Project Overview
The Company / Product
Kiavi's internal "Ops Platform" is a web application for Kiavi's employees on the Loan Processing Team to shepherd a Customer's loan for a real-estate investment property from submission to fund delivery.
The Problem
Loan Analysts were experiencing technical challenges and spending a lot of time copy and pasting "property conditions" (changes in scope of work to a property remodel) from the "Propery Tool Kit" area to the "Customer Messages area".
Project Goal
Conduct research with Loan Analysts to understand their challenges, define solutions, and ship solutions.
Team Size (5)
Me (Research / Design), 1 Product Manager, 2 Full-Stack Engineers
Duration
2 Months
My Role
Conduct Research / UX Design
Results
- Launched MVP on time.
- Customers-to-Date: 10 Textbook Publishing Companies
- Users-to-Date: 1 Million in the USA and Canada
Project Highlights
01. I conducted research with Loan Analysts to better understand the problem.
02. I synthesized my findings & recommended potential solutions
03. I collaborated with our engineering to team to implement and ship solutions.
01. I conducted research with Loan Analysts to better understand the problem.
I learned about this issue from an intake farm my team uses to collect issues from Loan Analysts using our app. Myself and our Product Manager felt that this particular problem mght involve nuance is how staff does this, so we wanted to conduct research before solutionizing.
I collaborated with our Product Manager on a research plan to interview 5 Loan Analysts. They sourced the applicants and I led writing an agenda / script for each session. Thankfully my Cross-Functional Team and the larger Kiavi organization supports conducting research, so I had buy in from the start.
Miro Board
I served as the Facilitator during 5 Loan Analysts Sessions and they shared with me their workflow and challenges, while our Product Manager was the note taker. There werent any major "challenges" during any of the sessions and we were able to get a good feedback.
These interviews were great because they challenged my initial assumptions. "What about making a copy to clip board button?" i thought at the start if the project. I began to see it wouldnt have been as simple as that.
02. I synthesized my findings & recommended solutions
I synthesiszed findings in to styynotes and created. a miro board.
- Finding 1
- Finding 2
- Finding 3
- Finding 4
- Finding 5
Miro board synthesis
I had 5 recommenstions based on our synthesis:
- Rec 1
- Rec 2
- Rec 3
- Rec 4
- Rec 5
03. I collaborated with our engineering to team to implement and ship solutions.
I met with the two enginerrs who would implement the solutons. I shared my solutkns via annotated screen shots in miro and some rough screen designs. Some technical contraints includes this and that.
I had to make some changes and blah blah blah.
Our engineering team shipped the updates in 3 weeks. We used Split.io to test with a small percent of Loan Analysts using the platform. Our metrics showed ease of use for that pop and we moved up further to 100%
Results: "This saves us so much time"
Delivering on this project helped us meet some of our team OKRS, and our Product Manager gathered some followup info with teams.
Outcomes
- Met (O)KR reducing number of time spent on loan
- Reduced issues with loans, and simplified steps.
- Quote from Loan Analyst 01 - "This saves us so much time"
Lessons
- With a problem as nuanced as this, best to get real feedback than prescribing.
Want to know more about this project?