When to merge features into a "master" mobile app or create a dedicated mobile app

Question

The general question is how do you decide that these features should be merged to an existing mobile app OR we should build a dedicated mobile app?

Let's say for instance that you work for a bank.

From the user perspective, you've identified two goals/tasks: 1. I want to see how much money is on my account. 2. I want to transfer money to some other bank account. If you were to do more research, I guess you'd find more goals/tasks (all that is only an example).

From the bank perspective, they started with one app "Name Of The Bank." And then at some point, it became messy because the objective of the app became unclear, the users' profiles (personas) and activities also became unclear.

So how do you choose when it would make more sense to split and create a new product or when it's ok to add on?

Thanks for your feedback, experience tips, readings, etc.

Answer 1

Generally, as soon as you notice you can't serve a specific group without negatively affecting other key audiences, then you need to make a separate application.

Primary personas represent the primary target for the design of an interface. There can be only one primary persona per interface for a product, but it is possible for some products (especially enterprise products) to have multiple distinct interfaces, each targeted at a distinct primary persona.

For example, a health-care information system might have separate clinical and financial interfaces, each targeted at a different persona. In some cases, two separate interfaces might be two separate applications that act on the same data; in other cases, the two interfaces might simply be two different sets of functionality served to two different users based upon their role or customization. Source: About Face, Alan Cooper.

Whether you incorporate those two distinct views into one product depends on if they can co-habitate the same application. Through user research and usability testing you can find out whether or not users can find their way through the application, and whether multiple persona's have overlap in used features or not. It might be the case that users don't find it difficult to navigate despite the abundance of features, or the opposite.