Evaluating User Experience Design Practices in Nigerian FinTech Applications

Nigeria's fintech sector has experienced rapid growth, but user experience quality varies significantly across platforms, affecting customer acquisition, retention, and financial inclusion outcomes. This study professionally evaluates user experience design practices in Nigerian fintech applications, focusing on mobile banking, payments, and lending platforms. A heuristic evaluation using Nielsen's Ten Usability Heuristics was conducted on 20 Nigerian fintech applications by a panel of five certified UX professionals. Additionally, 100 fintech application users across Lagos, Abuja, and Kano completed task-based usability assessments and the Mobile Application Rating Scale. Severity ratings were assigned to identified usability violations. Findings indicate that error prevention and recovery assistance are the weakest design dimensions across evaluated applications, with 65 percent of apps providing insufficient error messaging during transaction failures. Accessibility features for visually impaired users are absent in 80 percent of tested apps. Onboarding flows average 9.4 steps, above the internationally recommended maximum of seven for financial applications. Applications targeting users with lower digital literacy (proxied by secondary school education or below) consistently show lower usability scores than those targeting university-educated users. The study proposes a Nigerian Fintech UX Quality Standard with 15 design principles addressing inclusivity, error tolerance, multilingual support, and low-bandwidth optimisation, and recommends its incorporation into CBN fintech licensing requirements.

Keywords: user experience design, fintech, Nigeria, mobile applications, usability evaluation