Photo credit: Nathan Dumlao, Unsplash
Shedding light on the personal loan experience
Supporting a team of researchers and designers at a mid-sized FinTech organization in learning about and generating concepts to address user needs, expectations, and concerns related to unsecured personal loans and the platforms through which they are requested.
Lead Researcher & Project Manager
Delve, 2020
Internal collaborators
Insights & Strategy peers, Industrial Design, Service Design, Visual Communications, Sales
Client collaborators
Senior Managers of Customer Insights and Design, UX Researchers, Sr.
Impact
Frameworks, metaphors, and detailed design guidelines were used to inform the client's continued design and development work to address the unique needs of consumers in the personal loan application and borrowing process. A process map of the user experience provided our client the foundational insights for continued research and idea generation.
Note: This effort was conducted in a “learn/do” manner as the client team was actively working to up-skill and establish a design research practice at their organization. This entailed bringing the client team closely along in the development of research protocols and tools, analysis processes, and dedicating extra time to teaching about methods and best practices.
Design guidelines were presented in a framework to help illustrate the connection between insights and actions.
Design guidelines were presented in a framework to help illustrate the connection between insights and actions.
Tensions, inherent to any design effort, were defined to create awareness in continued development activities and build empathy with users.
Tensions, inherent to any design effort, were defined to create awareness in continued development activities and build empathy with users.
Process mapping brought awareness to user frustrations and opportunities for design. It was overlain with the design guidelines.
Process mapping brought awareness to user frustrations and opportunities for design. It was overlain with the design guidelines.
Tools & techniques applied
In-depth interviews with internal stakeholders and subject matter experts
Competitive analysis
Research operations including recruitment (Respondent), scheduling, agreements & forms, guide & stimuli development
Experience & process mapping
Jobs-to-be-Done theory
Ideation & storyboarding
Concept testing
Miro
Facilitation of co-analysis sessions, ideation workshops, and decision-making meetings
Project management
Key project activities
Designed and conducted discovery research (n=16 in-depth interviews) and concept testing (n=15 usability tests) to understand people’s experiences attaining a personal loan and explore concepts to address unmet needs and pain points. Managed all participant recruitment, scheduling, and incentives via the recruitment platform, Respondent.
Visuals: Multiple sources - primary and secondary - for discovery research were leveraged.
Completed competitive desk research to understand the landscape of lenders, experiences, and information available to borrowers.
Led structured debriefing sessions following every participant interview to capture top take-aways and begin identifying patterns early.
Developed and presented detailed participant summaries and facilitated Co-Analysis work sessions with active capture of jobs, pains, and gains, reflection and reframing exercises, affinity mapping, and idea generation.
Facilitated client down-selection of concepts to test, developed rough storyboards and concept descriptions, and worked with the design team to refine visualizations.
Visuals: Analysis activities were thorough and conducted collaboratively with all project stakeholders.
Created a detailed final delivery report with all project findings and recommendations, including concept refinements.
Managed the active program, including successfully negotiating a budget increase to account for client delays to the project timeline.