Helping Canadians take control of their credit

Client —
Borrowell

Mobile app —
Finance

Timeline —
Winter 2019

Role —
Experience Design Lead

Responsibilities —
Planning and roadmapping
DesignOps and leadership
Discovery and research
Experience design
Usability testing
Content strategy
Acceptance criteria

The challenge

Borrowell serves over a million Canadians by allowing comprehensive access to credit history via their website. Analytics have indicated that users often log into the website, consistently coming back, in anticipation of a refreshed credit score alongside tailored product recommendations. Many of Borrowell’s competitors had begun to address similar increases in engagement by venturing into the mobile space—as apps can offer greater utility when compared to their web-based counterparts. In response, Borrowell wanted to support the immediacy of information sought after by their customers with a mobile app, extending their digital reach.

Highlights

  • Led and oversaw a team of 2 designers who specialized in UX Research and Visual Design throughout the project (from discovery to delivery)

  • Employed innovative mobile features including biometric login (for fingerprint and face ID) as well as push notifications

  • Shipped a best-in-class mobile app that ranks #30 among finance apps in the App Store, rated 4.8 out of 5 across both the App Store and Google Play with over 5k reviews and over 50k downloads

Understanding the business ecosystem

 

In proposing a solution that would scale to hook into the existing online business platform, my team and I mapped out a series of flows that would support a connected system of action pathways for members, including:

  • Sign up and log in

  • Onboarding and biometrics setup

  • Retrieval of credit score and report

  • Exploration of product recommendations

  • Prediction of content and content adaptations based on user activity

Absorbing subject matter expertise

 

My team worked closely with Borrowell to learn about how their predictive AI-powered platform makes recommendations to its members. To do this, we did a deep dive into subjects including:

  • Credit score makeup and impact

  • Equifax security requirements

  • Product approval likelihood algorithms

  • Improving credit and financial literacy

  • Targeted marketing and API integration

Establishing documentation standards

 

In order for my team to hit the ground running, I wanted to create efficient and valuable templates, centralized documentation within the client’s the Atlassian Suite (Confluence and Jira). 

I was able to create an organized hub that showcased process and progress. Doing so allowed my team to seamlessly mobilize research into actionable design and development tasks.

Establishing a design framework

 

Post-discovery, my team and I worked with Borrowell to define a design language that would evolve the current Visual Design standards of the website to a best-in-class mobile app experience.

Simultaneously, we designed wireframes and mockups to illustrate the overall functionality and usage of the app.

Employing regular testing

 

Our research efforts continued well beyond the Discovery phase--I planned regular usability testing with members of Borrowell’s user base as well as internal stakeholders.

Ongoing research activities included:

  • Test recruitment

  • Drafting test plans

  • Conducting test sessions

  • Synthesizing actionable feedback

  • Implementing feedback into delivery cycles

Designing for accessibility through development

 

My team and I worked tightly with the developers to convert design palettes into common components with accessibility properties. We were able to systematically optimize:

  • Colour contrast

  • Target sizes for hotspots

  • Alt text and ARIA labels

  • Global navigation

A best-in-class mobile app experience

 

Working at Borrowell while embedded with their teams, my team and I were able to conduct research and form a tactical design strategy to execute on. This led to the design and development of a native mobile app that brings the Borrowell experience to iOS and Android devices, with features including:

  • Biometric login (Fingerprint and Face ID)

  • Push notifications

  • Custom webview for external links

  • Google Cards paradigm

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