Loan Disclosure Management

Streamloan is a B2B SaaS mortgage platform that makes the loan process simple, efficient, and digital for both the lender and customer.
Using the company's existing design system, we designed new features to allow loan officers to easily manage and track disclosures throughout the tedious loan process. These designs will be shipped by the end of the summer 2020.

ROLE

Product designer

DURATION AND FORMATS

7 weeks for desktop and mobile
project overview

Using the company's existing design system, we designed new features to allow loan officers to easily manage and track disclosures throughout the tedious loan process. These designs will be shipped by the end of the summer 2020.

Role

Product Designer

about streamloan

Streamloan is a B2B SaaS mortgage platform that makes the loan process simple, efficient, and digital for both the lender and customer.

Device format

Desktop

Problem

Loan officers are finding it difficult to complete the loan process on one platform.
The loan process is long and complex. It's layered with legal requirements, rules, and time constraints that inhibit loan officers from quickly processing a loan. The consequences for not meeting these constraints can lead to lost commissions or borrowers missing out on a loan.
How might we help loan officers manage multiple loan disclosures at once?

Solution

The loan process is highly dependent on time and produces a high impact on those involved.
By creating a centralized location for loan officers, they can stop jumping from multiple platforms and can now rely on one platform to manage their loan disclosures.

Research

The job of a loan officer is to find business then become an effective translator between the borrower and underwriter. One missed deadline could set a borrower back weeks, maybe months. The impact on borrowers is high, which is why loan officers need a reliable system that will help them with tracking, ordering, and managing their loans.
After conducting 5 user interviews, I synthesized the results and found the following key takeaways:

Design process

We prioritized what features to build based on the user's needs and pain points.
Task iterations
One way to help loan officers stay on top of each disclosure deadline is to inform them.
Surface when a disclosure is due and a way to perform the task to avoid missing a crucial deadline.
01.
One way to help loan officers stay on top of each disclosure deadline is to inform them. Surface when a disclosure is due and a way to perform the task to avoid missing a crucial deadline.
02.
The initial iteration had a combination of dropdowns and checkboxes with different lengths causing a visual disturbance. By using dropdowns, it visually draws the eye from top down in one motion.
Final.
Giving loan officers the ability to order a disclosure, review, and edit before submitting their order.
Ordering iterations
The main challenge here was to ensure that we had all of the legal requirements needed for each disclosure type. The goal was to save loan officers time by consolidating the ordering process into one flow.
01.
There were a number of different fields required to process a loan. I focused on identifying fields that could be grouped into a down bar and those with dependencies.

In doing so, inputs related to the disclosure were organized first and those with dependencies below.
02.
The initial iteration had a combination of dropdowns and checkboxes with different lengths causing a visual disturbance.
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By using dropdowns, it visually draws the eye from top down in one motion.
Final.
Giving loan officers the ability to order a disclosure, review, and edit before submitting their order.
Tracking iterations
Loan officers are constantly bringing in new clients which can make it hard to
manage current, new, and past disclosures. A way to combat this is to organize
the information into stages. We iterated on different ways to visualize progress
so that loan officers can see those that are in the early, mid, or later stages.
01.
One way to show progress is using a common design pattern such a progress bar to improve quick comprehension so loan officers can anticipate their next move.
02.
Instead of cluttering the page with two separate sections, I created a new page for Tracking and switched from a progress bar to tabs with each step shown.

However, we received feedback from 2 loan officers who found this confusing and overwhelming.
Final.
Established tabs and collapsible sections to organize disclosure types and to quickly track disclosures.

Validation Results

We conducted validation testing with 5 loan officers and made changes based off these findings.

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Learnings

  1. Learning about a foreign industry is challenging, but not impossible.
    The hardest part about this project was wrapping my head around the loan process. In order to mitigate this, I found success in organizing the information with user flows and personal sketches.
  2. Working with design systems.
    ‍    Initially, I found it challenging to work with the existing design system, but I found it helpful as we went into the hi-fidelity stage. Having these pre-set design guidelines helped speed up the design process and ensured consistency.
  3. Continue to ask questions.
    Because this was a new industry, it was important to constantly ask questions and ask for feedback throughout. This allowed our team to feel more confident with our designs and understand why some things were working and why others weren't.