Background
My team and I were commissioned by Savi, a social impact startup and public benefit corporation based in Washington, D.C., to help improve the website experience— more specifically, to improve the existing referral program.
Savi, which refers to itself as “Turbo Tax for student loans,” works to solve the student debt crisis by pairing qualifying public service workers with existing government repayment and loan forgiveness options and doing all the hard work for those workers. Savi operates most successfully by partnering with organizations who extend Savi’s services to their qualifying individual members.
The National Education Association, or NEA, is the largest labor union in the United States, representing public school teachers and others involved in public education. The NEA most recently decided to subsidize Savi fully for its membership of mostly public school teachers around the country— a prime target group for Savi. The partnership presented a unique opportunity for greater awareness about Savi and subscriber growth among the teacher community. The hurdle? At the time our project started, the referral system only had a use rate of .15%.
My team for this project included Jinah Choi (Project Lead); Erin Manus (Research Lead); Madeline Robison (Wireframing Lead); and me (UX Writing and UI Lead).
Preliminary Research
To embark in our design process, we split our research phase into two phases. Our goals in the first phase of research were:
To develop an understanding of how referral systems work. To achieve this, we did some early Comparative research and analysis on some of the most effective referral programs at companies like Care/Of, AirBnb, and Harry’s Shaving Company. We also did some Competitive research on companies with similar goals in the world of student loans, including Summer and LeverEdge.
To understand Savi through the eyes of the user. I completed a Task Analysis with a healthcare worker and potential target Savi user, to observe her interaction with the referral and onboarding process and gauge her understanding of student loans and loan restructuring.
To clarify how student loans, and potentially Savi, affect many users. Based on our findings in the first two steps, we developed a series of questions to ask both current Savi users and non-users in our user interviews.
Project Mission
We decided that our Project Mission would center the specific goal of improving the referral program within the more general, anticipated outcome: to build more awareness about Savi among the NEA and teacher communities.
My Task Analysis clued us in to some discomfort and lack of motivation on the part of first-time users navigating the existing onboarding process. To ensure that “awareness” included successful referrals resulting in growth of subscribers, we decided that we would take on two major design challenges: improving not only the referral process, but the onboarding process for first-time Savi users as well.
Secondary Research
The steps of our secondary research process include the following:
Affinity Map: We conducted user interviews to gain insight on borrowers’ knowledge and relationship with their student loans, asking questions on topics like jargon, restructuring and forgiveness programs, the emotional relationship between borrowers and their loans, comfort with digital loan management tools, initial observations about the Savi website from non-users, reflections on the Savi experience from Savi users, and referral insights from both groups. The Affinity Map helped us draw connections and formulate an understanding of major issues impacting the relationship of borrowers with their loans.
Surveys: To better understand what to keep in mind regarding users’ thought processes around student loans and referrals, we disseminated two surveys:
The student loan survey delved into the emotional landscape of users when confronting their student loans.
The referral incentives survey explored what incentives actually motivate people to sign up for something.
Empathy Map: We created an empathy map to help break down the users’ emotional landscapes when discussing student loans.
Empathy Thermometer: This step helped us correlate emotional insights we were uncovering to the specific steps of the research process.
User Personas: We developed two user personas to use as guides through the ideating phase: Lorraine is a current Savi user, and Mary is a Savi non-user who receives a referral. The personas helped us create our problem statements, which you’ll see below.
Problem Statements
Potential Savi Users need to feel that they can trust tools created to help them apply for loan restructuring & forgiveness programs, so that they can lower their monthly loan payments and feel less burdened and overwhelmed about their financial health.
Current Savi users need an easy way to share the life-changing impact of Savi’s loan restructuring services with peers who are also concerned about their finances and loans, so that they can feel helpful, connected, and confident in their decision to use Savi.
Two problem statements, two user flows. No problem!
Design Studio, Wireframes, and the Need for Something More
The team went through a Design Studio, creating sketches based on inferences from the research to brainstorm functions that could make the referral onboarding processes a better experience for users. Some sketches are above. After some discussions, sketching led us to mid-fidelity wireframing.
We discussed at length that a major insight repeatedly manifesting in our research was the simple reality that people were not just uncomfortable discussing their student loans, but that the topic too often led them down a turbulent internal emotional narrative.
We could sketch, ideate, and improve, and prototype all we wanted, but until we found a way to address that turbulent emotional landscape head-on, we would likely find little to no success executing our Project Mission until we addressed that elephant in the room.
As a strong and intuitive writer, this was where I took the responsibility to leave the others in the wireframing process to create a deliverable that would address the elephant head-on.
Tone of Voice Guide
After discussions with the team about our research findings to user emotional climate, I created the Savi Tone of Voice Guide, a 15-page document detailing communication and messaging guidelines for Savi to use in everything from website content to email and phone communication with users.
The first six pages of the Tone of Voice Guide are above, expanding on our research to provide the following:
Background on the Savi user based on our qualitative data.
A “How We Sound” guide to create a tone persona.
Three Empathy Guidelines structuring Savi’s communication style.
This, to me, is the heart of user-centered design: uncovering unanticipated data and incorporating those insights into a holistic and deeply intuitive solution from every angle.
The Tone of Voice Guide became a conceptual framework for my team throughout the prototyping phase, and also became the guideline I used to create the product copy.
Usability Testing on Wireframes and Prototyping
After creating our wireframes, we conducted usability tests with teachers from the NEA, who were both Savi users and non-users. We uncovered tons of feedback that became useful as we moved into the prototyping phase.
Among these insights were the following:
To design a friendlier and un-intimidating referral email that would, verbatim from one user, “dumb down the whole process for me.” We included instructional animations and referred to the Tone of Voice Guide to invoke friendlier language to make the process easy and fun.
Make it easier to send out multiple referrals to friends and family from the Onboarding screen. We changed the process to allow the user to input multiple email addresses at once for referrals, and made the email template fully customizable to allow the referrer to input their own language if they wish.
Make referrals more accessible on the Savi website. We added a secondary navigation to increase visibility.
Build out a more intuitive onboarding process. Picking up on users’ hesitation to input personal information to a website they aren’t familiar with, we created a neutralizing onboarding process with video testimonials, a savings estimator, stats, and links to Savi in the press.
Prototyping and UI
As UI lead, I oversaw visual design elements of our solution with the guidance of our project lead, Jinah. The first thing we created was a Design System that would serve as the basic guideline for the prototype, and which is pictured above— including information on color palette, font, a style guide, animations and other conventions we would go on to use in our prototype.
Some of the visual design decisions we made to our prototype included the following:
Updating the previously used font to provide a more modern and stylish aesthetic.
Adding explainer illustrations to simplify and humanize Savi’s website.
Creating round icons for press mentions to break up the larger blocks of text.
Building out a robust messaging feature in the form of a chat box again, to humanize the process.
Updating the color layout. Below are fully updated versions of many of the screens. You will notice the soft gray gradient in the background.
Stepping Up Referrals
Some of our research into user behaviors around successful referral programs led us to Social Cognitive Theory, which states that people are more prone to emulating experiences and actions of people they trust around them. We realized that social media lent itself to a performative aspect of the referral program that could be powerful in our goal of encouraging a better referral clickthrough rate, using Social Cognitive Theory.
We learned from many of our interviewees that the primary space for teachers to come together and discuss different aspects and struggles related to their profession, including student loans, is the break room at school. In our COVID climate and with schools closed, we considered ways to bring that informal, chatty experience online.
Our solution here was #SaviTeachers, a social media campaign based on goodwill and the spirit of teachers helping teachers. The goal with this campaign is for teachers to learn more about Savi through the networks of educators they trust, including friends and teacher influencers with large social media followings. After completing a simple four-step process using the #SaviTeachers hashtag, educators are automatically entered to win a prize.
Implementation
Because this is a multilayered solution with many moving pieces, we anticipate splitting up the implementation process into three main phases:
Phase 1: Gathering metrics on referral rate, email clickthrough rate, and user feedback on referral language.
Reorganize the dashboard to include the secondary navigation placing the referral process front-and-center.
Update the UX copy on the referral email.
Phase 2: Gathering metrics on the conversion rate for signups and user feedback on the updated onboarding process.
Introduce the updated onboarding process.
Phase 3: Gathering metrics on the referral rate in relation to referral channels.
Introduce the updated referral process with the social sharing campaign.
Next Steps
As a former social media manager and communications professional, I had many ideas to answer our client’s call for more human-centered approaches to building out Savi’s referral process and making it appealing for new members. One is the Teacher Spotlight.
The Teacher Spotlight is a program aimed to repackage the referral process in the sentiment of teacher appreciation, which we picked up on throughout the research process. Teachers spend hours outside of their paid work time lesson planning, grading, buying classroom rewards with their own money, and more. Too often, they get little to no appreciation for the extra work, time, and money they put in for their students.
The idea behind the Teacher Spotlight is to allow current Savi users who are teachers to nominate non-users to be featured on the website and social media pages of both Savi and the NEA. Each referral email is a congratulations message, including the personal paragraph written by the the referring teacher and highlighting the nominated teacher’s standout qualities. The email includes a link for the referred teacher to accept the nomination and sign up for Savi. The nominated teacher goes through the onboarding process for Savi, bypassing the emotional landscape factor of non-users by creating the experience in the feeling of appreciation and familiarity.
The idea of the Teacher Spotlight to spread Savi’s message through goodwill, security, and gratitude. This an initiative I am extremely excited to see come to fruition.
Takeaways and More Information
If you’d like to see our presentation to the client, please feel free to click the video above. Madeline walks us through the prototype from 24:11 to 29:41.
This project was exciting because it allowed us the freedom and autonomy, after a thorough research process, to design a solution based on our instincts about language and the emotional landscape of the user, as we did through the Tone of Voice Guide. Our client was open to any and all feedback, which helped us each lean on our professional backgrounds and skills to be more creative in our suggestions and brainstorm innovative solutions that went beyond the interactive prototype, as we did through the #SaviTeachers social sharing campaign and the Teacher Spotlight.
Speaking to both Savi users and non-users in the world of education developed within me a stronger connection to the project we were working on, through the simple realization that this company really does change the lives of everyday people who spend their time educating and helping others. A stronger emotional connection meant a solution that reflected deeper, more comprehensive thought.