How design-thinking powers Temenos’ empathy-driven experiences

From streamlining complex onboarding flows to surfacing the right information at the right time, design thinking encourages product design teams to bring empathy and intentionality into every layer of product development, creating experiences that are intuitive, responsive, and centered around real human needs.

Temenos is leading the charge to bring that mindset back to banking innovation, with Erik Johnson, Head of Product Design, at the helm. For Johnson, creativity and collaboration go hand in hand with functionality.

On this episode of the Tearsheet podcast, Johnson talks about structuring his design team in a “centralized, hybrid” model, solving design challenges with data and empathy, and how Temenos’ Innovation Hub in Orlando is structured to be a “we space” for exploring and co-creating new banking products.

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Centering humans in innovation

Johnson is driving a culture shift at Temenos to encourage human-centered and empathy-driven innovation, adding that it offers customer centricity. 

Part of the culture shift is a shift in language. He explained why Temenos is leading with the term “product design” rather than UX, UI or CX: “Product design really is a modern look at designers as generalists or T-shaped designers…my role is to bring together these generalist product designers, who think from a business perspective just as much as a UX perspective, and can provide value to teams.”

Johnson also discussed restructuring his team by embedding designers in departments across the company, while offering a “home base” for strategic alignment. These changes are intended to empower everyone from product managers to engineers to embrace a headspace that encourages exploration and testing in product ideation and development. 

“Our big goal is to be embedded within the product development process, within the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC),” Johnson said. “I want our team to feel like a connected family..”

Data-driven product design that flows and resonates

Under Johnson’s leadership, design decisions are informed by data-derived insights, with an end-goal to create smooth, intuitive product flows that move users forward: “I always emphasize with our team, how can you think about this differently where it doesn’t feel like you did something wrong, and it’s just guiding you through the experience.”

Good product design, he noted, also leads with empathy. His team fleshes out different user personas to better understand their pain points, motivations, and goals. “It’s easy to think about the end consumer because we all use a banking app…but to put yourselves in the shoes of a bank employee, it’s harder, but it’s something we have to do to follow that design thinking mindset of building empathy.”

Underscoring his point, Johnson recalled a conversation he had with a product manager in one of Temenos’ design partner workshops with a bank. “He said, ’This will free up so much of my time that I can actually get to innovating some really awesome products,’” Johnson said. “That was something that we focused on: how can we make this a fun experience for these banking employees?”

Temenos empowers its clients to focus on innovation through products like Temenos Product Manager Copilot which is designed to assist product managers accelerate time-consuming and laborious tasks like data collection and navigating compliance to focus more on the “fun dream world” aspect of product ideation: “The end goal with all of this is you’re going to see much more bespoke products being created when you have time to really innovate, because you’ve reduced the time spent on all of these cumbersome tasks.”

A “we space” for innovation

With a growing client and partner base in the U.S., Temenos’ new Innovation Hub based in Orlando, Florida, is helping the company co-create with its bank customers. “I talk about it as a ’we space’ rather than a ’me space,’” Johnson said. “You can book a room for a short amount of time, and you can collaborate in that huddle room, but there’s no actual dedicated offices there. And what that does is it encourages us to collaborate with our partners, with our customers, bring them into this space and use it as we see fit.”

One of the centerpieces of the Orlando Innovation Hub will be a device lab that explores banking innovation through AI and a conversational design perspective. 

“With AI, you’re going to have much more of a screenless experience where you can just talk to a co-pilot,” Johnson explained. “I’ve always liked exploring different kinds of phone models, tablets, phablets, foldable phones and wearables…we’re going to have those in this space. So you can imagine how you would use these types of devices when you’re interacting with your bank as a consumer, and how banks can think about exploring this.”

For banking executives, this kind of hands-on environment offers a rare opportunity to see the evolution of user interaction unfold in real time and superimpose those possibilities on their own challenges, customer needs, and product roadmaps.

As Temenos continues to evolve its approach to product design, Johnson’s vision offers a glimpse into the future its shaping in banking

“I want everyone across the organization of Temenos and externally with our partners to get product design,” he added. “Once we lay that foundation, the sky’s the limit. We’re going to build some incredible products.”