Background

Chase sees an opportunity to help Millennials improve visibility of their credit score and financial challenges, as young generations rely more and more on web & mobile tech for their financial needs. Therefore, Chase is looking into expanding their web app (Credit Journey) by adding credit score and personal finance management capabilities. Chase sees an opportunity to make a difference, and help those millennials with their financial challenges. In order to do this, they would like to round out their offerings by providing users with personalized features that not only allow them to check their credit score but also manage their personal finances. Chase wants to embed this Personal Finance Management feature within the current Chase Bank Web App with the consistent design but a fresh and modern color palette & illustrations. Giving their digital product a face lift.

Problem statement.

A legacy version of the Chase Credit Journey already exist but no one was using it, not even chase customers. While millennial users of Chase are starting to be more vocal about their financial future they are starting to choose tools like Credit Karma & Credit wise over Chase’s Credit Journey. Going forward Chase is facing some challenges:

1) How to bring Chase’s own customers back to their credit journey app.

2) Currently only Chase customers are able to use credit journey, how to make this tool accessible for everyone.

3) Giving users not just a credit score viewer but a tool that can help them guide through tough times as well as give more control over their credit score.

4) Designing a state of the art credit score simulator that predicts users’s future credit score, while visually showing users what can happen if they partake some financial decision.

My role What I did

I was a senior UX researcher and designer on this project. I was part of qualitative and quantitive research and documenting the user journeys. Conducting design sprints with business to understand and solve some of the larger challenges. Leading a team of UI designers to design a new product and giving it a face lift and expanding Chase’s brand guide. I was also part of delivery & hand off and worked really closely with developers & architects to implement design. After implementation we also iterated on design while using users analytics from Google & Matamo.

UX research & analysis
Design Sprint
Wire framing
Interaction design
Prototyping & motion studies
Documenting patterns & best practices

Discovery

▸ The average credit score for Millennials is below 621 (bad) whereas the average credit score for those 50 and older is considered fair or higher.

▸ According to the Consumer Federation of America, 71% of American households are involved in very light financial planning, such as basic budgeting and savings goals.

▸ The average debt of a household is $16,000 for those without a mortgage, and $132,500 for those with mortgage.

▸ JPMorgan Chase’s mobile customers grew by 12% in the third quarter.

▸ The bank last year said that millennials made up “the majority of their new deposit customers”.

▸ Chase found that many of the millennials want a better visibility of their credit score and better ways to manage their credit alerts and weekly score updates — something they’ve found difficult to do.

▸ Visualization tools like infographics help tell the user the story of their finances by visually representing boring data in an interactive, attention-grabbing manner.

▸ Clearly and intuitively designed interfaces + active support forums enable Millennial customers

to self-service for almost all their regular needs, and troubleshoot their own problems when they occur.

▸ Users want more direct control over their credit score & reports.

▸ Personalized user experience is in high demand.

(The above discoveries we made using marketing research, secondary research, competitive analysis, user interview and user testing.)

(Collected through research from various government and private agencies)

Financial decision making matrix among Millennials & baby boomers that are the biggest driving factors.

Challenges

Taking all of this into account, Chase sees an opportunity to make a difference, and help Millennials with their credit score challenges. The typical personal finance management features include showing credit score, recent reports, calculators, and debt tracking. However, Chase is open to other suggestions as long as they’re supported by research and offer a step forward in their desired direction.

Conceptualize and design a Credit score and Finance Management feature that embeds smoothly within the current Chase web app but new and modern look and color palette. Specifically, include features that could help increase brand loyalty in Chase’s millennial audience, bring current Chase customers back to Credit Journey web app as well as making this web app available to any user regardless if they are a Chase bank customers or not and most important providing users a smart and easy to user credit score simulator.

To summarize, taking Credit Journey App from once in a while tool to check to reoccurring tool that users can rely upon for their credit scores, helping users improve it and help monitor for any changes through alerts.

Pain & Needs

Personalized Experience

Millennials are willing to exchange personal information to enjoy highly personalized services. 58% are ready to share personal information to get more accurate recommendations related to their interests. They also want more direct control over their financial information

Simple Informaition

Most Millennials lack of financial knowledge 84% seek advice from professionals or peers. Therefore features in the web app should be easy enough to use even if users don't have finance-related education. Information presented should also be easy to understand.

Effortless Management

User research found due to shorter attention span, young generations expect user experience of product to be more frictionless. Intuitive design and readily available support are keys for the design. The simpler the experience, the sooner users are likely to use the product again.

Instant Protection

For those who lack of experience in financial management, prompt notification and guidance can help them solve financial problems before they are out of control. Since 25% of credit card users from Millennials have hard time paying bills on time, and over 50% are still receiving some form of financial aid, timely protection on users' account is important.

Personas

Based on my finding from the interviews and surveys. I chose character that represented the target audience – younger people for using this new Credit Journey feature in Chase Web App. Lucia has a great income for her age but she needs to figure out where most of her money goes every month. She would like to find an easy way to manage her credit score and financial needs through her bank app instead of downloading more than one app to accomplish a task.

Based on the research two types of personas were developed: the "Achiever" Luke and the "Experiencer" Lucia.

Luke Smith

“The Achiever“

Lucia Ortiz

“The Experiencer“

Competitive Analysis

Final Look

Here’s the final look at the product which is MVP 1. It has 250+ screens. Due to the NDA some of the data and screens have been altered to maintain confidentiality.