ROLE
Lead product designer
TEAM
Engineering, Risk, Fraud, Product, Marketing, Analytics
LED
Discovery, feature differentiation, prototypes, handoff
Purpose:
How do we launch a net new business and product MVP that stands out amongst competitors?
I. Create strategic roadmap to define MVP milestones
Working with a lot of ambiguity in the project's outset, I decided to map the questions and deliverables onto a phased approach, where each phase of discovery would yield insights leading into the next. I then worked with my PM to define the other stakeholders that would provide input into each phase.
II. Competitive Analysis of Business Landscape
I decided to go through the application flows of the top online lenders for Personal Loans and identify common themes. This enabled me to get a quick understanding of the current product offerings and start to identify ways I can improve the experience for customers shopping.
III. Prospective Customers Discovery
In the same time, I also needed to build up a foundational understanding of Personal Loan borrowers. What they typically use the loan for, alternatives they consider, and pain points they experienced along the way. I partnered with UXR to recruit and interview prospective customers, which inspired many features and ideation that followed.
III. Led cross-functional workshop to ideate on core value props for MVP
After conducting both the competitive analysis as well as customer interviews, I summarized both sets of insights into a customer journey of a Personal Loan borrower to be used as artifacts for the broader team to understand at-a-glance who we're building the product for and as a springboard for our brainstorm.
We know in order to launch a successful MVP that's appealing to customers, we faced headwinds by being in a mature, competitive market with many online established lenders. I wanted to ensure not only did we have a functionally smooth experience, but we also create a product with features and value propositions that distinguishes itself from the competitors. After collecting the insights from above, I led a cross-functional workshop with Product, Marketing, Engineering, and also invited our GM to brainstorm ways to differentiate our MVP.
IV. Converged on value prop via concept testing
After we summarized our feature ideas, we decided to do one more round of user testing using email concepts to assess which value proposition resonated the most with users and was the most compelling. The one the emerged was Rate Drop Reward, where we recognize the user's good payment behavior by lowering their rates progressively up to 0.75% off.
V. Designing an E2E Experience and testing multiple hypotheses
After we defined the core positioning of the product, I dove into creating the entire application journey for a user. Starting from when they would discover the product on their homepage, checking the rates, and all the way to signing of the loan. I led the requirements gathering part by translate our business construct into user flows.
Origination Fee comprehension
One of the core construct of a personal loan involved giving the user an option to choose an origination fee or not. The origination fee has an impact on the interest rate and total cost, which made it important both for the business and users to understand the implications of taking the fee vs. not. I explored various UI + copy options to assess user comprehension and appeal of the option.
Show Estimated Savings with Personal Loan vs. Credit Cards
As part of the MVP launch, we also focused on targeting existing Earnest customers. I thought there could be a way to leverage the existin credit data we have for the users and show them how much they could save with a Personal Loan compared to putting their spending on credit cards with high APRs. I explored options showing the maximum $ savings, as well as interest rate difference.
Enable pre-filling for existing users and handling edge cases
To help existing users get into the funnel easier, I proposed a pre-filled flow where we auto-populate the user's latest profile information and also enable them to edit information that's changed.
VI. We synthesized these hypotheses into two flows for concept testing
After exposing users to both flows for comparison, across both experiences we recieved high confidence.
10
participants for interviews
4.75/5
In user clarity of E2E flows
VII. Incorporate late-stage Risk and Fraud considerations into flow
After the successful concept testing which gave confidence to move forward with the core experience, I worked with Product and Engineering to discuss the final scope for our MVP and weigh the effort for implementation. However, the bigger change came after weeks after the team onboarded our Risk strategist, who provided a crucial piece of the personal loans product that we had not considered before.
A major risk highlighted was we needed to prevent potential fraud, where Earnest deposit the money into an account but never receives the monthly payments. This necessitates verification of the bank account used for disbursement did belong to the user applying for the loan.
To facilitate the cross-functional discussion to quickly arrive at a flow that incorporates the risk requirements and meet engineering timelines while balancing user trust, I translated the Risk scenarios into various paths.
VIII. Final designs for MVP
Compelling entry point for existing customers to discover Personal Loans on dashboard
As part of the MVP launch, we focused on targeting existing Earnest customers, the final card communicates key value props tested that would help users realize at-a-glance benefits of borrowing with Earnest
Show users all of their information pre-filled except two net new questions to answer
Create a sense of personalization and efficiency by letting users complete a rate check with pre-filled information in seconds
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Allow users to update information on the spot using an edit-and-save pattern
In the same screen, users can use the Edit button to change information that might've been outdated since their last application with Earnest, e.g. if their income had changed
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View prototype for E2E walkthrough of the experience
IX. Post-Launch Results and Next Steps
After launching the MVP to users, we saw a much higher than expected conversion rate for a first iteration out of the gate.
$5M
in signed volume in less than 6 mo
80%
application start to submit
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