Mobile app redesigN
CLIENT
Sallie Mae
INDUSTRY
Financial: Student Loans, Personal Loans, Credit Cards, Banking
MY ROLE
Start to end: research, design, testing, and collaboration with dev team
TIMEFRAME
3 months
OVERVIEW
The Sallie Mae mobile app needed an upgrade so that it could not only be an app to pay off student loans but also include the new financial products the business was releasing — personal loans, credit cards, and savings accounts. Stakeholders also wanted to make it simple for customers to view all their Sallie Mae accounts at a glance and receive personalized cross-sell promotions for products that align with their needs.
Initial Evaluation & Concerns
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Sallie Mae was now offering personal loans, credit cards, and savings account
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User research & testing (customers) showed confusion of what the circle colors were
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Customers did like that it only took 2 taps to submit a payment (keeper!)
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Sallie Mae also went through a rebranding with a new color palette and logo
Competitor Research
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Research pros and cons of competitor bankings apps
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Further exploring into finance and servicing apps
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Reviewed App Store comments for customer experience insights
Design Ideation
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Card design seemed well for the approach of showing multiple products at a glance
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Explored personalizing the app with custom greeting messages
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Explored gamification/ celebrations with paying down your loans
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Introduced new app features like dark mode
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Incorporating new brand elements
Prototypes and User Testing
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Created several rounds of design experiments and stakeholder feedback
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Tested our top designs in our in-house user testing lab
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Tested online prototypes with usertesting.com
Final Approvals, Development, and Launch
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Our team and stakeholders felt proud of the new design and brand
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Worked closely with the iOS & Android developers to perfect the design on various screen sizes
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Launched it and continued to improve it from customer feedback, survery, and app store responses
Results
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Customers appreciated how simple and easy the app was to make payments (2 taps!)
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4.6 Star Rating in the App Store
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Even our haters left nice comments in the App Store
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Established a visual language along with our design system
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New Technology Enhancements
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Dark mode
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Face & Touch ID
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Subtle animations
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Touch vibrations
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Widget
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Welcome experience to highlight the app features
Review
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What was my role in this process?
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Start to finish lead designer
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Collaborating with our UX Researcher
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Heavy rounds of approvals with legal & compliance
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Creating prototypes to test with customers
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Working closely with devs & QA
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What ended up being shipped to users?
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Complete rebrand of the new mobile app and improved interactions/experience
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What did I learn?
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Wow, so many edge cases to consider when it comes to financial products. So many surprises but we found solutions to them all.
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