Singapore Loan Market
User Interface Design (UI) | User Experience Design (UX) | Mobile Application
Why create this?
Generally, cash liquidity and financial stability are always the controversial topics among the Singapore society. The COVID-19 has undeniably enlarge these topics to a high rise. According to my recent survey, nearly 80% of locals do not have more than 6 months of liquid cash on hand. This is a terrifying figure as it has illustrated the fragility of our people in handling any unexpected issues that may hit one’s financial stability in covering daily expenses.
Loan holds a big share in financial market and it is one of the most common financial product that the public would need. Almost 99% of adults would require a loan, in any type of loan available in the market such as personal loan, business loan, housing loan, education loan and lots more that you can imagine.
So, What if we make loan more approachable when one needs it? What if we can simplify the process and have the application in a lean way? What if the public would have the options to compare all the loans available at one glance? What if, the public has the right to choose the right loan with the right loan provider? What if Banks are competing to offer you a more attractive loan with better interest and you have the freedom to be pampered and choose?
Find it interesting? Welcome to my platform! This is exactly the reason of my platform about.
Product Overview
LoanPal provide more choices for user according to their personal needs, and provide them with reasonable financial loan package.
Challenge
How might we help users easily obtain instant loans and save their time to find a plan that suits them?
Roles
I was responsible for user research and user experience design. I distilled data relating to user behaviour on some of the bank loan and conducted user interviews to get some insight into pain points and areas of friction in the loan request process in the past.
Objective
The goals were simple, expose areas of friction in the loan request process and explore feasible ideas aimed at increasing the loan request rate with more choices. Something else I happy to do was give the app a more modern look and feel so that we could attract and retain users in the different group of people.
Research and Survey
To get some insight with users, I also conduct a google survey form to ask a several question about the “ Loan experience” with 40 people.
Competitor Analysis
In order to better understand the Singapore financial loan market. I made a comparison between similar applications, this is an analysis between Singsaver and LoanPal, so this is the result.
What the user want?
After collecting all the research data of the user, I came to some conclusions and listed what the user would like to see in the application.
Personal
Personal enable a better understanding of target users of LoanPal app. This helps us get into the mindset of the users, thinking in terms of their contexts, needs and goals.
Personal Stories
Personal stories is a method to understand the reason behind users desire for a function or design.
These stories provides context by focusing on the exact situations that cause the need for feature and the real outcome needed.
User story from a potential user is:
- I need a personal loan. I need cash flow to repay debts urgently, I want to have a platform to give me a several options to let me know which one is more suitable for my applications, so I can avoid wasting time waiting for approval, high interest rates, and can also adjust the repayment period according to personal comfort time.
- I need an overview to help me check the status of my application. So I can plan my financial needs early or plan a new plan for that.
From here I can understand that the user wants to be able to adjust the period of repayment, also needs to have a function to provide a few options and recommendation for his application. Fast approval and high chance of obtaining application approval. Also an overview to check the application status anytime anyway to plan early for it.
It helps me concentrate on their needs and the context of use.
Sketches
I referred to other competitors apps and analyse the reasons behind their choices of design and sketched different possible layouts for this my new propose app for Loan Pal to explore and choose the most suitable layout.
User flow
The figure shows step-by-step instructions from the main screen to completion of submission and checking status or updates.
Mobile Prototype
Ready to check out an excerpt of my prototype? Now try to do that on my prototype
Desktop Prototype
After trying the mobile prototype, I created it. Now try my desktop prototype
Validate
I asked 5 of my friends what their preference for loan applications is and what their order of priority is. After that, I showed them the prototype I made and asked them for their opinions on my LoanPal app. Here are the key findings from them.
Task Scenarios
Imagine you need to apply a personal loan due to some financial issue. And you need help from us. You decided to seek for a suitable plan for yourself based on your requirement and criterial.
- Log on the LoanPal App.
- Select the plan you want to apply.
- Log on to Singpass.
- Key in your requirement amount and repayment period.
- View plan
- Choose the plan that suits you according to your criteria or recommendations.
- Continue to execute the plan according to your choice.
- Confirm the plan and submit it.
- Check the status of your application.
Key Findings from Testing Prototype
- 5 out of 5 interviewees said the application design is easier to understand and clean.
- 4 out of 5 are satisfied with the concept of checking reviews before choosing.
- They like that the process is fast and does not require too many steps before deciding on the loan plan.
Conclusion
Instead of modifying an existing application. Through research, I found that there are many opportunities in the Singapore financial loan market. I tried to challenge myself to create new applications that have not yet become popular in Singapore, especially during this pandemic. From the data collection, I learned about their worries and experiences in the past for applying the loans.
In designing this application, I put the layout they desire in the application, hoping to help them get a better user experience according to the needs of potential users.
I hope my work and ideas will be able to launched in the market one day. Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this case study. If you have any feedback, I’d love to hear from you.
You can contact me with lbh.evelyn@gmail.com or connect on LinkedIn.
