Mobile Banking Loan Application
Mobile / UX Research / Wireframes
Overview
As a member of an ATCOM team, I was assigned to design the user experience flow and wireframes about a consumer loan application for mobile banking app. This task was delivered to one of the biggest banks in Greece. The scope of that project was to investigate "if the bank should add a type of a fast and low amount loan application as part of the mobile banking app". Iniitally my task was to investigate If the bank should continue with this option. After that I should design the user flows and the wireframes.
- The timeline I had to deliver the project was 12 days, including the research and the final UX proposal flow
- The most important constrains were the regulatory guidelines imposed by authorities and backend issues that could affect performance.
Design Contribution
- The process was straightforward. I started with researching how banks that had similar phylosophy implemented similar solutions.
- I conducted guerilla user interviews among friends and family that with a semi structured questionnaire. The main investigation points involved around the reasons that drive users applying online for a loan. What are the implications that are in play.
- I investigated what are the elements that make an efficient and easy to use loan calculator.
- I designed a high level user flow before the wireframes to have better control of each step.
Outcomes
Research and findings
The main finding was that users need as much information as possible before committing to apply for a loan. Users in Greece appear to be untrustworthy towards financial institutions. That means that clear design and simple and efficient copywriting. Labels and informative text is a must. The loan interest rate is very important to be communicated.
For the mobile I added a marketing carousel at the start of the flow as a way to showcase relevant information. Interviews results showed that returning visitors interested on a loan they read again the same things to be sure about the terms before they commit.
Since I knew the start and end values of the loan mount and durations I used sliders but in my initial proposal I added the option to directly type the amount for accessibility reasons. This option the business dropped in the final implementation opting only for the sliders.
One of the designs constrains that affected the loan calculator sliders was that each time duration or loan amount changed a call to the server had to be made again before calculating the loan rate. After discussing with the development team was made clear more dynamic sliders with automated results was not an option.
In my initial design concept the loan calculator was made a little more transparent in terms of microcopy. The CTA delivered a copy that invited to calculate the loan monthly instalment instead of beginning a loan application. This was done to exploit a cognitive bias about the fear of pressing the new application button.
Another constrain was that my solution had to be in compliant with the existing design system, trying to avoid the creation of new elements.
In the battle for accessibility sometimes you win sometimes you lose.
Reception and Outcome
The loan application through mobile was implemented successfully. Vanilla bank was thrilled and decided to explore more products that could be added to the existing mobile banking to increase cross-selling and revenues.
The impact was so important that exceeded when the Mobile banking applications surpassed the applications of the branches network and e banking.