A case study on how I
Simplified the
document submission process for borrowers at Yubi
About the project
I was part of the initial design team at Yubi (previously CredAvenue) and contributed significantly to the company's rapid growth. I was the sole designer in charge of the Borrower's experience on the Marketplace platform at Yubi, from their onboarding to loan disbursement. I was in charge of this project and worked on it from beginning to end. But I did collaborate with a lot of other people on this project.
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Product managers: To understand the project's overall scope and requirements. Collaboratively, we introduced new ideas/features in this project.
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Senior designers and stakeholders: To get timely feedback on my designs and design direction.
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Engineers: To ensure that the final output matches the design exactly.
About Yubi
Yubi is a unified digital platform for discovery, trading and fulfilment of all debt solutions for Banks, NBFCs, Institutional investors and HNIs.
So, let’s understand the two primary users on the platform: Borrowers and Investors
Who are the Borrowers?
Borrowers require funds for a variety of reasons, such as paying bills or expanding their business. They will post a requirement for the debt on the Yubi marketplace by selecting from the various instruments we provide.
Who are the Investors ?
The Investor will discover the investment opportunities posted by the borrowers, then choose and partner with the borrower for investments on the platform.
Why was this problem a priority ?
The Borrower had to constantly upload a few documents at each stage of the loan approval journey, which was done with the help of CST (customer support team) because the platform was not completely self-serve and the UX was very poor.
As a result,
Borrowers failed to upload the documents needed by Investors for their loan assessment & approval.
This negatively impacted their overall experience on the platform. Unfortunately, this led to a situation where the investors were not showing interest in their loan requests or their loan approval process was taking an extended period of time. Eventually, a significant number of borrowers became dis-heartened and dropped-off from the platform.
Identifying user pain points
I decided to dig deeper into the borrower's experiences and patterns by interacting with the customer support (CST) and marketing teams, both of which are aware of the user’s complaints and challenges. In addition, I conducted my own usability testing on the document uploading process on the platform with my team and identified pain points.
Pain points
Needs
Key document ignorance: Borrowers are unaware of the most important set of documents they need to upload at every stage.
Investor-preferred uploads: Borrowers don't know the benefits of uploading the preferred set of documents that most Investors on the platform want.
Appears complicated, time & effort taking: Uploading documents seems complex and overwhelming due to the extensive list that needs to be submitted throughout their journey.
Lacks motivation/ nudge: The reason why the borrower is required to upload the document and how it affects their ability to partner with the investors must be communicated.
Borrowers prefer guidance on uploading only the most important set of documents.
Borrowers must be guided and informed as to why a document must be uploaded.
Borrowers prefer a simple, easy and quick document submission process.
So, lets re-define the problem statement here
How might we ...
Make the document uploading process
simple, engaging & time saving for the borrowers.
Solution building starts here !!
We introduced two new features
Given that users had to upload documents at each stage, what if we could prefetch their docs. from open sources like Karza, Tally, MCA, etc. to save them time and effort? Additionally, in order to increase user engagement, we decided to gamify the doc. uploading experience. Both of these features were introduced in collaboration with my product manager.
1. Automated doc. prefetching: The docs. was prefetched from open source, and the user had to upload only the docs. that were not prefetched. This significantly reduced the number of docs. they needed to upload throughout the journey, saving them time and effort.
2. Introducing Loan scorecard: This was introduced to increase user engagement in the doc. uploading process. Each doc. is assigned a value based on its priority level. With each doc. uploaded, the score on the Loan scorecard increases. Higher the loan score, the higher the probability of attracting investors in a partnership. The Loan scorecard also has milestones, with each milestone carrying a different set of rewards for the borrower.
Iteration #1
Each card represents a document, with an icon indicating high, medium, or low priority.
High-priority cards are stacked on top; lesser ones are below. This design incorporates a document list of all that needs to be uploaded throughout the journey. The high-priority icon represents the important set of documents that the user must upload at each stage.
Learnings from iteration#1
As a high priority doc. is something that we want the user to act on first, it’s time to define what qualifies as a high priority.
Defining high priority doc. for a 1st and Nth time user.
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Key approval docs.: Priority docs. include Borrowing Profile, Directors' Info., and investor preferred docs., crucial for quicker loan approval, potentially reducing turnaround time (TAT).
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Expiring/ expired docs.: Regular updates, like quarterly financials, are crucial to prevent data from getting outdated.
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Draft docs.: If the user drops off while uploading any document, they are prioritised over others, encouraging the user to finish uploading them.
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Error docs.: When errors are found in the doc. we want the users to update them.
Iterations #2
In order to be more clear and intuitive, we decided to replace the icons with tags in this design exploration. Each card shows whether it has a high, medium, or low-impact upload. High-impact uploads raise loan scores, while low-impact uploads have a lesser effect. Users now have impact-level info., which improves decision making compared to the previous design.
User’s statements & my learnings from iteration #2
We conducted user testing with internal stakeholders and actual users, and these were the most frequently repeated responses from all.
“I'm on the platform to get a loan, but how I'll get there”.
Unclear gamification: Borrowers are unable to understand the relationship between the high/medium/ low impact documents and the score card.
“Can I upload any high impact document that is readily available with me?”
Lacks clarity & guidance: Assume there are about 15 high-impact documents to be uploaded. Users are confused about which document to upload first.
Avoid the long document list: If the effort is minimal, they are more likely to act.
Iterations #3
The learning and feedback from the earlier design were implemented in this variation. They are
Simplified gamification: We decided to use a point value system to help users understand the relationship between the doc. card and the scorecard. Each doc. card in this variant carries a point value. A borrower's Loan scorecard is increased by 40 points when they upload a doc. worth 40 points. The scorecard displays loan progress and prompts borrowers to upload docs. for investor consideration.
Selective docs. display: Only the important set of docs. to be uploaded are displayed, while the rest are hidden under the " view all " CTA. This was to make the uploading process simple, more focused and less overwhelming.
When everything is considered important then, nothing stands out as important.
Learnings from iteration #3
The nudge/ motivation was missing !!
We noticed that a nudge/motivation was needed to keep users engaged. So, depending on their loan journey, we iterated on a few nudge variations.
Understanding card status
The document card displays the status of the uploaded document; let's go over each status here.
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Not started: Document not uploaded
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Draft: Incomplete upload
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Action needed: Error found in the uploaded document.
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Pending documents: Validating of uploaded doc. in process
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Uploading failed:
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Processing: Validating of uploaded doc. in process
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Processing failed: Validating of uploaded doc. in process
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Completed:
The card design layout explorations were done with the following specifications in mind:
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Each card The card must appear clickable.
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The points earned for each card uploaded must be highlighted.
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Each card will have one of the following statuses i.e. not started, draft, validating, error and completed. This must be clearly communicated.
At Last! The Final Design
The design iteration 3 was developed further based on user testing, and the learnings were implemented.
Let's talk about the number now
By including gamification and adopting progressive disclosure of document submission to avoid cognitive fatigue, we increased
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The document uploading conversion increased by 31%.
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The TAT for onboarding was reduced from 15 days to 3 days.
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The user activation increased by 21%.
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The loan order was increased by 35%.
My learnings + What could be done better
Partially prefetched data: Let's consider the following scenario to better understand this. For the financial information, the user must upload Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4 for the year 2021, and the Q1, Q2, and Q3 information was prefetched as it was available on open source, and the borrower need to upload the Q4 information. Mentioning the status on the card as "Partially Prefetched" or "70% Data Prefetched" would motivate/ nudge the user as it requires less effort to complete the document. This will be addressed eventually.
