Perch
Radically simplifying the credit-building process 🔒
Role & Team
Lead Product Designer (in collaboration with Jessy Liu)
Duration
October 2019 - October 2020
Tools
Figma, Framer, AfterEffects, Illustrator
Disclaimer: This is not my full case study! Due to my NDA, I cannot disclose certain details. If you're a recruiter, contact me for access.
Problem
Underbanked adults uninformed about credit avoid or feel barred from building their credit because the process feels stressful, exhausting, and confusing.
Solution
Remove the emotional barriers to credit building by designing a a radically simple credit-building feature that feels as approachable as it does secure.
Interested in seeing my full process? You can find more details here.
See full case study →
Background
Our mission: Bring non-traditional credit building to young adults
Not-So-Fun Fact: With a traditional credit card, getting a credit score at all can already take up to half a year. You can expect for that to take longer —or downright not happen at all— if you don't have good credit history.
It all started when Mike, Perch's CEO, discovered that reporting his monthly on-time rent payments to the credit bureaus established his credit score in just 2 weeks... even with poor credit history. After struggling to qualify for his own student loans, he wanted to make this method of non-traditional credit-building available for young adults everywhere. Enter Perch's founding team. Mike knew how to build credit without the need for traditional credit-builder loans or credit cards, it was just a matter of making this method into a convenient mobile-based platform for users.
But if other avenues for building credit already existed, what was stopping the underbanked from utilizing them?
Final Designs
A simple, fuss-free non-traditional credit-building product for young adults
Designing for simplicity, security, and approachability.
We built Perch's credit-building feature to be friendly and easy to navigate through its fun graphics, walkthroughs, and process that's only 3 steps.
1. Enter rental property information
2.Verify your rent payments
3. Upload your lease agreement
Providing users with fuss-free organization and the flexibility to continue reporting
We gave users the ability to easily keep track of previous leases or go back to them to report rent payments for months they didn't originally submit.
Takeaways
The highlights from my time at Perch
There are about a million and one things I learned and boxes I checked off through working at such a rapidly growing company like Perch. Here are the highlights:
1. Help raise a 2.5 million seed and round up a 18k+ waitlist
Crazy to see so much growth, all thanks to a mix of luck, frantically pushing out new design iterations for investors + pitch competitions, and shamelessly plugging Perch to everyone I knew on social media.
2. Become a Swiss Army Knife
I had my hands in marketing, making graphics, creating animated videos for FinLit, developing Perch's website, and handling some third-party partnerships. (And half these skills I had to pick up on the fly)
3. Design not only with users in mind, but also founders, engineers, and investors
As a designer, I had to learn how to juggle founder vision, engineers' constraints, and investor demands on top of user insights.
4. Make an idea into a product (and re-design that product 6x along the way)
So many scrapped Figma files. But also incredibly rewarding to see the evolution of the product and myself as a designer!
5. Apply to and graduate from Y-Combinator... and work in a hacker house all day long!
From slamming Yerba Mates to meet tight deadlines to setting up in-house barber shops (who knew designers could be so versatile!), it was quite the ride.
See full case study →