Abstract purple background with geometric cubes and "SMART DATA FOUNDRY" logo in white.

Smart Data Foundry

Enabling innovation within the open banking landscape

Team

Kari Yoshime, Charlotte Holland, Oonagh White, Michael Salmon, Scott Barron

Expertise

Strategy, UX, Web Design

Background

Smart Data Foundry (SDF) is an organisation which specialises in the innovative analysis of private-sector financial data. Their mission is to improve people’s lives, businesses and communities by using their findings to tackle the biggest societal, economical and environmental issues across the country.

With a goal of accelerating innovation within the financial industry, SDF (in partnership with Ozone API), developed 2 new products: the Standards Library and Innovation Atlas.

With global open finance standards becoming increasingly complex, the idea was that these products would form part of a toolkit to help banks, fintechs and regulators understand and compare the 20+ different standards that exist around the world.

Web interface with graphics for 'Standards for Innovation' and 'Innovation Atlas'.

The brief

As SDF’s trusted digital partner since 2022, we were brought on to help bring these two products to life by:

  • Working with SDF from a strategic and user-centric perspective to ensure the products met business objectives and user needs
  • Developing a complete design system for their user interface utilising a modular component approach
  • Ensuring alignment with their existing brand and clearly communicate their mission, purpose and values to current and prospective stakeholders
Graphic design mockups for a "Smart Data Foundry" design system with colour palette, typography, and UI elements.

A well considered user experience

As an advocate for their users, we worked closely with the SDF team to effectively map out the user journeys and information architecture through interactive wireframes taking into account:

  • A login management system allowing users to sign up, log in, retrieve passwords
  • The relationship between these products and SDF's main public facing site
  • The requirement to build a responsive framework accessible to WCAG AA standards
Complex flowchart with interconnected boxes and blue lines, depicting a user journey or process map.

Standards Library

In a nutshell, the Standards Library is a filterable and searchable database of global open finance standards for each country or region which are owned and managed by either banks, organisations or their respective governments themselves - all maintained through a CMS (content management system) by SDF.

Our carefully thought out designs meant that within each entry detail page, users can view a range of complex information such as data formats, security models, developer resources and associated legislation without being overwhelmed. We also created functionality to allow users to compare up to 3 different standards side by side alongside dynamic search and filtering.

Screenshot of a 'Standards Library' webpage with information on the Bahrain Open Banking Framework.

Innovation Atlas

The Innovation Atlas is an easy-to-navigate interactive map providing an overview of what is happening around the world within open finance. It documents the levels of financial inclusion, telecommunication challenges, banking and data privacy regulations globally as well as illustrating the state of open banking, open finance and open data in each country or region.

To ensure a premium user experience, we developed functionality that directs users to dedicated country pages when they click on highlighted regions. These pages include quick search and filtering options for changing formats and accessing detailed information.

Web page with a world map highlighting financial innovation, sidebar navigation, and a pop-up focusing on the UK.

Brands We've Worked With