Online Short-Term Assistance Application
for Credit Union Members
All assets have been remade and genericized due to NDA requirements
From
To
Project Aspects:
Led a fully remote small UX team consisting of a UX designer and a content specialist.
Close collaboration with business units and Dev team
Research project to determine user needs
Completed in a remote agile environment
Designed in Figma
Project Overview:
Create an interactive application for financial hardship applicants.
Take a simple existing paper form and create an information portal that leads to an interactive application, easing the members process of requesting assistance.
Existing PDF Application
Requirements:
Allow for easy understanding of what kinds of assistance are available to credit union members
Create a “guided” online application for the first of three forms of financial assistance available to the credit union members
Member must be able to save, exit, and re-enter application
The Ask:
Members are confused as to even what kinds of financial assistance is available to them during times of financial hardship, much less how to apply for them
Update the Temporary Hardship Assistance paper application to a user friendly online “Short-Term Assistance” application.
The User:
Credit union members currently in the midst of a financial hardship
Issues:
Lack of understanding of what financial assistance entails
From the member perspective, there is no clear definition of what assistance is
From the business perspective, there was not a comprehensive list of needed data for the different causes of financial hardship
Preservation of document association upon document upload (this document is associated with this member for this reason for applying for hardship, while that document is associated with the same member but for a different reason for applying for hardship)
The organization decided to use Salesforce as its customer facing front-end for their authenticated online banking platform. This decision severly hamstrung the option for design and eventual implementation.
Saving, exiting, and re-entering an online application was not an existing capability for the credit union’s in production platform and no design patterns existed for those actions.
Research Effort:
Expert analysis
Competitor Analysis
User Survey of hardship application expectations
Since financial hardship is rather “bespoke” due to the nature of personal finances, there are not many online hardship applications in the wild.
Our research showed that people need
Very explicit information about what financial assistance can and cannot do
What the short-term and long-term effects will be from simply applying for assistance
Design Advocacy:
Softening the language on the application to account for user stress
Clearly describing the assistance offered by submitting this application
Clearly outlining the negatives associated with merely applying for assistance
Stakeholders were unconvinced that the members did not know what “financial assistance” entailed in this instance. User research demonstrated that many users felt that “financial assistance” was an additional loan to help make ends meet instead of a deferment of payments until the hardship was over.
Members were able to select multiple reasons for being in a financial hardship (“Death in the Family” and “Long-term Illness” for example), so we had to make sure each component module of the application clearly outlined what documents were required to establish that “flavor” of hardship (Death certificate or published obituary and hospital bills respectively). These clear documentation requirements keeps the member on task and helps the person evaluating the application make their decision faster.
Proposed Informational Landing Page
Proposed Application Page
Results:
Completed design for an online interactive application for short-term assistance
Much more precise information gathering for the company
Potential for much quicker turn around times for assistance approval
Less incomplete application submissions to to document submission requirements
