Mobile Dashboard

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Mobile dashboards help users monitor activity, track progress, and access key actions from a single view. For product designers and managers, the challenge is balancing information density with clarity while ensuring quick access to what matters most on smaller screens.

Mobile Dashboard Testing uses a design stack of UX metrics: engagement, comprehension, satisfaction, and sentiment to measure how effectively the dashboard supports user goals and encourages return visits. This approach replaces subjective opinions with measurable insights.

With these findings, designers and managers can make informed design decisions, prioritize improvements, and demonstrate the impact of changes on business outcomes. For example, testing Bank of America’s mobile app dashboard revealed strong comprehension but weaker engagement, showing where interaction patterns could be optimized to drive deeper ongoing use.

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Define Goals for Your Mobile Dashboard

A mobile dashboard should balance user needs like trust, clarity, and efficiency with business goals such as retention, engagement, and cross-sell opportunities. Users want a clear overview of their financial health and confidence in their data security, while businesses aim to keep customers active within the app ecosystem. Measuring dashboard engagement ensures the experience delivers both trust and long-term value.

**Audience:**

This concept was tested with Bank of America members and everyday banking consumers who interacted with the Bank of America mobile app dashboard. Participants were asked to explore key features, interpret account summaries, and share impressions of clarity, usefulness, and security.

User Needs
As a customer using a mobile banking dashboard, the five most important needs would be:

1. Users must feel that their financial information is fully protected and private. (Users must feel Secure)

2. The dashboard should load consistently and display accurate, up-to-date account data. (Dashboard should be Reliable)

3. Key actions like checking balances or paying bills should be quick and frictionless. (Dashboard should be Efficient)

4. The dashboard should provide clarity into spending, saving, and financial trends. (Dashboard should be Insightful)

5. The overall experience should make users feel the app genuinely helps them manage their finances better. (Dashboard should be Valuable)

These five ensure the dashboard feels trustworthy, informative, and empowering, making financial management smooth and reliable.

Business Goals
Here are the five most important business goals for a mobile banking dashboard:

1. Increase Daily Engagement – Encourage frequent logins and interactions that build customer stickiness.

2. Promote Product Adoption – Surface relevant offers like credit cards, loans, or savings products.

3. Strengthen Customer Retention – Build loyalty through transparency, ease of use, and reliable performance.

4. Reduce Support Volume – Enable self-service actions that minimize calls to customer support.

5. Gather Behavioral Insights – Track dashboard engagement patterns to inform product strategy and feature improvements.

These goals help the business build lasting relationships, deepen product engagement, and maintain customer trust through a secure and insightful mobile dashboard experience.

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Choose Metrics to Test Your Mobile Dashboard

For Bank of America’s mobile app dashboard, a design stack of four UX metrics was chosen to measure how effectively the experience supports users in managing their finances on the go. This stack — Usability, Effort, Success, and Sentiment — was established by mapping key user needs directly to measurable outcomes:

• Efficient → Usability

  Users need quick access to key account information and actions. Usability measures whether participants can easily navigate the dashboard and locate features like balances, transfers, or bill payments.

• Reliable → Effort

  The dashboard should feel stable and predictable in use. Effort evaluates how easy or difficult participants found it to complete core actions, indicating whether reliability reduces cognitive or interaction strain.

• Valuable → Success

  The experience should make users feel their time and attention are well spent. Success measures whether participants can complete essential financial tasks smoothly, demonstrating the dashboard’s overall value.

• Secure & Insightful → Sentiment

  Users should trust that their information is protected and that insights are meaningful. Sentiment captures whether participants describe the dashboard as safe, informative, and confidence-building.

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Establish Hunches to Direct Your Testing

A mobile dashboard serves as the command center for users — helping them stay on top of balances, payments, and alerts without friction. For Bank of America’s app, the design’s clarity and efficiency directly influence user trust and engagement. These hunches identify potential friction points and emotional signals that can be tested to validate and refine the dashboard experience.

Example: Bank of America Mobile App Dashboard

<table xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" style="min-width: 75px;"><colgroup><col style="min-width: 25px;"><col style="min-width: 25px;"><col style="min-width: 25px;"></colgroup><tbody><tr><th colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>Hunch</p></th><th colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>Question</p></th><th colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>UX Metric</p></th></tr><tr><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>The dense grid layout may feel informative but visually overwhelming, especially for first-time users scanning multiple account types and tools at once.</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>Was it easy to understand what information is most important on your dashboard?</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://glare.helio.app/define/ux-metrics/behavioral-metrics/effort">Effort</a></p></td></tr><tr><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>The “Customize My Dashboard” CTA at the bottom may not stand out enough, leading users to overlook personalization options that could improve engagement.</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>Did you notice the option to customize your dashboard?</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://glare.helio.app/define/ux-metrics/behavioral-metrics/success">Success</a></p></td></tr><tr><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>The navigation icons at the bottom (Accounts, Transfer, Bill Pay, Deposit, Menu) may blend together visually, creating uncertainty about where to begin certain actions.</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>How confident do you feel navigating to perform a specific task, like paying a bill or transferring money?</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://glare.helio.app/define/ux-metrics/behavioral-metrics/usability">Usability</a></p></td></tr><tr><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>The spending summary widget (“3 Categories Over Budget”) introduces useful insight, but its placement and wording may trigger anxiety rather than motivation to explore further.</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>How does seeing your ‘Categories Over Budget’ message make you feel about your finances?</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://glare.helio.app/define/ux-metrics/attitudinal-metrics/sentiment">Sentiment</a></p></td></tr><tr><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>The visual hierarchy of icons and numbers could make users focus more on balances than actions — potentially limiting engagement with secondary features like FICO score tracking or transfers.</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>What part of the dashboard did you look at first, and why?</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://glare.helio.app/define/ux-metrics/behavioral-metrics/engagement">Engagement</a></p></td></tr></tbody></table>

These hunches help test whether Bank of America’s mobile dashboard delivers on user expectations for efficiency, control, and reassurance, ensuring the design feels empowering rather than overwhelming.

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Turn Hunches into Test Questions

Turning these metrics into participant questions transforms design assumptions into measurable signals. Each metric uses a specific question type paired with a clear example from Bank of America’s mobile app dashboard:

• Sentiment **(Multiple-choice impressions)**

  Question type: Impression checklist.

  Example: “Which of the following words best describe your impression of this dashboard?”
 (Positive: Trustworthy, Organized, Clear, Helpful. Negative: Confusing, Cluttered, Overwhelming, Dull)

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• Usability **(Click test success across multiple directives)**

  Question type: Multi-task click test.

  Example: “Where would you tap to view your transaction history?” followed by “Where would you tap to transfer money between accounts?”
 (Success rate is averaged across tasks)

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• Effort **(7-pt scale of difficulty)**

  Question type: Difficulty rating scale.

  Example: “How easy or difficult was it to complete the actions on this dashboard?”
 (1 = Very Easy → 7 = Very Difficult)

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Calculate UX Metric Scores from User Feedback

We tested Bank of America’s mobile app dashboard with 100 participants, and their responses were analyzed and translated into UX metric scores on a 0–100% scale. Each metric in the design stack was calculated from post-task survey questions and click behavior, then benchmarked using the following scoring system:

• Very Good = 90% and above

• Good = 70%–89%

• Average = 50%–69%

• Poor = 30%–49%

• Very Poor = below 30%

Once the individual UX metric scores are calculated, the average of those scores are used to determine the overall score for the user experience.

Bank of America’s Results

• Sentiment (44% — Poor): Despite functional performance, users described the dashboard as “cluttered” and “overwhelming,” suggesting that visual hierarchy and tone could be improved to create a calmer, more focused experience.

• Usability (83% — Good): Participants easily located key actions like viewing balances and navigating between accounts, showing strong operational clarity.

• Effort (89% — Good): The app’s layout enabled quick access to primary functions with minimal taps, highlighting an efficient interaction design for frequent banking tasks.

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These findings produced an overall test score of 72% — Good. While the dashboard performs well functionally, its emotional resonance lags behind. Enhancing sentiment through simplified visuals, better balance between data density and whitespace, and more human-centered microcopy could elevate both user comfort and trust in the mobile experience.

Click here to check out the raw survey data and UX metric scores for Bank of America’s mobile dashboard.

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Draw Signals from Your Design Stack

Here’s how signals were surfaced from the BofA mobile dashboard test results by following these five steps:

1. Focus on poorly scoring metrics

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The mobile dashboard test for Bank of America’s app produced a good overall score of 72%, with strong performance in Usability (83%) and Effort (89%), but a noticeably poor Sentiment score (44%). This indicates that while users find the dashboard easy to navigate and perform tasks efficiently, the emotional impression it leaves is underwhelming. The interface works — but it doesn’t inspire trust, confidence, or delight.

2. Identify patterns across metrics

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The data suggests a functional yet emotionally flat experience. Users can complete actions quickly and easily, demonstrating solid usability and efficiency. However, low sentiment reveals a lack of perceived warmth or reassurance — critical qualities in a financial context. This mismatch between performance and perception signals that users may see the experience as purely transactional rather than relationship-driven.

3. Determine if user needs are being met

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• Secure: Partially met — while users trust the brand, the interface lacks visual cues or language that actively reinforces security.

• Reliable: Met — the dashboard presents accurate, real-time account data without visible issues.

• Efficient: Met — users complete key tasks like checking balances or making payments quickly.

• Insightful: Not fully met — users can view balances but lack deeper financial insights (e.g., spending analysis or saving recommendations).

• Valuable: Partially met — the experience helps manage finances but doesn’t convey added value beyond standard functionality.

4. Compare outcomes to your business goals

• Increase Daily Engagement: At risk — while usability supports repeat visits, low sentiment may discourage habitual engagement.

• Promote Product Adoption: Limited — the dashboard’s transactional tone doesn’t surface relevant product opportunities.

• Strengthen Customer Retention: Weak — without emotional resonance, the experience doesn’t foster loyalty.

• Reduce Support Volume: Supported — strong usability ensures users can self-serve effectively.

• Gather Behavioral Insights: Supported — dashboard usage provides reliable performance and engagement data.

5. Surface signals & establish a direction

Signals derived from the data:

1. Users find the dashboard easy but uninspiring — efficiency is strong, yet emotional connection is lacking.

2. Trust feels assumed, not reinforced — users expect security but don’t see it actively communicated in the design.

3. Insight is the missing piece — users want clearer visibility into their financial health, not just account balances.

Direction based on business context:

To align with Bank of America’s goals of increasing daily engagement and strengthening retention, design priorities should include:

• Reinforcing trust through visual reassurance (e.g., security confirmations, data privacy cues, positive tone).

• Introducing more personalized financial insights to deepen value and relevance.

• Enhancing emotional engagement with microcopy, motion, or visuals that convey stability and empowerment.

Based on the signals and design direction, we created an updated version of the design with the expected UX metric improvement:

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The signal is clear: Bank of America’s mobile dashboard performs well functionally but lacks emotional resonance. By humanizing the design and reinforcing security and insight, the app can turn usability into trust and engagement into loyalty.