Framing the Issue
Context
Many students face the same situation: Go get your first credit card and get turned down by banks because you didn’t have a credit score. Ironically, when building credit, you need to have had credit card.. and in order to get a credit card you need to have credit in the first place. As of today, 71% of college students have no viable way of building their credit score. Without depending on their parents, the current status quo does not give students a way to build their credit score. This chicken-and-egg problem is the issue that our team wanted to solve.
The Problem, The Opportunity
So we posed the question: How might we jumpstart the credit-building process for college students in a way that makes sense for people either who know little about credit and/or might not have been in a place to traditionally apply for a credit card?
From there we these goals:
Radically simplify the credit-building process by allowing college students to build credit by reporting an activity almost every student does: Paying rent.
Offer other opportunities to build credit and save money by reporting and keeping track of subscriptions, debitizing credit cards, and suggesting new cards with cash back benefits tailored to their spending habits
Challenges and Constraints
As an early-stage startup, we also have to build our product with regard to not only users’ needs, but also to investor’s demands.
With that in mind, I had to receive feedback from multiple parties —users, the rest of the Hatch Credit team, and investors— and balance all their needs.
Another challenge was the integration of our revenue models. Our revenue model is based on marketing credit cards to users, so I wanted to integrate this feature in a way that didn’t seem too in-your-face and impersonal.
The Process
The First Iteration
Considering our pre-seed, pre-release stage of the startup, I initially began designing the first version of our app with considerations to the founders' vision. They wanted to emphasize rent reporting and the revenue model above all else, so I focused on those aspects in the V1. With a two-day turnaround request, I went straight for the high-fidelity designs knowing that
Additionally, the first iteration attempted to consolidate all of our team’s ideas, which there were a LOT of, hence all the tabs. As I created the other iterations, these features would get cut out as we evolved our product concept.
For our second iteration, I took into consideration the feedback our team received from the investors: Simplify, simplify, simplify. In accordance to the critiques I received, I reduced the number of tabs, cut down the walkthrough length, and consolidate the reporting and revenue model features into a single page.
With the creation of our third version, the Product Team and I worked to create a more eye-catching, bold color scheme (seriously, we debated on colors for 6 hours). In response to more feedback from investors, I hit the whiteboards with my Product Team to figure out a way to make the app less static, move to a sleeker design, and continue re-organizing our features. So, for our V3, I came up with changing statistics/graphs, adapted a flat design, and finalized the Credit, Saving, and Profile tabs.
User Research
Usability Testing
As our product launch date nears, I suggested we begin ramping up user testing. I led a focus group of ten students and asked them questions about each screen, inquiring about their intuitiveness, purpose, and design. In terms of feedback, the main takeaways we received were:
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More visual cues, like color coding and graphical representations of data
Added emphasis on rent-reporting on the main page, such as through larger fonts, better screen placement, and less focus on other information (ex. credit score)
Buttons with text-cues, as opposed to ambiguous symbols (read: plus sign)
Preference for implicit, singular, and personalized credit card suggestions as opposed to a single page marketing multiple cards
So, What Happened?
End State
While there isn’t a complete end state so far (or will there ever be one?), my last version of Hatch does reflect our company’s constant pivoting, evolving efforts to adapt to our consumers’ needs. Currently, I’m in the midst of making the fourth version of the product that will take into consideration the feedback we've gotten so far!
Side note: The colors in the app were dulled after I formatted them on Illustrator
What I've Learned
How to meet crazy deadlines and really get into the startup spirit
How to conduct in-depth A/B testing, lead a focus group, and apply user feedback to new versions of the app
Metrics
While our app remains pre-launch until March, our focus groups so far expressed the desire that people have for an app like Hatch; people were enthusiastic for benefits our product could provide them because the issues we were trying to solve were also issues they were trying to solve.
Metrics to come post launch!
