Work: Currently a Design Manager at Meta.
Education: Currently a Ph.D. student in Design at Carnegie Mellon University. I earned a Master's in Strategic Design & Management from Parsons School of Design. I also earned a BS in Entrepreneurship and a BA in International Studies from the University of Utah.
Prev Case
Next Case
How might we leverage alternative data sources to help people with low FICO credit scores?
Millions of consumers who lack credit history or have experienced financial distress in the past have difficulty obtaining or increasing credit from mainstream financial institutions.
Through cohesive user experience, we designed desktop and mobile interfaces that leverage financial transactions to increase credit scores and broaden financial inclusion for Americans.
February - August 2019
Experian is a global leader in consumer and business credit reporting and marketing services that gather, analyze, and process credit data. Experian helps individuals by offering access to financial services; it helps lenders minimize risks; and it helps businesses make better, more informed decisions.
Experian Boost is a service that rewards customers for responsible financial behavior by increasing their credit scores. Experian Boost connects to your bank account(s) to find qualifying on-time bill payments and, with your permission, adds those payments to your credit file. The process takes about five minutes, and you'll see any changes to your credit scores instantly. Most people who try Experian Boost immediately see their credit scores improve.
Through partnership with Finicity, the Experian project enhanced the consumer borrowing experience by accelerating loan underwriting and broadening loan availability. It used a web and mobile interface design for Boost features, using data from the mortgage and rent industry.
The design focuses only on bills for utilities that the “boostable” population is not leveraging. The new app design is intended to reach that subset of the consumer base by ensuring design has sufficient information to improve consumer’s FICO® Score minimum scoring criteria.
35% of Americans' rent and monthly payments are not helping their credit score. Some renters don’t pay for their utilities directly, making their rental payment one of the only neglected transaction streams that could help improve their credit score.
Consumers believe design should speak to them in ways they can understand and make it easy to find answers to their questions.
The interaction design should show users what they can do, tell them what to expect, and help them along the way so they feel empowered to move forward.
The design needs to show users the value that makes this worth their time and encourages them to complete the process.
Plans to build a business independently, currently works two jobs and does not make large purchases with his credit card. He has difficulty building his credit score.
Hoping to buy a house, he always makes rent payments on time and is not aware that those payments can be used as investments toward his credit score.
The UltraFICO™ Score incorporates transnational data from consumer’s checking, savings, and money market accounts. It extends the scorable population and refines prediction to broaden financial inclusion
Projecting a strong upward shift in scores seen in key segments like the thin and/or young credit files/credit files with previous derogatory information. Overall we will see positive shifts in all other segments
In the early stages, we analyzed our competitors, noting their respective weaknesses and strengths. We hoped to avoid their weaknesses while solving their problems, ultimately creating a competitive feature that optimizes Experian Boost’s unique positioning.
| Competitive Name | Weakness | Our response |
|---|---|---|
| Credit Karma | Credit Karma does not make use of FICO scores; instead, it leverages a less common credit evaluation metric. | FICO integration means Experian leverages the best credit evaluation metric. The app would need to highlight the advantage of Experian’s Boost’s instant FICO improvement |
| Equifax | Equifax offers virtually the same services as Experian; however, its apps have generally poor reviews on the Apple App Store (Equifax’s “Lock and Alert” app has more 1-star-reviews than any other user score). Reported weaknesses include the user interface, poor functionality, and complexity | The Experian app would provide a new, more specific, instant way for people to improve their FICO scores. It can capture even customers who will continue to use FICO products The Experian Boost App would need to provide an experience different from the clunky, frustrating experience provided by Equifax; we decided to simplify the design wherever possible. |
In the early stages, we analyzed our competitors, noting their respective weaknesses and strengths. We hoped to avoid their weaknesses while solving their problems, ultimately creating a competitive feature that optimizes Experian Boost’s unique positioning.
The team set key requirements that the final design needed to meet. Experian Boost’s app should:
Only 20-30% of rentals are professionally managed by third parties. Individual landlords manage the rest. This will make it hard to build out a definitive list or to establish a data format to help identify rent trade streams.
The less information we demand from customers, the more they will sign up for this service.
We could have them upload rental agreements or provide an example of a transaction they make to their landlord if we need to.
We designed the UI fields needed for customers to navigate the app. We asked various questions to help our understanding so that customers could seamlessly input information into the interface.
We created a low-fidelity mock-up demonstrating the basic features of the app and mapping the relationships between various screens.
More questions that arose when designing the interface were: What does Normalized Payee look like for rent? Is the name of the landlord or a third-party representative used as the NP?
How can users gather and input information about their rental transactions? What do most rental transactions look like?
What patterns exist in rental transactions that can be easily added to the TS identification engine? Can we make use of first-month security deposits for verification?
Interview
The app conducts an “interview” to verify applicants pay their rent regularly. It asks users to provide information about the times' rent is paid, the cadence of payments (how often they occur), information about the landlord, and the method of bill payment.
Normalized Payee
All selected transactions are processed to determine eligibility by identifying rent/bill payees
Add Accounts
The user is asked to select which account or accounts they use to pay their rent or other bills.
Confirmation
The app analyzes users’ bank accounts, identifying their transactions and verifying that they pay rent
More than 1.3 million American consumers have completed the Boost process, and more than 840,000 of them saw their FICO scores increase. Impressive 86% of the thin file ( “thin” credit histories–meaning they don’t have many credit accounts to report on-time payments) consumers using Boost have seen an instant FICO 8 Score increase, averaging 19 points.
Boost is projected to benefit 7 million consumers who fall into the upper 500 to low 600 FICO score range — usually just under a lender’s minimum credit threshold. It should also help the 15 million Americans who have no credit score at all (due to never taking out a loan, applying for a credit card, etc.)
Up to 35% of Americans could instantly improve their FICO credit scores using Experian’s Boost service. Experian Boost is free, so potential users are missing out, either because they do not know about the benefits, they do not feel they have time, or other reasons.
The Experian Boost App responds to this problem by creating a seamless, easy-entry app, allowing users to securely and conveniently link their accounts to Experian Boost. The UI design is simple, yet each step educates the user about the process and allows control over financial information and rent transaction history. Users can easily begin the process without previous preparation, removing some potential users’ objections.
Brainstorming, market research, and competitive analysis led to a strategizing process. The design team responded to current problems and responded to competitors’ weaknesses. Then, the most important features were mapped into a low-fidelity mockup. From there, user interface and other design features were incorporated into high-fidelity mockups and prototypes. The complete app offers a streamlined interaction that captures Experian’s Three Experience Pillars.
