You Are Not A-LOAN:
Getting Real About Student Debt
Project Overview
While student loans allow access to education and opportunity, the stress, financial burden and lack of comprehension leaves many confused, overwhelmed, and unprepared for repayment.
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Our application, Sprout, grew from our users' need for a singular, simple, intuitive, and accessible home for all student loan debt information and resources.
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During this project my role was a UX strategist, and my responsibilities included:
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UX research: conducting competitive analysis and leading 1:1 user interviews
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UX design: leading co-design sessions and building the mid-fidelity prototype
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UX strategy: building the IA of the Sprout application
"How might we help those with student loan debt better manage their loans before entering repayment? "
Target Audience
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Current undergraduate or graduate students.
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Recent graduates (those who graduated 5 years or less) with a student loan balance.
Stakeholders
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Primary: Chime (Project Sponsor) and student loan holders.
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Secondary: Banks, loan servicers, dependents or parents/guardians.
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Tertiary: School financial aid departments and counselors.
Research Methods
To explore demographics and attitudes, we chose a selection of ‘learn’ and ‘ask’ methods that allowed us to gain both breadth and depth of the problem space. ‘Learn’ methods are methods that review current facts, while ‘ask’ methods involve directly communicating with and listening to our target audience. Our 'learn' methods entailed lexical and sentiment analysis, literature review, and competitive analysis while our 'ask' methods contained the survey, interviews, and collaging activity.
42
survey
responses
11
user
interviews
70+
images
collected
Key Insights
Loans are easy to get, but hard to understand.
“I think I was surprised by how easy it was to
take out the loan. Like it wasn't that difficult of a process, they didn't really bother me after I did it.”
- Interview P5, Recent Master's Graduate
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"Easy to take them [student loans] out, hard to learn how to pay them back."
- Survey P23, International Student
Image referring to 'confused' by P8
Current students feel ambivalent about their loans.
“Is it just is what it is? It's a reality. I took out student loans and we're going to pay [them] back sometime someway.”
- P6, Business Owner
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“...yeah well like repayment it's kind of this is bad, but like out of sight out of mind.”
- P9, 1st Generation & Transfer Undergrad Student
Image referring to 'out of sight, out of mind' by P9
Students feel stressed when thinking about repayment.
“I'm fine right now, but I know it's gonna hit me in a little bit”
- P5, Recent Master's Graduate
Image referring to 'stress' by P9
Interest accumulation on student loans is surprising.
“And then learning that both unsubsidized and subsidized you really should be paying
throughout, even when you start you know
you're not finished, you really should be paying that interest down that was a little frustrating to learn about”
- P4, PhD Candidate
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“...had a lot of surprises and oh it's
compounding interest actually and it's not just simple interest, so all those sort of things”
- P2, International Master's Student
Image referring to 'shock' by P9
Protopersonas
These two protopersonas were developed through our user research and cooperative design methodologies. Designers and engineers working on expanding Sprout's framework should focus less on socioeconomic factors and more on the concrete needs and emotions of those with student loan debt.
Design Activities
Example of design assets that were produced from a rapid design session.
Example of design assets that were produced from a co-design session. We hosted 5 separate 1:1 sessions with different users to understand their needs.
Design Solution
Balance at a Glance
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The user can view all current loans and loan amounts, along with a timeline of projected balance and interest accumulation.
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We added this as our primary feature because users wanted to be able to view all their student loan debt in one place, no matter the loan type or lender.
Payment Calculator
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Users can run various scenarios for understanding repayment amount(s).
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This feature was created in response to user's desire to understand how their loans can accumulate.
Loan History
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Here the user can see monthly accruals and disbursements.
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Similar to the Balance at a Glance feature, this feature was created so users could view all loan activity history, regardless of loan type or lender.
Reminders
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Lets users create and organize reminders in one location for all of their loans.
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This feature helps users understand critical dates associated with their loans, so they can create plans and budget for repayment.
Tips and Tricks
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This section helps to educate and prepare users and to help them understand different aspects of student loans, repayment, and other budgeting needs.
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This feature was created after we heard from our users that they prefer watching videos to understand more about managing loans as opposed to reading articles.