Amazinzwork

(Contract Product Designer)

I ran three iterations, arriving at an elegantly simple single-card, single-action dashboard. Icon and illustrations are original content by me. This project was very important to me

and I had a lot of fun with it—Hope you enjoy it!

Research and UX Framework

First things first—we needed to figure out and understand who we were designing for. After researching Filipino lending culture and interviewing relatives and friends of friends living there, we arrived at two key findings:

Default rates are historically high due to the family-oriented culture—lending and borrowing with friends and family without expectations of repayment doesn't translate to loans from financial institutions.
Remittance/cash pickup is an effortful task in the office requiring a lengthy, traffic-heavy commute from suburbs or rural areas to a brick and mortar location, where paper documents are required for a transaction to go through.

A quick persona-building exercise gave us some clarity on user needs that we translated to product goals:

‍Transparency — Making sure borrowers understand the lending process and their loan terms.

Speed/Accessibility — Getting the loan as quickly and easily as possible.

Default Minimization — Encouraging on-time repayment in full.

Bounce Rate Minimization/NPS Maximization — Affording a non-intimidating and friendly experience.

Things I have learned from this Product design experience

Go for the global maxima

Through extensive brainstorming and wire-framing, you are able to pass through tons of ideas quickly to help ensure you are choosing the best solution, not just a solution. There might be 100 ways to solve something, but if you break the problem down to its core, one of those solutions might prove to be the best.

Don’t be afraid to say no

Sometimes it can be difficult to say no to something that looks tempting… Saying yes to something means you are also saying no to another thing, so it is super important to make sure you are fully evaluating what you are saying no to and maximizing your ability to discern what you can take on. It is generally better to take on less than more because that allows you to increase your focus and effort level instead of trying to do too many things.

Communicate early and often