At a Glance

The Payoff Savings Calculator was an shopping tool built to help potential applicants see if they would save money by applying for The Payoff Loan. The purpose was to be transparent with would-be applicants as to whether they would save money, or whether they would be better off sticking with their current loans.

Goals

1. Calculate their savings amount quickly
2. Easy to understand
3. Provide transparency & trust to loan shoppers

Research/Competitive Analysis

Research Goals

• To identify effective ineffective design patterns in savings calculators currently available in-market
• To understand how the current Payoff savings calculator compares to its competitors
  • To identify opportunities for improvement

Findings

• Calculator features that were considered most valuable included:
  • the ability to add multiple cards — requires less cognitive effort
    • credit.com, nerdwallet
  • sliders — the ability to manipulate their numbers freely
    • credit.com, bank of america
  • side by side comparisons — often eye opening in helping them understand how much money they could be losing
    • bank of america
  • payment amount & months until paid off — valued the ability to control these levers
    • nerdwallet, capital one, bankrate
  • calculator & results on 1 page
    • capital one, credit.com
• The ability to manipulate numbers was often used as a way to check the trustworthiness of the information of a calculator
• The amount of potential interest paid was often a bigger motivator compared to amount of time until debt is paid off
• Usability issues included:
  • Presenting credit card amount and interest as a lump sum often to a misinterpretation of the number of credit.com
  • Using vague copy (e.g. monthly payments) often led to confusion around whether the tool was asking for minimum amount or amount paid
    • Bank of America’s questions format was considered easy for all participants to understand (and often most preferred)
  • Using placeholder text sometimes led to confusion of whether information was already filled out
  • Auto-filled boxes were sometimes glanced over which led to confusion about information that was received in the results (e.g. min payment in credit.com)
• The design approach used by credit.com was considered fun, aesthetically-pleasing, and ease to read, but was also referred to as less serious and therefore elss trustworthy
• Payoff’s current calculator was considered not useful by all
  • the large numbers presented, “doesn’t make any sense”
  • “felt like they were trying to sell me something”

Videos Link:

UserTesting.com

Wires/Prototying

FPO

Final designs

Screens…