Student Loan Management
Role: Product Designer | Team: DWKQ | Duration: January - April 2024 | Tools: Figma, Figjam, Qualtrics
Background
Gradify is a mobile app created as a part of the UX Mastery Course at University of Michigan. Many Americans have student loan debt and our initial interviews suggested that these borrowers experience friction when managing student loans. Gradify creates a central space for loan tracking, aiming to give borrowers' an approachable way for borrower's to stay connected to their student loan journey.
Insights
Three major themes were discovered through interviews and a user survey with over 60 responses.
Financial Terminology
Borrowers experience confusion around financial terminology
Budgeting
Budgeting is a main obstacle in student loan management
Interest Rates
Borrowers have a hart time understanding how interest rates work
User Flow
As we began to think about what features would add the most value to our users, we outlined a flow to reflect the information hierarchy and prominent screens within the app. As time went on and we received more insights from users, this flow evolved. Initially, our user interviews displayed the need for heavy budgeting tools and we reflected that within our first iteration. However, once we received survey results and tested the low fidelity screens, we realized that we needed to go back to the drawing board as the architecture and depth of loan information was insufficient to our users.
This first iteration of the flow placed more emphasis on budgeting/habit tracking and microlearning
This final flow reduces emphasis on micro-learning and introduces the separation of the loan hub, in order to steer away from general budgeting
Design Decisions
Design Decision 1: Interest Calculator
53% of users stated having difficulties understanding how interest rates work
Design Decision 2: Note-taking & Task Manager
60% of respondents manually check loan provider websites to stay updated
43% of users budget by memory or using informal methods (note-taking, journaling)
Design Decision 3: Resources
9 out of 10 users find it difficult to understand financial terminology
Design Decision 4: Journey within User Profile
Allowing students to see their progress and tangible goals
Looking Forward & Learnings
Iterate, iterate, iterate: My fellow designer on this project, Whitney, and I spent hours going back to the drawing board in order to play around with visual structure and information architecture. While yes this took a lot of time, it made our final product stronger and something that we are proud of!
Save all your designs. Including the ugly ones. It was fun to return to our screens that ended up in the graveyard section of the Figma file - this helps visualize the full design journey and also it can be valuable to see your own progression as a designer.
I also realized during this project that I thrive in the ideation stage; I love turning data into actionable design considerations and I hope to bring that strength to my next role!