Vancity MyCredit

Team Members: Elena Hsu, Elizabeth Lo, Macguire Rintoul, Isabelle Soares, Jordan Yep
My Roles: Experience Design, Interface Design, Wireframing, Video-production
Duration: 4 week project for a senior design course
Tools: Sketch, Keynote, Adobe Creative Suite
Project Overview
MyCredit is a companion mobile application for Vancity members to manage their credit and set goals that encourage credit building, to better support their financial well-being. The aim is to ease financial anxieties related to credit scores and help members track credit habits.
Awards and Recognition
Honourable Mention for the 2019 RGD Student Award for Strategic Design
‍Selected to present at the 2019 SFU FCAT Undergraduate Conference

Vancity MyCredit

Team Members
Elena Hsu
Elizabeth Lo
Macguire Rintoul
Isabelle Soares
Jordan Yep
Roles
UX/UI
Video-production
Duration
4 week project for a senior design course
Tools
Sketch
Keynote
Adobe Creative Suite
Business Problem
Credit score might be the most important number in your personal finance, however, a study done by BMO showed that an estimated 56% of Canadians have never checked their credit score and 31% don’t know how to improve their score.
Opportunity
"With 250,000 of them – close to half of our members – interacting with us almost entirely online or via our mobile app, we’re under pressure to deliver even more mobile and digital functionality." — Vancity 2017 Annual Report

Vancity's current credit experience is buried in four different pages on their website, creating difficulty for members to find the information they need in one place. Additionally, existing mobile app has yet to provide resources for credit management. Part of the problem relates to misconceptions around credit scores — we found that scattered resources around the web led to a fear of checking scores and an overall low-importance about scores in general.
Solution
Our solution focuses on how Vancity, as a credit union, can encourage their members to set goals for their credit and provide guidance by providing the tools they need to reach their goals.
Onboarding/Multiple Accounts
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Onboarding helps people to get to know the app and at the same time learn helpful information about credit. Additionally, members can link credit accounts from other financial institutions via MX Technologies to be able to see how their accounts influence their score.
Notifications

Because everyone manages their finances differently, members have an option to link credit accounts from other financial institutions and keep track of important updates. MyCredit recommends actions specific to each member’s habits rather than providing generic information.
Learn/Credit Explained

Learn tab explains the most important parts of credit, and shows members how their credit score is being influenced by their activity.
Goals/Actionable Tips

Curated information helps members reach their goal by giving them clear, achievable steps within a reasonable timeframe.
Celebration
Celebrating accomplishments and recognizing members for their efforts encourages them along their credit building journey.
Insights
Two insights framed our research as to why people do not check their credit scores:
Framing
The question that would refine our target problem was:

How might we provide guidance that reduces financial anxieties by encouraging members and providing tools to reach their goals?
Vancity Members
To be able to understand Vancity members, our team conducted research which led us to three different segments. For MyCredit we decided to focus on ‘dissapointed applicant’, because we saw a bigger opportunity to improve their experience.
Targeted audience
The target audience are members ages 18-45 as they are individuals who are likely to be purchasing cars, paying off student loans, and might think about mortgages.
Persona
Our persona is a full-time veterinary technician who wants to buy a car, but isn't happy with the interest rate she qualified for. Some of her friction points are, because of her irregular work hours, she has a varying monthly income and it makes visiting an advisor difficult.
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Journey Framework
In the current Vancity experience, information on their existing website is not only scattered and hard to find, there are also no calls to action to keep them accountable. MyCredit focuses on building credit and helping members follow through with the great advice that Vancity already offers. It helps keep track of their score without taking them away from Vancity resources.

Design Principles
We developed three design principles to reference throughout the project and keep us focused on what was most important.
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Iterations and User Testing
Through our three week process of designing the application, we went from grayscale wireframes to our final fidelity product. With the help of user testing, we were able to get feedback and iterate on it to reduce cognitive overhead and produce a more consistent interface.
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Discovery
There are three main ways to discover the MyCredit. Members can be informed in-person at a Vancity Branch, through the Vancity website carousel, and the notification in the Vancity banking app after core functions.

Copywriting
In order to write in the voice of a trusted financial institution, the copywriting had to credible and informative but also balance an encouraging and personal voice so members wouldn’t feel overwhelmed with their financial situation.

Reflection
This project gave me an opportunity to improve my research strategies, wireframing, user experience techniques and video editing skills. Working on a project that involved in-depth research, interviews and execution in a ~4 week time frame showed me the importance of communicating efficiently within the team, constantly iterating based on feedback, testing as often as possible and the value of good quality research. My team and understood the importance and need in iterating quickly to get the product validated by real data.

The project benefitted greatly from having a multidisciplinary team of designers and researchers. Having no prior banking experience or knowledge within the team, comprehensive and rapid research was necessary to get us off the ground.
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