Credit Insights

The Problem

Market Status

In the financial wellness space, a lot of our competitors have leveraged additional services for their premium users, such as budgeting, paying bills, providing access to credit etc. However, today, LifeLock has multiple barriers to building a financial wellness experience.
User testing showed customers trust us for financial products and would explore if they are in the market, but they don’t organically think of us for financial products. There is a lack of member association LifeLock as a service for financial wellness.

User Needs

LifeLock users apply for roughly 800K credit cards on an annual basis, they want better credit insights that are actionable and dynamic to their credit score changes, which could help improve their credit score quickly.

Business Needs

Our user currently mainly engage via alerts when they come to our product, we don’t have many features to encourage recurring use of our product other than credit scores and subscription management.

Design for Engagement

Solution Delivered

Introduced the value proposition of all 6 score factors to prompt user to click "Get Latest Score & Report".
Once the score is updated, display the factor change on the card.

Removed the previous credit detail sections and merged these information into the score factor details modal.
Less scrolling and more user engagement on the top level.
Users can click into each factor to understand the details and navigate between them.

Introduced a "See What's Changed" modal, listing a summary of the factors that have changed.

How did I get here?

01

Factors Overview

User Goals - More valuable insights to improve score

Current Problems

The current primary way for users to engage is by clicking "Get Latest Score & Report" to obtain the most recent score.
After the score is updated, the information in the Score Reasons section is very generic.

Iterations

Per VantageScore3.0 standard, there are usually 6 factors that impact user's credit score change, each of them has different levels of impacts. Since the new score factor session will replace the generic score reason session, I started to explore how to best layout them to help user better engage and understand the details.

I initially experimented with 3 different layout types, each with its own set of pros and cons. Analyzing these layouts allowed me to identify a more refined structure.

Option 1 - Information list

Lots of texts to read through;

Took up a of vertical space;

User would like to understand more about what each factor means;

Option 2 - Dynamic card

Introduced the value proposition first and encourage the user to click the CTA to see the factor change;

Divided the factors by impact so the user can easily focus on the ones that have a higher impact on their score;

User can see the value but not the change in value;

User would like to know if there is a summary listing all the changes;

One more click to see the lower impact factors;

Option 3 - Selected Layout

Introduced the value proposition first to encourage the user to click the CTA to see the factor change;

Provided high-level information on each card, including:
- Value
- Change indicator
- Rating

Color-coded the card style to match the rating;

02

Deep Dive

User Goals - Less effort to find information

After finalizing the entry point design, I began to consider how to layout the detailed information. I noticed that some of the six factors listed below have very similar details to what is already on the current credit page. How should I handle this?

Payment History
Credit Card Use
Derogatory Masks
Credit Age
Total Accounts
Hard Inquires

Current Problems

Current page is very lengthy, and requires a lot of scrolling, which is hard for user to digest all the information.
After scrolling past the Financial Benefits section , the following sections are extracted from user's credit report. ‍‍However, current engagement rate of these sections is very low.
If we introduce score factors, some of their detailed information will be repetitive with what we already have on the credit page, including:
- Credit Inquires
- Credit Accounts
- Credit Utilization

Revised Design

Since the scrolling part has very low engagement, and their content is also overlapped with score factors, I proposed to take out the repeated content, and extract and embed those information into each factor's detailed page.

Removed the repeated content to avoid users having to navigate back and forth;
Significantly reduced the scrolling;
Encouraged user to engage with the top session;

Iterations

Once user clicks on any of these score factors, we want to give user a chance to learn more details. I decided to land user into a modal since our users have been very familiar with this treatment across web page. In addition, each one of the factors has same type of information that needs to be included:

Factor Name
Overall Factor Value
Impact
Rating and how it get calculated
Each account's detailed factor value

So I decided to create a template to serve for all 6 factors. Below is an example:

Removed the redundant info from the credit page and embedded it here in a more contextual manner;
Easily navigate between factors;
Able to retain the functions we had before, but in a more organized way;

Payment History Default

Payment History Expanded

Credit Card Use Default

Credit Card Use Expanded

Derogatory Marks Expanded

Credit Age Default

Total Accounts Expanded

Hard Inquiries Default

Tooltips - help user understand how the factors get calculated

Payment History

Credit Card Use

Derogatory Marks

Credit Age

Total Accounts

Hard Inquires

03

See What's Changed

User Goals - Quickly grasp a summary of changes

On the revised layout, in addition to allowing users to click on each card to learn more about each factor's change, I also introduced a way for users to see a summary of all the changes. How should we trigger this summary view?

Iterations

I explored two options and selected one of them:

Option 1

Text button has low discoverability;

Option 2 - Selected Layout

After the user clicks "Get Latest Score & Report", their attention is still focused on the left side because the score has just been updated. Placing "See What's Changed" in the same spot could easily catch their attention;

Modal Details

This is a dynamic list that will only display the factors that have changes.
User can take a glance and get an overall idea of what has changed.
If they want to understand more details, we will direct them to download the credit report.
If the user's credit score has increased, we will direct them to the relevant credit offers based on their score.

Reflection

Communication and coordination are crucial throughout the entire process. When the PM first brought this project to me, she hadn't anticipated or required a redesign of the entire credit page. However, as I iterated on the score factor design, I realized there was an opportunity to streamline the lengthy sections on the web page. I set up a meeting to explain why I believe this approach is better. It wasn’t an easy decision, as it expanded the scope of the project, but after a few rounds of discussion, we reached a compromise. I will provide an MVP version for the first phase, and we will implement the full vision in the post-MVP phase.
Years of design training taught me detail matters, especially for UX.
Last but not the least, as a designer, I should strive to collaborate closely with the PM and other disciplines to ensure my design meets user goals and enhances their experience. This, in turn, will contribute to achieving business objectives and overall product success.

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