Site overhaul-Credit.com
This project involved a comprehensive site overhaul of the Credit.com logged-in experience, redesigning it based on business initiatives and user research.
Role: Lead Product Designer. Collaborated with the VP of Strategic partnerships and a Marketing designer.
Overview
This project involved a comprehensive site overhaul of the Credit.com logged-in experience, driven by key business initiatives and user research. The goal was to redesign the platform to better serve user needs and align with strategic objectives, ultimately enhancing the overall user journey.
The challenge
The Credit.com logged-in experience had been stagnant for several years, lacking design or functional updates. Stakeholders sought to revamp the service and explore new value propositions for existing users, but lacked a clear direction. My role involved shaping this product vision by creating mocks and prototypes for presentation to stakeholders and users via platforms like Maze.
Design Decision 1: Enhancing actionable insights
New design
A core principle for the redesign was to retain and significantly expand upon the valuable letter-grade scoring system. Through user research, we confirmed its effectiveness in helping users understand their standing and identify areas for improvement. In the new design, we not only preserved this intuitive scoring but significantly enriched the information provided.
In the latest design, users receive a clearer understanding of why they received a particular grade, comprehensive details on their positive financial habits, and actionable guidance on specific areas requiring improvement.
This transformation shifted simple scores into practical, empowering insights, making the credit assessment far more user-friendly and actionable.
Current design
The previous design, despite featuring a letter-grade scoring system for credit factors, presented information in a way that often added to cognitive load. While users found the basic grades useful for understanding their standing, the accompanying content was frequently cluttered and presented in a manner that made it hard to fully grasp why they received a particular score or what specific actions they needed to take.
The lack of detailed, digestible explanations meant users had to work harder to extract value, hindering their ability to effectively improve their credit.
Design Decision 2: Crafting a personalized financial roadmap
A significant design challenge was to effectively visualize the "Path to 800" concept, providing users with a personalized roadmap to improve their credit score. The complexity lay in creating a simple, intuitive visual representation of this journey, while simultaneously explaining the importance of each step and the strategic rationale behind the recommended order of tackling score factors.
Further adding to the challenge, stakeholders emphasized that the path should not appear rigid, demanding a design that could convey flexibility and adaptability in the user's journey. This required careful consideration of how to blend clarity, educational value, and a non-linear feel into a compelling visual narrative.
Design Decision 3: Gamifying financial education
While the existing site possessed a wealth of valuable credit information within its blog, it often resided in long-form articles that were difficult for users to digest in a timely manner.
Our third design principle focused on transforming this content into bite-sized, engaging educational modules with strong visual components. The aim was to make learning about credit both more accessible and enjoyable, allowing users to absorb key information efficiently and playfully, turning complex financial concepts into digestible, fun insights.
User testing
Leveraging platforms like Maze, we transformed parts of our prototype into interactive tests for both our user base and paid testers. Our primary goals were to understand user sentiment regarding the proposed changes and assess their ability to locate commonly used functionalities.
We also sought feedback on the new educational content. While users expressed strong interest in personalized guidance, our testing revealed a crucial insight: we still needed to refine the presentation of information.
Users consistently showed greater interest in actionable items directly relevant to their credit improvement, rather than solely educational pieces. This feedback was critical in prioritizing future content and functionality development.
Takeaways
Testing Theories Validates and Redirects Strategy
Our project underscored the critical importance of user testing to validate design theories and stakeholder assumptions. While internal ideas for new value propositions and features were abundant, putting prototypes in front of real users provided invaluable data. This direct feedback allowed us to have data-driven conversations with stakeholders.
Balancing Familiarity with Innovation
The redesign successfully demonstrated the power of retaining valuable existing features (like the letter-grade scoring) while innovating to provide deeper, more actionable insights. This balance ensured user comfort and continuity while simultaneously enhancing the product's utility, proving that evolutionary improvements can be as impactful as revolutionary changes.
Prioritizing Actionable Insights Over Information Overload
We learned that simply providing a wealth of information isn't enough; delivering that content in digestible, visually engaging, and directly actionable formats is paramount for user engagement and enabling them to take meaningful steps towards their financial goals.