Building upon the increasing demand from the old legacy online portal and physical store traffic, the Advanced America New Online Experience (NOE) embraces opportunities in new financial technologies, empowering customers in their financial journey, and transforming the way they access, track, and manage their loans.
(In a scrum team) UX Designers from an agency (early stage), Managers, UX Researchers, PMs, Developers, Architects, Business Analysts, QAs
/01 Managed and iterated the design of over 400 screens by collaborating with stakeholders and cross-functional team members, using an existing brand guidance and UI kit, to design new features.
/02 Collaborated closely with user researchers to analyze research data.
/03 Led the process of creating user stories to facilitate ongoing improvements of the updates needed to enhance the new online experience, guided by user feedback.
Advance America, the largest financial service under Purpose Financial, offers small loans like Payday and Installment Loans. With 900+ stores across 24 states, it also provides online loan services.
To enhance its digital presence, a new online platform is being built to improve traffic handling, user experience, and omnichannel integration while leveraging innovative technologies.
The website’s user experience is unfriendly, with long scrolling screens that make navigation difficult.
Built years ago, it lacks modern financial technologies for faster and more convenient services.
It hasn’t adapted to mobile trends, even though over 80% of users access services via mobile or tablet.
How can we build trust in a financial product that customizes loan offers using personal information, given recent data breaches? The current experience features a generic, context-lacking questionnaire.
Each screen requesting personal information includes a pop-up with a clear explanation of its purpose and usage. The content was reviewed with legal and marketing teams to ensure accuracy and empathy for users' financial situations.
Loan documents are often lengthy and tedious, leading many to miss important obligations. The legacy portal displayed loan disclosures as long PDFs, causing pain points such as lack of clarity, lengthy content, and buried information under time constraints.
Redesigned the screen for clarity, showing customers the total documents they will sign, with convenient tools to download, review, and print. For additional documents, we created a brief section for a quick read.
Funds are received differently depending on the funding method, and the old experience lacked a tool to answer the key question: 'When will I receive my money?'
In the new design, we separate loan and funding statuses using color psychology. We addressed the issue by ensuring customers know their loan is approved while funds are on the way,
The current income verification platform is slow and friction-filled, leading to drop-offs. Partnering with Plaid, we aimed to integrate a faster, more efficient process and introduce it in a user-friendly way.
We designed a simple screen with two expandable cards for quick access or deeper exploration. I also worked with the development team to enable users to skip verification initially and complete it after viewing loan offers.
Encourage returning users to apply for a new loan and inform those with an open loan about reapplication eligibility, while maintaining the primary focus.
The closed loan reapply card featured a bold brand color and a clear call-to-action, with pre-populated financial information for quick confirmation and editing. For the open loan reapply card, the design balanced focus between completing the current loan and reapplying, using a more subdued layout to distribute attention.
The legacy platform had a major issue where users forgot about or were unaware of scheduled payments and autopay sign-ups, leading to duplicated payments, poor user experiences, and internal system complications.
Introduced a 'Scheduled Payment' notification on the dashboard and payment screen as reminders. Added an 'Upcoming' display for scheduled payments, allowing users to review withdrawal details, with a user-friendly filter to manage multiple payment types.
On the "Loan Offer Selection" screen, multiple loan offers are displayed. However, it was discovered through UX research that almost all users (90%) were unaware that there were multiple loan offers available because they were hidden outside the screen view.It was later determined that in the MVP, users will only have two offers available simultaneously. This information influenced our design at a later stage.
Option A: vertical scroll with a comparison button that expands more information about the loan offers
Option B: an indicator that serves as the visual cue that there are more loan offers
Option C: a horizontal scroll switcher that allows user to navigate between offers
To gain insights into the designs, our team conducted quick usability testing using Useberry. We had 70 users complete sessions, with an average completion time of 10 minutes and 34 seconds. Users were asked to complete four quick tasks in each session.
Option A: people prefer buttons that are easily understandable with just a quick look.
Option B: over-designed call to action may lead user’s question on the trustworthiness of the application.
Option C: horizontal scrolling among our users is not as popular as what we think.
Based on the insights gathered from testing, we finalized a design that allocated less header space and provided more room for the offer cards to ensure users are aware of them. Additionally, we introduced a new scrolling logic that enables users to compare two offers side by side.
Within the new online experience, a subset of users is required to bring their verification documents to one of our physical stores to obtain a loan. However, the process can be surprising and overwhelming for users as it involves several steps they need to complete before visiting the store.
Monitored on LogRocket, our researcher identified a high drop-off rate at the screen informing users to visit a store with documents to complete the loan process. Analysis revealed that unclear instructions and lack of guidance left users uncertain about the next steps. Additionally, without visual cues, many mistakenly assumed this screen was the end of the process.
I redesigned the screen with clearer instructions and a dynamic step-by-step list, ensuring users understand the next steps. The list updates based on progress and remains accessible from the customer dashboard for easy reference.
Quick, small tests are better than none. Early designs were based on assumptions, many of which testing later proved wrong. Despite access to user data, evolving technology constantly shifts user behavior, highlighting the need for ongoing research.
Designs can’t be rigidly “locked” and handed off like assembly line parts. During development and QA, unexpected edge cases often emerge, sometimes reshaping the design entirely. I learned that maintaining an open, flexible collaboration between design and development is essential until the project is complete.
We created a design kit to improve efficiency, but during updates, some designers struggled to integrate new designs into existing components. While design systems provide structure, rigid templates can limit creativity. The key lesson I learned is to use the system wisely—balancing consistency with originality.
