TY - BOOK

T1 - Interpreting infrastructure

T2 - defining user value for digital financial intermediaries

AU - Ferreira, Jennifer

AU - McKnight, John Carter

AU - Fish, Adam Richard

AU - Perry, Mark

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - The UK economy has a huge dependence on financial services, and this isincreasingly based on digital platforms. Innovating new economic models aroundconsumer financial services through the use of digital technologies is seen asincreasingly important in developed economies. There are a number of drivers forthis, ranging from national economic factors to the prosaic nature of enablingcheap, speedy and timely interactions for users. The potential for these new digitalsolutions is that they will allay an over-reliance on the traditional banking sector,which has proved itself to be unstable and risky, and we have seen a number ofnational policy moves to encourage growth in this sector. Partly as a result of the2008 banking crisis, there has been an explosion in peer-to-peer financial servicesfor non-professional consumers. These organisations act as intermediaries betweenusers looking to trade goods or credit. However, building self-sustaining orprofitable financial services within this novel space is itself fraught with commercial,regulatory, technical and social problems.This document reports on the value, use and interpretation of infrastructure in digitalintermediaries to their users, describing analysis of contextual field studies carriedout in two retail digital financial intermediary organisations: Zopa Limited and theBristol Pound. It forms the second milestone document in the 3DaRoC project,developing patterns of use that have arisen on the back of the technicalinfrastructures in the two organisations that form cases for examination. Its purposeis to examine how the two different technical infrastructures that underpin thetransactions that they support–composed of the back-office hardware and software,data structures, the networking and communications technologies used, supportedconsumer devices, and the user interfaces and interaction design–have provided opportunities for users to realise their financial and other needs. While we orienttowards the issues of service use (and its problems), we also examine the activitiesand expectations of their various users.Our research has involved teams from Lancaster University examining Zopa andBrunel University focusing on the Bristol Pound over approximately a one-yearperiod from October 2013 to October 2014. Extensive interviews, documentanalysis, observation of user interactions, and other methods have been employedto develop the process analyses of the firms presented here.This report comprises of three key sections: descriptions of the user demographicsfor Zopa and the Bristol Pound, a discussion about the user experience and its rolein community, and an examination of the role of usage data in the development ofthese a products. We conclude with final analytical section drawing preliminaryconclusions from the research presented.

AB - The UK economy has a huge dependence on financial services, and this isincreasingly based on digital platforms. Innovating new economic models aroundconsumer financial services through the use of digital technologies is seen asincreasingly important in developed economies. There are a number of drivers forthis, ranging from national economic factors to the prosaic nature of enablingcheap, speedy and timely interactions for users. The potential for these new digitalsolutions is that they will allay an over-reliance on the traditional banking sector,which has proved itself to be unstable and risky, and we have seen a number ofnational policy moves to encourage growth in this sector. Partly as a result of the2008 banking crisis, there has been an explosion in peer-to-peer financial servicesfor non-professional consumers. These organisations act as intermediaries betweenusers looking to trade goods or credit. However, building self-sustaining orprofitable financial services within this novel space is itself fraught with commercial,regulatory, technical and social problems.This document reports on the value, use and interpretation of infrastructure in digitalintermediaries to their users, describing analysis of contextual field studies carriedout in two retail digital financial intermediary organisations: Zopa Limited and theBristol Pound. It forms the second milestone document in the 3DaRoC project,developing patterns of use that have arisen on the back of the technicalinfrastructures in the two organisations that form cases for examination. Its purposeis to examine how the two different technical infrastructures that underpin thetransactions that they support–composed of the back-office hardware and software,data structures, the networking and communications technologies used, supportedconsumer devices, and the user interfaces and interaction design–have provided opportunities for users to realise their financial and other needs. While we orienttowards the issues of service use (and its problems), we also examine the activitiesand expectations of their various users.Our research has involved teams from Lancaster University examining Zopa andBrunel University focusing on the Bristol Pound over approximately a one-yearperiod from October 2013 to October 2014. Extensive interviews, documentanalysis, observation of user interactions, and other methods have been employedto develop the process analyses of the firms presented here.This report comprises of three key sections: descriptions of the user demographicsfor Zopa and the Bristol Pound, a discussion about the user experience and its rolein community, and an examination of the role of usage data in the development ofthese a products. We conclude with final analytical section drawing preliminaryconclusions from the research presented.

M3 - Commissioned report

BT - Interpreting infrastructure

PB - 3rd Party Dematerialisation and Rematerialisation of Capital

ER -