37Signals' "37BetterBank", circa 1998, is still better than my bank's interface from 2008 | Hacker News Reader

37Signals' "37BetterBank", circa 1998, is still better than my bank's interface from 2008

37signals.com

45 pointshenning22 comments

Wow, the wayback machine is in effect!

The 37Better series was from back when we used to do client work. Every once in a while we'd run into a bad experience with a site we used. An online bank, FedEx, PayPal, etc.

So, as one-part experiment, one-part promotion, and one-part just plain fun, we'd redesign one (or a couple) pages to show what we'd do with the concept/site if we had the chance.

Sometimes using the mobile version of an existing site in a normal browser can give you similar results

https://www.bankofamerica.com/mobile/

http://mobile.fandango.com/

You're absolutely right, I never really thought to even try this.

This is seriously an excellent idea. My Bank of America online banking just improved by leaps and bounds.

Thanks!

It's also a good test for services that might be ripe for the picking. In other words, if their mobile site viewed on your PC is better than their actual site....well maybe they deserve to be put out of business by a startup.

Absolutely Brilliant! I took me less than 2 minutes to pay 3 bills and check my balances. Normally this is 5+ minute affair!

Wow cool, they have a few "Better" apps/designs: http://www.37signals.com/better.php

In PHP too!

Getting Real online book (2006?) is php too: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php

BofA just put in all these crazy icons on their on the U/I that make no sense. My wife and I where looking at it last night in total confusion - they bacially filled the screen with a bunch of useless crap.

An improvement would have simply been using a larger font and breaking out transactions into logical categories, maybe even a newsfeed type feature to let you know at a glance the most recent transactions.

Other banks are far worse than them, really its remarkable how bad they are even today. then you have credit card companies, don't even get me started....

Seriously, can someone please tell me why banks have such terrible interfaces? They have soo much money, they could blow it out of the water...

Take ING Direct for example. Their service rocks, I absolutely love it... but I loathe their interface, it makes me hesitant to refer to my aging family members.

I'm currently working on similar software to what a lot of banks use. The user interface is given very very low priority. It's kind of sad.

I'm working on the back-end side of things (the money must add up! otherwise the accountants get grumpy) but would love to see more innovation on the interface side of things.

I have developed web and desktop applications for a bank ... "Design" is just considered eye candy and it is not in the specification document.

Probably the same reason that just about all large companies have annoying websites. Something to do with large companies being terrible at anything which isn't the core of their business.

Design by committee - multiple departments with a say in the final product.

Okay I have never done online banking, so I am not sure I understand what this is?

Is this an application they sell to banks, or is it an application you can use to connect to your bank online regardless of what your bank offer?

... what is this?

It's a design for a banking website. They did not go beyond the mock-up stage.

They should have... That mockup is lightyears better than my bank's site.

I absolutely despise my bank's website, and the slow servers they use to show it to me. The text is tiny, it uses a table based layout and tries to load up other useless information, such as the current weather conditions.

this dates from loooong before DHH/Basecamp/Rails/etc. came into the picture.

My bank's (CIBC) isn't terrible, but I wish I didn't have to screen-scrape it just to download a list of my transactions.

I use USAA for banking. Their online interface rocks. The bill pay is especially nice.

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