Fidelity Student Debt
Product Design
User Experience
User Interface
Visual Design
Product Design
User Experience
User Interface
Visual Design
2023 – 2024
Mac Hill
Emily McGalliard
Casie Mattrisch
Student Debt Direct is a benefit offered by Fidelity. Clients (companies) purchase a contract with us to offer this benefit to their employees. It is primarily a retention and hiring incentive where the employer agrees to pay some amount of their employee's student debt every month. However, the product requires complicated loan verification and management with cumbersome loan service provider systems.
I was brought onto this project with an ambiguous task: to improve the user experience for all user actions after enrolling in this benefit with their employer.
One of the first things I did after being brought onto this project was to learn the existing product front-to-back. I worked with the systems analyst to create a miro that maps the entire lifecycle of the product.
UX lifecycles miro board
Next, I partnered with our user experience researcher to run a heuristic study. I even had to get my hands dirty and code to update a reference user interface we would use in this study.
We hosted two two-hour meetings where we took turns interacting with the reference user interface while going through specific scenarios a user would go through in the lifecycle. Then we wrote sticky notes on Miro, talking about things we liked and didn't like, things that seemed to give us problems. We also spoke to a few users from within Fidelity who use this product, asking questions and gaining insights from them.
Miro board and screenshot from visual studio code
Users aren’t clear on loan management
Communications are problematic
After identifying pain points, I continued discussing with product owners, analysts, developers, and more. Maintaining formal meetings twice a week, I facilitated discussions meant to excavate ideas from all stakeholders involved in this project. By showing off problems with the current product and showing very rough, low-fidelity designs for ideas, everyone involved was able to have a sense of ownership and come forward with ideas.
Discussions on Zoom, using Miro to collaborate on ideas
Sketching, primarily with flow diagrams
One of the most significant solutions we encountered and built was to separate the complicated loan management procedure into two separate flows. We can determine if the user needs to edit a loan and give them one experience. If the problem is more complicated and they need to add a new loan, we can give them a different experience. Additionally, allowing users to add additional loans and see a historical record of their accounts develops trust and ease of swapping in the loan they most want to be paid off first.
New additions to the dashboard include seperate actions for editing and adding loans
Edit flow allows users to edit specific pieces of their loan rather than the whole thing all at once
Add flow allows user to add a new loan account
Additional work included updating email communications. Now we are working on moving the entire product over to the brand new enterprise wide design system that Fidelity is using.
Updated look for enrollment
Updated look for the post enrollment dashboard