Intro

When applying for a loan, many borrowers are approved conditionally. This means they need to provide more information to be reviewed by our internal team. By automating the case review process borrowers are able to get approved instantly, reducing the number of cases requiring manual review from 1,800 a month to 600.

After studying the third party process, I designed integrated workflows tailored to both mobile and desktop devices. 

As the sole designer on the project I was responsible for the user experience and design specs, while collaborating closely with the Product Manager, engineers, and representatives from the third party.

Discovery

I needed to familiarize myself with the workflow of the third party that we were integrating with. After reviewing their documentation and having a few informational sessions with their project team to understand their capabilities, I created workflow diagrams to outline the transition from our platform to the third party’s and back. This helped me illustrate the context switching between devices and the different personas involved.

Borrowers who start their application on our desktop platform need to switch to their phone to complete the verification process.

I explored two options for integrating the new process in our mobile app. The first option was similar to the desktop workflow, starting on the sales rep’s device and switching to the borrower’s device for verification. The second option simplified the workflow by keeping the verification process on the sales rep’s device.

In creating a complete view of the workflow, I identified an opportunity to simplify the process by removing an unnecessary step. Because we already have the borrower’s phone number from their application, we don’t need to ask for it again. Instead, we can send the borrower a text automatically from the desktop workflow, and for the mobile workflow we opted to keep the process on the sales rep’s device.

Design

With workflows established, I moved into higher fidelity mockups to define updates to the existing UI, as well as new screens to transition borrowers from our existing experience to the third party’s workflow. 

There were a few nuances that required alignment with stakeholders. Since there would now be two ways to resolve cases, we had to decide if we would prioritize one over the other. Borrowers also have loan documents to sign, so we had to decide how to prioritize signing those documents vs resolving their cases. 

After much deliberation, we decided to present only the new option when the borrower first landed on the decision screen, and then offer the old process as a fallback if they drop out of the third party’s process.

Stakeholders decided that we should prioritize resolving conditions when presenting both conditions and loan documents to a borrower. In the spirit of encouraging borrowers and sales reps to progress loans forward, we decided to allow a user to complete these tasks in either order, while emphasizing conditions when present.