Barclays was undertaking a digital transformation project on the tools used by Mortgage advisors and Brokers.
I was tasked with working on phase two of this project. The project was looking at the advice process. This is where a Mortgage advisor spends time with customers understanding their needs, requirements, background and circumstances to offer a mortgage recommendation.
The team consisted of :
Product owner
Mortgage advisors
User research
Development team
Ux designer (Me)
Digital Data Capture
The Brief
Redesign the advice process and bring it in line with a new mortgage application experience.
Workshop
The first step was to arrange a workshop to get alignment. Some work had already been undertaken. There was also many new people on the project team so getting alignment on what the goal was and understanding the problem to be solved was important to the success.
From the first workshop it became clear that an additional session would be needed as the requirements were not fully defined. I held workshops to help bring alignment and define the requirements.
Our Problem statement was:
"Advisors spend a long time with customers providing the advice, the process is linear and feels like an un-natural scripted conversation. How can we reduce the time it takes to complete the application and provide customers with an exceptional advice journey tailored to their needs, so they can make an informed decision on their mortgage application whilst remaining compliant ?"
Below is a photo of the remote workshop
Journey walk-through
I was fortunate to have a Mortgage advisor working on the project. I arranged a walk-through of the existing system used by the advisors. This helped me understand the user flow. I was also able to understand some of the issues faced by the advisor.
Insights
The walk-through with the advisor identified a few issues. I needed to understand if these were isolated or affected other advisors. I decided that some additional research would be required. I worked with a researcher and we brainstormed questions to ask. The researcher planned the interviews.
There were several findings from the interviews but two key findings that shaped the designs were:
The process was very manual. It relied on taking notes either on pen/ paper or on a separate document.
Time was needed by the advisor to collect all the notes and hard facts in order to provide a recommendation. This meant customers would need to wait for up to 45 minutes while the recommendation was being drafted.
Designs
Using the information from the walk-throughs the requirements and the insights gathered, I started to design possible experiences. The core focus was on digitising as much of the experience as possible. I sketched ideas and reviewed these with stakeholders. Taking feedback on board I refined these. Once there was agreement I proceeded to create some wire frames.
Below is some of the sketches I worked on.
Usability testing
The wire frames were mocked up into 3 prototype variants. The prototypes were tested and on the whole feedback was positive. However it was clear that the advisor needed a dedicated note taking tool that was customisable based on the notes being made.
I have included some examples of the wireframes.
Next iteration
At this point I was joined by another designer on the project we brainstormed ideas based on the feedback received in the testing. The designer worked on the next iteration. A prototype was created and tested with advisors. The advisors liked the new experience especially the fact that they were able to do everything all on one screen rather than having to have multiple tabs open and different documents or have a separate piece of paper.
The outcome
I took some time out and went on a career break. On my return I found out that the designs did need some changes based on technical feasibility but on the whole the exp will be as planned.
The project was due to go live at the start of this year.
