Transcript of Interview With Jean-Baptiste Kaloya

Interview With Jean-Baptiste Kaloya

This interview features Jean-Baptiste Kaloya, head of design at Bpifrance. You can watch it on Jean-Baptiste’s profile page.

Transcript

– Well, hello, I’m Joe Welinske. I’m the conference director for Convey ux. The event is going into its 12th year taking place the last three days of February. We’re gonna be in person in Seattle and also online. And I have the fun job of talking to our many speakers before the event. This day I am speaking with Jean-Baptiste Kaloya. Hello Jean. Jean-Baptiste. How are you today?

– Hello, Joe. It’s a pleasure to talk to you. I’m really good.

– Well, we’re really happy to have you as part of the program. I’m talking from my home office in Bellingham, Washington, just north of Blinks Seattle headquarters. Where are you talking to us from?

– So, I’m, I’m literally currently in my home in Paris, where, where I’m based and yeah, nearby to our offices of BPI friends. We have several offices in Paris and in other part of France.

– Well, that’s great. We’re great. You’re able to make the trip from Paris to Seattle. For people who may not be familiar with you, why don’t you talk a little bit about your background and the types of work that you do?

– Sure, yeah, of course. So, as you mentioned, I’m Jean, today’s head of design at BPI France, who, who maybe know what we are doing. BPI. France is a bank that has being created by the French government to finance and support entrepreneurs at every stage of their company’s life. And before that I have experience leading design team and working on service and product design, user user research strategy, design strategy in different industries such as e-commerce, fashion, public sectors, companies and travel. And in recent years I’ve have been specialized a bit into fintechs and banking experience by working with different banks in France and in Europe and other fintechs.

– Go ahead

– If you want tell you a little bit more about my current job. So in, in BPI France, basically it is as the head of design, definitely leading and defining the design vision of the digital product we’re creating, then empowering, scaling up and managing the design team. So when I joined the company almost three years ago, the design team were only composed by four designers. Now that we are more than 35. And I’m still also leading transverse topics such as design advocacy, design ops, and design system strategy. And also finally, maybe something that’s important to, to notice is that I’m, I have one of my design mantra, which is learning by doing with others. So I, even though I’m leading the entire design team, which is now a really large design team, I’m also focusing on some design changing challenges with the rest of the team. So I’m still focused on really specific and strategic design changes and I think that keeps me grounded between the vision and strategy to the execution. So I’m still working on some few operational changes.

– Well, we’re really happy to have your experience with financial services as part of the event. Your topic title is Designing Tomorrow’s Banking Experience, A Journey into Emotional Design. So tell us a little bit about how you decided on that topic and what we can expect to learn from it.

– Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great question. I’m going to give you a little, a teaser about what we are going to, to, to discuss. I think the, this is one of the topic, I think it’s, it’s extremely interesting into the banking and FinTech industry. If we think about banking experience, the offensive form complexity or you know, lack of intuitiveness. And if we take a step back from that, it’s kind of a paradox because money is really part of our daily life. And it’s interestingly connected to our emotions can bring us like serenity joy or even feeling of accomplishments on, on the one hand and on the other end, it can also be source of irritation or fear or frustration. So this is also especially true for entrepreneurs. When you are entrepreneurs, you are really facing up and down situation with your business, especially in, in early stage. And so I’ve been working especially at BPA France with a team for many years on how we switch and how we create banking experience that tend to become memorable and also enjoyable. So in that talk, I’m also going to give a, a, give a quick tool about the journey of what, how we create those memorable experience at the ference, what didn’t work, what didn’t work, the tactic we also developed to, to do so, and how also we measure the success because it’s also very linked to the business. And also creating those, those experiences that also at the end have a positive impact on the global business.

– Well, I think that’s gonna bring in a lot of interesting learning and discussion to the conference as a, as a a banking organization, you certainly have the, the digital component of that, but also there’s the, the interpersonal part of it with respect to customer experience, you know, how do you think about that because CX is one of the major themes of the conference this year.

– Yeah, that’s, that’s a real question and I think that’s also really important to, to say that BPA France at the beginning is not a FinTech, it’s a investment bank. It’s, it’s kind of a, one of a kind also bank, because I was, as I was mentioning, we are helping entrepreneurs. So we are only our, our only clients are entrepreneurs and we invest and we help them with financial and non-financial solutions. So you can’t create, you know, bank accounts with a big P n’s credit card. We only, you know, help you to to, to finance some projects. And so our mission as a digital team at BPN is really to transform this, this, this bank into a FinTech. So by doing that, we are focusing on creating those digital experiences that goes within the, the traditional experience of the bank. We have more than 2000 bankers, we have more than 50 agencies within the France and BPI France is also very present to and organize some big events dedicated for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs in France and in Europe. So the digital experience we’re creating is really how we focus on the right part of the journey. And also we are facing multiple changes because our end user are extremely diverse. First of all, we have entrepreneurs obviously, but we also have the internal bankers that are working within the banks. And we are also helping partners. So we are, as BP funds working with other banks, we are also working with the French state and we are working with partners like incubators for example. So all those different type of end users have very different challenges. So for example, entrepreneurs, it’s finding the right solution for their needs or for the bankers. It is how they can be. We, we can reduce the low value added tasks by digitalizing some complex regulatory or or banking process. But within a, an experience or digital is a digital experiences we are creating are also really mixed with the experience. When you meet someone in real life or you meet your banker or your banker goes with you in your company to really understand what is your, your car business. So we are really focusing on the global also approach of customer experience on its own. And even though we started really of focusing at the beginning of our transformation only on digital experiences, now that we are more and more mature, we enlo the customer experience on the, on the global scale.

– Well I think the many of the conference participants are gonna be looking forward to having a chance to talk to you about the customer experience at the conference. We have a lot of very senior and experienced practitioners who are participants at the conference, but we also have people who are relatively new to user experience. Do you have any thought or a tip that you might offer as advice to people that are just getting started?

– Sure, yeah, that’s a, that’s a great, great question. I think maybe I would say I have like one advice that can be also divided into, I think the, the, the first one is really, it can sound common, but it’s really like under deeply understanding what is your user and business goal you want to achieve. And I’m really focusing on user and also business because that’s extremely important. Especially banking experience can be complex. We are facing really complex topics and obviously this is a continuous approach. You, you, you, you still, I mean I, I learn a new thing every day and I’m not a banker at, I’m a designer, but how you become more and more confident on, you know, understanding, really deeply understanding the real need of your user or the real business problem you’re trying to solve. I think that’s really the, the first and, and the maybe the stronger advice and also telling to the team on a regular basis. And once you do that, how you execute that producing good design is obviously very complex. There is not no one good design or multiple good designs. And to do that, obviously you have design methodology that helps you to do that. But I think they only make sense as long as we consider them as a tool, not as an end on itself, on themself. And to really develop your craft as a young designer, I would say you obviously need to integrate those methodology but also stay in spite of what is happening. What are the, the, if you want to, especially to develop mobile able experience in the world of design. Obviously product design, but also some other part of design. What is happening in industrial design, what is happening in architecture for example. And if we go a little step further, if we see talented chef or talented fashion designer, they all have in common that they combine a great technical knowledge with a taste, a strong taste and developing a taste, there is no framework for that. So how you mix function and form and how you develop a way to really be excellent in your craft. I think those two things. So, and deeply understanding and then developing your craft is obviously not something that’s you achieve. I think it’s a continuous process, but I think that that’s maybe one of the most important advice and and way of, of thinking for designers these days.

– Well there’s a lot of good advice in there that I think is gonna be helpful to many of the participants at the conferences just as, as well as anyone listening to our preview video here. One of the elements that we have at the conference is a bookstore, a physical bookstore put on by a local Seattle bookshop called adas. And also there’s an online version of that. So I always like to ask if you have any books you’ve read recently, anything you might want to recommend to us.

– Sure. So very also ignorant with my talk, I think two major also they are really well-known book in the design community. But if you’re interested into emotional design, I would highly suggest to read obviously design Designing for Emotion from Aaron Walter, which is in very interesting to really understand what is emotional design and how you can really on a very tangible way, integrate that into your design process. So that would be the first one. And the second one is also very well known emotional design by Don Norman. I think this one is, I, I reread it recently one, one and a half year ago. So not, not too recently, but it’s, it’s explore how behavioral design works and also give some interesting thoughts on how do you understand basis of neuroscience and how that helps you to really design great experiences. So I think those books also that are really the base of really understanding emotional design are really me reads

– Well. Those are great additions. We’ll see about getting those into the conference bookstore. And John Baptiste, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me and, and talk about your background and your organization and your thoughts on CX and your topic and your ideas you’ve shared with us. So we look forward to seeing you in a couple of months in Seattle.

– Thank you so much Joe. And we, it will also be my first time in Seattle, so I’m definitely looking forward to visit the city. And maybe one last thing I can add is I’m also very interested into coffee. I know the, the city has a really strong coffee culture so I’m also looking forward to discover that.

– Well, we’ll be sure to, we’ll make sure, we’ll introduce you some to some good spots in Seattle. Thank you.

– Sure. And thank you so much for organizing the the conference.

– Alright, bye-Bye bye.