"Borrower Rewards"
ECMC Innovation Lab UX Team: Mandy Rotella, Theresa Winters, Lauren Hong, and Chris Kovel. My role was as UX Researcher, Visual Designer, and UX Strategy.
Proprietary material of ECMC Group. Used with permission. No further use authorized.
The Challenge
Upon college exit and into repayment, "high-risk borrowers" (which ECMC defines as student loan borrowers most likely to miss payments and eventually go into default) are not prepared to repay their loans. While they have some discretionary income, they struggle to find a balance between financial obligations (such as student loans) and experiences.
This group of borrowers is difficult to engage and are not proactively seeking information and are not motivated to make progress on loan repayment due to perceived lack of repercussions.
The Research
“More than 40% of Americans who borrowed from the government’s main student-loan program aren’t making payments or are behind on more than $200 billion owed.”
Due to the enormity of this problem, the research began with conducting five focus groups to better understand these users needs, pain points, and motivations.
Key Findings: Focus Groups
From the focus groups, we synthesized all the data and organized it into themes that were most prevalent. However, we still had an overwhelming amount of information, so we continued to break it down. To help our UX team and the key stakeholders better grasp the information, and empathize with the user group, I designed a mental model and user journey for the "high-risk borrower" group (click to enlarge the two diagrams below). From this research we came up with two concepts: "Borrower Rewards" and "Repayment Planner".
The Solution
Based on all of the research, we came up with an app that would motivate student loan borrowers by "rewarding" their positive financial habits. Similar to a loyalty program, "Borrower Rewards" would encourage good borrower-behavior, as well as teach better financial habits outside of student loan debt, through offering weighted points - depending on the tasks.
For example, watching a financial literacy video would be a small amount of points, whereas making a full, on-time loan payment would result in a lot of points.
Mockups created for the pitch presentation
These points could be redeemed as money toward a user's student loan or a smaller amount of cash, to better encourage paying down debt. It also became clear through our research that "high-risk borrowers" value experiences and small wins, so we had hoped to incorporate concert tickets and other events.
To help engage this skeptical user group, we created a dashboard and added some gamification to encourage app usage. The more a user opened and engaged with app, the more points they would earn.
The Results
After pitching this app concept to the leadership team, ECMC Group decided not to pursue "Borrower Rewards" further.