Case study: Simplification and clarification
Payment plan selection in a loan application
A small team used rapid prototyping and iteration to solve a UI problem that caused loan customers to make choices they didn’t understand. My role was UX designer and director, and I worked with a UX researcher and a prototyper.
Problem
Users approved for student loans had to choose a repayment plan and a type of interest rate from the page shown at right.
Customer surveys, call center records, and usability lab research showed that users
were intimidated by this page.
did not read/understand info in the right rail.
made choices they didn’t intend to make.
Approach
Iterated through 3 ideas stakeholders asked us to test. Although none solved the problem, we gained a lot of insights.
Applied those insights to arrive at a design that worked well for users and satisfied stakeholders.
Test 1: Better table design
Could we improve the page by improving the readability of the table?
Users said:
How to make a choice is clear.
All these terms are overwhelming.
We don’t know how to decide what to choose.
Test 2: Sorting
What if users can sort options based on their most important consideration, such as monthly payment or total cost?
Users said:
We can’t take in all that info up top.
The ways this information can be sorted don’t help us. For example, lowest total loan cost requires payments many of us can’t make.
Test 3: Filtering
Sorting asks only one question; does it help to show that there are two decisions? I also tried putting info popups inline.
Users said:
We see there are two decisions to make. That helps.
Tying definitions to terms helps. But info popups are awkward.
This is still hard.
Test 4: Separate the decisions
Users needed to see that they had two decisions to make. From interviews, I knew most users came in with strong preferences about interest types, so I put that question first. I also designed to get definitions on screen in context.
This design disclosed the questions one at a time. Once the user answered both questions, they saw the resulting loan.
Users said:
This makes sense, but we have some objections.
It’s not helpful to answer fixed/variable first.
We want to see numbers sooner.
We’re suspicious of being narrowed to one option: is it best for us or for your company?
Test 5: The one that worked
In this version, I started with the payment plan decision and tried to make clear that you’re basically deciding whether and how much you can pay while you’re still in school.
I also included a Benefit statement for each plan to help make the results of the choice more obvious.
Once the user chose a payment plan, they saw estimates for that plan with both fixed and variable interest.
Users said:
The plan options make sense.
We like seeing numbers after answering only one question.
We might use the ability to make changes or to view all plans at once to look at all the possibilities, but we still like this breakdown of the decision.