX-relevant reviews
Reviews were AI-assisted for clustering, then representative samples were manually checked.
Evidence boundaryThese sources justify investigation and concept direction. They cannot tell us how many current users fail, what their baseline time is, or whether the redesign improves behavior.
Public review analysis
Two themes appeared repeatedly
Core features were described as hard to find even when they still existed. Interface changes across updates were also read as product instability, a more serious cost in banking than in low-risk consumer apps.
01 · Discoverability
Availability is not accessibility. A buried feature still creates a failure when the user must act quickly.
02 · Consistency
In a financial product, unpredictable interface change can be interpreted as service instability.
Review data is reactive and selection-biased. Repetition makes a theme worth testing, not automatically representative.
5 Whys
Why does Home make users search?
The first answer is visual competition. The root cause sits deeper: the system has no explicit rule for assigning priority by attention type.
Why might users spend extra effort finding an action?Because several modules compete with similar visual priority.
Why do several modules ask for attention at once?Because Home must support account context, transactions, instant access, services, and business content.
Why does supporting many jobs create friction?Because careful, urgent, reassuring, and promotional jobs are exposed through similar priority patterns.
Why are different jobs exposed similarly?Because the screen mainly mirrors product modules and distribution needs.
Why does product structure dominate?Because Home is treated as both the start of action and the surface for the entire ecosystem, without a governing attention model.
Root cause
The Home Screen lacks a shared, enforceable rule for separating jobs by attention need: orientation, reassurance, deliberate action, urgent action, and discovery.
Working problem
Four layers are blended
The issue is not that any layer is invalid. The issue is that users must determine priority themselves before they can act.
Balance & status
Confirms that the account and financial state are safe.
When untiered: reassurance competes with shortcuts and content.
Transfer & payment
Deliberate actions that require input, review, and confirmation.
When untiered: people scan a broad grid before starting.
QR, cards & alerts
Time-sensitive jobs that should be accessible by reflex.
When untiered: urgent actions behave like ordinary shortcuts.
Offers & products
Business discovery that remains valuable after orientation.
When untiered: suggestion feels like interruption.
Attention needs at a glance
Home supports four valid jobs. The design problem is deciding which one deserves attention in each moment, not making every module equally prominent.
Orientation & Trust
Am I in the right place, and is my money okay?
- Need
- Context and financial confidence
- Response
- Visible identity, stable balance, clear account state
Speed & Immediate Control
I need to deal with this now.
- Need
- Fast response under time pressure or uncertainty
- Response
- Persistent access to QR, Cards, and Notifications
Focus & Careful Completion
Help me finish correctly, not merely quickly.
- Need
- Accuracy, review, and confirmation
- Response
- A low-noise transaction area for deliberate tasks
Growth & Home Conflict
What else could be useful after my primary job?
- Need
- Discovery without interruption
- Response
- Place offers and services after the utility layer
Design strategy
Layered Attention System
Instead of starting with a new visual style, the redesign assigns each zone one primary mission and a deliberate order in the user's attention journey.
Context should orient. Trust should stabilize. Core should focus. Quick should accelerate. Growth should wait for the right moment.
Account identity
Confirm the right personal space without stealing focus.
Balance / trust anchor
Establish a stable financial reference before action.
Core transaction area
Support careful actions with a low-noise starting point.
Quick access
Reserve persistent access for time-sensitive tasks.
Growth content
Surface discovery after utility rather than inside it.
Intent before inventory
One Home, three paths by user need
The redesigned journey keeps a shared trust anchor, then reduces the screen to the shortest appropriate path. Urgent actions stay immediate, deliberate tasks add review, and growth waits until utility is complete.
From principle to interface
Five moves, each with a cost
The redesign does not pretend every change is an improvement in every dimension. Each decision protects one job and accepts a specific trade-off.
Decision 01 · Trust
Make balance stable before making it prominent
Users need a reliable financial anchor, not simply a larger number.
- Give the balance module clearer breathing room.
- Keep visible, hidden, loading, offline, and error states at the same height.
- Increase the visibility control target to at least 54×54px.
Rule: Trust comes from stability, not size. Cost: more vertical space above the fold.
Keep identity visible but secondary
Use a compact avatar and account status to confirm context, while separating identity from financial status.
Rule: Context should orient, not dominate. Cost: one more element in an already busy top area.
Separate deliberate transactions
Keep Transfer prominent in a focused transaction area and collapse secondary actions where appropriate.
Rule: Careful actions need a low-noise start. Cost: some lower-frequency tasks move one level deeper.
Reserve persistent access for urgent jobs
Place QR, Cards, and Notifications in a three-item bottom action area with large touch targets.
Rule: Less search under pressure. Cost: bottom navigation capacity becomes intentionally limited.
Place business content after utility
Keep banners visible but move them below orientation and transaction layers. Cap height and separate secondary campaigns.
Rule: Suggest after reassurance. Cost: early campaign exposure may decline and must be guarded by CTR.
Two opposing views
Modernize the hierarchy or the entire presentation?
Both directions use the same layered logic. They disagree on how much familiarity should be spent to create visible change.
Option A · Controlled
ChosenPreserve the familiar mental model. Change priority, spacing, state behavior, and quick access placement.
Strength
- Lower learning cost
- Safer staged rollout
- Clearer causal measurement
Weakness
- Less dramatic visually
- Some legacy constraints remain
- May underserve a rebrand goal
Option B · Card-based
Repackage identity and balance into a large financial card for a more premium, fintech-like presentation.
Strength
- Stronger visual shift
- More modular top area
- Clearer rebranding signal
Weakness
- Pushes actions lower
- Higher relearning cost
- More support and rollout risk
My decision is Option A. The stated objective is reducing everyday friction, not announcing a rebrand. If the real business objective were perceptual transformation, Option B would be the honest choice, but it would require a different research plan, migration strategy, and risk budget.
Selected concept
Still familiar, but with clearer roles
The final direction keeps the established transaction model while making financial context stable, grouping deliberate actions, and reserving bottom access for QR, Cards, and Notifications.
No metric, no claim
Measure the baseline before testing the redesign
This concept has not been released. The next valid step is not polishing the UI; it is establishing current performance and testing whether the new hierarchy improves urgent jobs without damaging familiarity or growth.
Instrument baseline
Measure current time-to-action, success, entry points, banner CTR, and findability-related support tickets.
Test both user groups
Recruit 8–10 participants across frequent and less-frequent banking behavior because they fail differently.
Compare guarded outcomes
Speed up QR without slowing transfer; improve clarity without collapsing familiarity or business performance.
Roll out by layer
Visual foundation → Balance → Quick Access → Growth, each with its own decision gate and rollback trigger.
| Metric | Decision it protects | Direction | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time-to-QR | Quick Access improves urgent action | Decrease vs. current | Needs baseline |
| Time-to-transfer | Separating actions does not harm the core job | No meaningful increase | Guardrail |
| Core task success | Hierarchy improves findability and completion | Target after baseline; directional ≥90% | Needs baseline |
| Familiarity score | Controlled change protects learned behavior | No sharp decline | Guardrail |
| Banner CTR | Later placement does not destroy growth value | No meaningful decline | Guardrail |
| Support tickets | Navigation change does not create feature loss | No increase in “can't find” reports | Guardrail |
Product, Design, and Growth agree on which job types may occupy each layer and the evidence required to change priority.
Track entry point, time-to-action, completion, error, and recovery for QR, transfer, card control, and notifications.
Ship independently measurable layers with explicit rollback thresholds instead of bundling all changes into one redesign.
If only Why 1–3 are treated: spacing, icon size, or a reordered shortcut grid may briefly look cleaner, but new campaigns and services will recreate the same competition because the prioritization rule and ownership model remain unchanged.
Reflection
Behavioral clarity beats visual novelty
A banking Home Screen has to serve trust, deliberate action, reflex speed, and growth at once. The design succeeds only when those jobs stop competing for the same moment.
A successful redesign may feel almost invisible: still Techcombank, but easier to trust and faster to act.
Implementation notes
What the handoff must protect
These details keep the strategy intact after the polished screen leaves Figma.
Balance states and edge cases
- Visible, hidden, loading, offline, error, and long-amount states keep a stable module height.
- The visibility control remains reachable at enlarged text sizes.
- Error states provide a next action rather than only reporting failure.
Quick Access rules
- Bottom action is limited to QR, Cards, and Notifications.
- Tap areas remain at least 48×48px; badges never cover the label or reduce icon recognition.
- Cards represents card management broadly, not only emergency card locking.
Growth content rules
- One primary campaign appears after the utility layer.
- Secondary campaigns move to a separate area or carousel, with visibility and CTR tracked.
- A campaign cannot enter the Trust or Core layer without a documented exception.
Research sources and limitation
- Public State Bank of Vietnam digital transaction data and the Connected Consumer report, as referenced in the original research.
- Competitive benchmark across 10 Vietnamese banking and fintech apps.
- Approximately 1,000 public App Store and Google Play reviews, filtered to 153 UI/UX-related reviews.
- No internal Techcombank analytics or confidential product data was used.