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Loan Application
System
I consulted with a project team at a bank to address a failing application that allowed clients to apply for and take out loans. As a partner, I instilled a design process focused on design thinking and educated the team on advocating for our users.
1 product designer
2 stakeholders
1 business analyst
3 developers
consultant, product design
background
through heavy collaboration and research, the team aimed to understand why the loan application was failing to produce successful loan outcomes. the current system's loans that clients were requesting had a ~33% rejection rate which meant that about one third of applications that our clients filled out got sent back to them. myself and my team members were determined to find out why this was happening.
what was causing the low success rates? the system? the processes? the data? the usability?
the process
discovery
we knew that there was an issue with the current state of the loan application tool because of its history of rejection rate, but we didn't know why it was failing. one of the major assumptions the team had was that the current process was super manual and required a lot of user focus to fill out the application. could the lack of data automation be the cause for all these rejections?
i love kicking off a project with loosely structured stakeholder interviews to understand their idea of a project's success and what information they may already have about user processes and needs. i don't limit these interviews to only stakeholders if there are other SME's on the team or involved in the project. the stakeholder interview template i utilize focuses on 3 main areas: vision, value, and users.
main themes collected from 3 stakeholder interviews:
1. project vision and success will be determined by a decrease in rejected loans
2. users have issues filling out the forms and they take long (on average 25 minutes) to fill out
3. there is a lack of transparency around tracking the loans from submission to approval
4. a desire to integrate with e-signature
i set up shadowing sessions with 15 financial advisors who have used the loan application previously to watch them complete the process of filling out the loan application. i paid attention to the sequences of events and workflows that users went through throughout the process and documented my findings. following my sessions, i created a journey map that outlined the full journey users went through.
following my sessions, i created a current state journey map that outlined the full journey users went through from the moment the loan application was launched to their final submission of the loan. the map was important because it allowed me to document real user reactions which established a sense of empathy when i reviewed it with the team.
in order to really understand where the opportunities throughout the loan application process were, i created a current state workflow. i emphasized the areas where the system was failing the users and where the users may have been using the system incorrectly.
not only did the process of taking out a loan reveal itself to be extremely hands on and manual, it also brought light to the fact that there was zero user feedback given to the FA/SA when an error was made or why a loan was rejected.
originally, we had believed that the systems biggest flaw was that it was so manual. although that was correct, the map and workflows ended up exposing even larger issues with the tool. they provided insight into mistakes happening so often not only due to having to manually entering a multitude of information, but also because users were not receiving any feedback on errors that were being made. we reframed our thinking into a 'how might we' to start converging on ideas on how to address this.
creating a shared understanding
the team shifted gears to focus on solving the problems surrounding the lack of automation and the lack of user validation. i looked at how other companies were providing user feedback as forms were being filled out and their methods of validation as inspiration to take into our loan application.
slack indicates which fields are required through use of a different color text
amazon uses an asterisk on their forms to tell the user what fields are required
if there's a problem with data entered, users know right away by a message that demands attention on airbnb
when in doubt, refer to jakob nielsen's usability heuristics! because this team had never engaged with a ux partner prior to myself, it was important to me to educate the team on the importance of usability best practices and advocating for our users. as the nielsen norman group puts it, "to err is human, and people will make mistakes" and it's up to us to design an experience for them that quickly and easily lets them correct their mistakes and proceed. for this project, i relied heavily on the heuristic of visibility of system status which is all about effectively communicating with the user.
we followed the three main nng principles while considering changes our tool:
1. error message should be easy to notice and understand
2. errors on fields should be easy to locate
3. errors should be simple and guide the user on how to quickly make fixes
it was through observation methods that really allowed us to narrow down what features needed to be added to the application to ensure a decrease in the amount of rejected loans. Ultimately, user validation and error messages, including the indication of required fields upfront, were added to the feature list and prioritized as the highest item. that, paired with automation to reduce the amount of manual labor by the user, would hopefully decrease errors all together and increase accepted and approved loans.
design studio
i decided to run a design studio session with the team to get everyone together to collaborate on solving our problems. the goals of the workshop were:
1. create divergent ideas and convergent decisions (idea generation vs. synthesis)
2. quickly generate a lot of visual ideas very quickly
3. create a culture of shared ownership around future product vision
and most importantly ...
4. have fun and get our creative juices going
the design studio session allowed us to sketch out our ideas, pitch them, and critique each others. we repeated until we converged on something we all believed in. sample sketches from the studio can be seen below. all of our sketches ended up exploring ways on how to call out errors, display required fields, and give users validations as they navigated throughout the forms.
prototype
after the design studio, i started collecting the designs that the group felt best captured how we envisioned the new loan application tool working and looking. i took the designs into axure and translated them into wireframes. during this phase, i sat with the team's developers to ensure i could quickly vet out and validate that design solutions were feasible and technically possible.
test
creating interactive prototypes allowed me to quickly test my designs with real users. i ran usability tests with the initial users that i shadowed and gave them specific and relevant scenarios to work through. i allowed stakeholders to sit in and listen to the sessions so that they could hear user feedback first hand, but also recorded them for anyone who could not join. after each test was completed, i sent the user a sus (system usability scale) survey to support the data collected.
after a few rounds of testing where the same user concerns were being brought up, i revisited my wires and iterated on my designs. i followed the process of continuing testing and incorporating feedback into my designs until the team and i felt that we have successfully designed a tool that ultimately would reduce the amount of rejected loans. in addition to direct user feedback, the sus survey revealed an average score of an 76, which is above average on the usability scale. the team was proud of the hard work that went into addressing the issues of this tool and the efforts that i put in to keep the users at the center of our process. my engagement with this team inspired other parts of their organization to involve design for future work.
final thoughts
i love when i have the opportunity to teach others about user experience design and design thinking methodologies. i get giddy at the idea of enlightening others with how important it is to include users into our process and light up when they actually get to experience the true value of it. working with this team was a prime example of bridging the gap between product and design and led to other future engagements with ux from this team.
the visibility of system status heuristic defined by nielsen paved the path for our user error messages and user validation/feedback methods. there is so much research and data that nielsen norman group studies and puts out, so i knew that by leaning into a huge, already defined, principle would be a big win overall for our users and with the team.
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