Experian Consumer Credit
MY ROLE
I built and lead a team of 14 UX designers, UI designers, copywriters, and researchers who were responsible for the consumer facing products at Experian. Our work focused mostly on the native app and responsive web experiences that helped users build and monitor their credit, but it also branched into privacy protection and personal finance tools as well.
RETHINKING THE DESIGN PROCESS
When I started at Experian, the design team was using an agency for usability testing, making testing slow and expensive. They also worked in high fidelity first, which made iterations time consuming and prevented early alignment, thus creating unnecessary rework. My task was to transition the team to a process that would reduce churn, improve alignment, and boost quality.
The first step I took was to introduce flow diagrams at the start of the design process so that we could quickly align on high level scope and goals with our stakeholders.
This immediately helped increase transparency, caught misalignments early, allowed us to have discussions about trimming or expanding scope as early as possible, and prevented the conversation from derailing into design minutiae.
Below are some examples of early flow diagrams and information architecture diagrams my team produced.
My next step was to establish in-house usability research so we could test quickly and continuously. We began with hallway and Starbucks testing to get off the ground, but as we grew we evolved into a more structured process. In the end we were testing with 4 participants every week and 3-5 projects per participant.
This meant that everything we worked on was tested at least a handful of times, no matter how short the project, and that we could make rapid, informed changes nearly every day. This allowed us to move away from long arguments and differences of opinion both within the team or with our stakeholders, and to move ahead with confidence and speed.
In order to support this much more rapid pace of design, it was also necessary for my team to begin working in low fidelity. This was an uncomfortable move for most of my team and for our stakeholders who were used to immediately being able to see and critique the "end result".
We transitioned slowly into low fidelity to gain buy-in from everyone involved and to test if it truly made us faster. Within a few months I had built a strong consensus within my team and our colleagues that rapid testing and iterating in low fidelity was a better way to explore new ideas and hit deadlines.
I also moved my team to a mobile-first process as the previously used desktop-first process was leaving the challenges of fitting the desktop content into mobile until the last minute, creating sub-par mobile experiences, and slowing down the flow of the project.
GETTING USERS THEIR FIRST CREDIT SCORE
One of our first projects that followed this new design process was a journey created for our users who didn't yet have a credit score.
This flow introduced the purpose of a credit score and the benefits of having one. It then asked a few strategic questions about the user's financial situation and comfort levels. Finally we recommended a personalized strategy for establishing credit in ways that were the least risky for them.
Below you can see key parts of the "New To Credit" journey that we created.
PERSONAL LOAN ADVISOR
Many of our users with low credit scores were struggling with high interest debt. To increase awareness of the idea of consolidating their debt with lower interest and to provide an easy to use marketplace, we built a personal loan journey into our products.
Our journey focused on helping users find a monthly payment amount they could afford and highlighting how much money they would save in the long term due to the lower interest rates. It then offered a streamlined pre-qualification process that focused on simple step by step instructions and reassuring information about how this process would not negatively affect their credit.
CREDIT CARD
COACH
Our market research showed that our customers with higher credit scores were interested in exploring how they could take advantage of those high scores to get better benefits from their credit cards.
I led the design of a "Card Coach" that captured key information about the user's spending habits and their rewards preferences to create a customized "card marketplace" that highlighted cards that maximized the user's desired rewards. We also took into account the user's credit score and history to calculate the likelihood of approval.
The designs below show the onboarding journey for "Card Coach" and also highlight the new friendlier illustration style I established with my team to help move Experian away from the more corporate style it had used previously.
The credit card marketplace experience was customized to highlight the amount they stood to earn based on their spending, as well as cards with a high likelihood of approval.
Contextual help was a major part of the design process at Experian, both to cover the legal fine print, but also because credit and finances are stressful and it was important to offer additional information to reassure users.
Here is an example of some of the help content we built for the credit card marketplace.
DARK WEB PROTECTION
To expand Experian's portfolio of paid consumer products we created a dark web monitoring feature to help protect our user's information and identities from being stolen and sold.
We created a friendly and simple experience to help users understand what the darkweb is, what the dangers are of having your information available on it, and how we could help you monitor and eliminate risks.
We conducted user testing to establish the right amount of information and details, like sources for claims, reassurance about how we secure their data, and ways of skipping onboarding for users who wanted to jump in immediately.
Here is an example of one of the paid dashboard experiences for responsive web. It includes a call to action for top recommended next steps, education on privacy best practices, confirmation of what we are tracking for the user, and the ability to add family members to their plan.
Here is an example of the mobile-first flows from our design process.
VOICE & TONE GUIDE
Nearly everyone who worked at Experian had an 850 credit score and saw their job as teaching customers how to not make "bad decisions" that would lower their credit scores.
Based on my team's conversations with customers, though, we knew that for many users their low scores were from events out of their control and they found much of Experian's language to be judgmental and patronizing.
As a result I worked closely with my copywriters and the broader copywriting department at Experian to develop a voice and tone guide to improve how we spoke to our users.
Our research showed that this language shift had a dramatic effect on our users, making them less afraid to use our products, and more trusting of our advice and brand.
