Fidelity Student Debt
44 million Americans have student debt. Student Debt Direct is a workplace benefit where an employer pays down some of their employee's student loans each month, mostly as a hiring and retention incentive.
Verification runs through cumbersome loan servicer systems, and regulatory changes ended our plans to automate it. I started by mapping the entire product lifecycle in Miro with our systems analyst.
UX lifecycles miro board
I supported our UX researcher on a heuristic study, and coded the frontend for the reference interface we used in it.
We worked through the product scenario by scenario the way a user would, writing down everything that tripped us up. Talking with people inside Fidelity who use the product confirmed what we were finding.
Miro board and screenshot from Visual Studio Code
Two findings stood out. Users weren't clear on how loan management worked, and the product's communications were frustrating employees trying to manage their benefits.
Users aren't clear on loan management
Communications are problematic
I kept my sketches rough on purpose. Pairing unpolished ideas with clear examples of the current problems made it easy for product owners, analysts, and developers to weigh in, and gave the team ownership over the direction.
Discussions on Zoom, using Miro to collaborate on ideas
Sketching, primarily with flow diagrams
The biggest change was splitting loan management into two flows. Editing an existing loan is short and focused. Adding a new one is separate. Users can also see a historical record of their accounts, which builds trust and makes it easy to swap in the loan they want paid off first.
New additions to the dashboard include separate actions for editing and adding loans
Fidelity is overhauling its design system to unify its products, with component reuse and accessibility as priorities. I'm helping establish consistent patterns across the enterprise, like the way you edit an account.
Updated look for the post-enrollment dashboard
Updated look and pattern for loan management
We added inline alerts for problems with a loan. Each one explains what's wrong and how to fix it, so users can get back to receiving payments.
