Mortgage Experience
Project type: business project, native iOS and Android apps + web
Date: January - December, 2018
Location: Bucharest
Role: Business Innovation Lead, Product Designer, UX Designer, UX Researcher
Design Process
Due to confidentiality requirements, I describe only the generic parts and insights, without disclosing the name of the Client and explicit outcomes of the project, but just the design and product deployment stages.
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The problem
The slow and paperwork-heavy mortgage process is frustrating for clients and Bank employees. Everybody is looking for a more digital experience, a mortgage service designed around their work and their lives. The interaction with customers during the discovery interviews, running survey, and rapid prototyping workshop confirmed that the mortgage experience is cumbersome. Customers and Bank employees need more instant answers, predictability, and transparency.
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The goal
Implementing improvements to the mortgage experience is laying the foundation for the Bank to becoming a trusted advisor to customers. Our hypothesis was that, in order to capture this opportunity, we need to build a service that is digital, fast and personalised for busy people on the go.
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My responsibilities
I was a Client Partner in this project and played, from a design perspective, various roles: business and product architecture, UX service designer, UX researcher.
Discovery
For the ideation, we ran a suite of workshops around several topics: persona, competition, ideation, for which we have used the lean canvas and value proposition canvas. Eventually we have depicted a comprehensive customer journey map, and, mirrored to that, a detailed business process map.
User research summary
Research
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440 respondents in online survey
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33 qual customer interviews
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60+ internal interviews
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7 key executive stakeholders meetings
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The opportunity for was is to demonstrate real transparency and predictability to deliver a convenient and empathic customer experience.
Rapid Prototyping Sprint
Prototyping session
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48 hours
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7 iterations paper-based prototype 1st day + 4 iterations high fidelity prototypes 2nd day
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39 users (internal and external)
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23 Client experts and executives
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22 our team (UX/UI, solution architects, programmers)
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We tested 3 ideas:
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What if the customer knows what he/ she is supposed to do along the mortgage journey, both in finding the desired home and the most suitable financing solution? Design an experience that clearly and transparently communicates the subsequent steps and anticipates the needs of the customer along the mortgage quest.
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What if all parties involved in the mortgage process - the Client, the seller, the notary, the evaluator, the Bank - may share mortgage-related documents in a common repository? The challenge was to imagine a way to organise such a repository, in an easy to use and secure manner, while also notifying the parties when relevant events occur.
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What if the frontline employee has a tracking system of a mortgage file for the Customer in his/her portfolio and could know the file status constantly? The mission was to design an easy and transparent process through which the Frontline Employee is able to know everything about a mortgage client and a file status.
Mockups & hi-fi prototypes*
*All greens presented below were depicted during the prototyping session, the end-state screens are not presented in this portfolio, due to the confidentiality considerations indicated upfront.
Development & Implementation
Following the documentation of the design playbook and its approval by the client, we have started the implementation.
Along the implementation and software development stage, we have provided iteratively (agile) 6 featured UI screen packages validated with real users (end-user clients and internal employees), following the guiding line confirmed during the rapid prototyping session. We have embedded the brand guidance of the client and we have provided an associated design system for the developed product (mortgage credit).
Lessons & takeaways
The working streams, along the entire design process, was a compelling customer experience statement. The reward was substantial, even the execution was complex. The prototyping sessions helped us think out of the box, understand better the client needs and work as a team with the Client professionals.
Client representatives testimonials:
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"All teams prototypes are fully answering the customers pains we identified during the workshop sessions, pains that we succeeded to solve and test with customers in the prototyping sessions. I am confident that the solutions found by our teams, all together, will provide a great and integrated housing experience for our customers that will make a huge difference in the market."
"The rapid prototyping session and the prototypes themselves represent the new trend in thinking and building client centric products."
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"If fairly motivated, a new team can deliver good-enough results in less than 8 hours and can deliver outstanding results in less than 2 days."
"During the two days prototyping session it was proven that through human centric design one can deliver fast products that are in depth rooted in the digital world, in sync with clients’ needs."