Goal
The goal was to design a seamless process that will allow users to request for loan in-app and get instant value.
Approach
In his book “Talking to Humans’, Gill Constable popularized a user/customer-centric approach that I adopted for this project. The fulcrum of his approach is embedded in a design thinking method of challenging assumptions made in risk hypothesis from the purview of the customer.
Riskiest Hypothesis
The believe that people will want to request for loan via a digital platform. The believe the target customers will be individuals with a source of income. Competitor analysis
Two things I did next was, first; find out what the loan application consumer journey in existing digital lenders in the industry was. The subjects of my research are stated below and I was able to deduce a few things from my investigations.
Subjects
Main Findings
Carbon as at 2020 has an active customer base of 2.2 million and a PAT of ₦112.6 million (FY ‘19) Fairmoney requests for personal details like Full Name, Phone Number, Email Address etc. when these information can be gotten from the BVN customer had submitted during sign up. They both request for source of income from users during loan request. Talking to Customers
The second thing I did was validate my assumptions. I did this by designing the wireframes and putting out a call for people who had gotten loans from digital lenders in a small community I belong to. I then went on to have a conversation with this focus group over Google Meet.
Armed with the insights I had acquired from my research, I made changes to the initial wireframes.
before talking to users
Insights
Present the textfield in a way that when users tap on it they are still aware of the expected input data. The possibility of not allowing users inputs the salary payday (data integrity) as well as directly validating the monthly net salary via an open finance API provider.
after talking to users
Actions
I moved the textfield label to the top left of each and included a placeholder to guide users on the expected input data. I switched the KYC information screen with a button asking users to “link their bank account”. This will enable the system to filter through the user’s transaction history to validate the monthly net salary or income. Final Outcome
Still leaning on insights I had gotten from my conversations with customers and competitor analysis, the wireframes were then developed into an interactive high fidelity design.