USER INTERVIEWS

Our target demographic for our User Interviews was teachers because the National Education Association, one of Savi’s partners, had recently subsidized the cost of Savi for their members. Going into our research, we wanted to gather data from two different teacher groups: Potential Savi Users and Current Savi Users. Our goal was to gather insights around our users emotional landscape and needs. Here’s what we learned:

1. Potential Savi Users were...

   • Burdened by their monthly student loan payments.

   • Uncertain of what government programs they qualified for.

   • Overwhelmed by the government repayment/forgiveness application process.

   • Defeated because they heard almost no one gets accepted.

   • Mistrustful of companies claiming to help.

2. Current Savi Users were...

   • Elated that Savi helped them lower their monthly payment.

   • Grateful that they found Savi.

   • Excited to share their success.

PERSONAS

We were surprised how vastly different the emotional landscape was between teachers that were potential users vs current users.

HOW DO OTHER COMPANIES BUILD TRUST?

After conducting user interviews we realized building trust needed to be our guiding principle throughout our design process. We decided we needed to do more research into how other companies were building trust with their users, especially when dealing with a difficult topic. I gleaned the following insights from the below companies:

WHAT PROBLEM ARE WE SOLVING?

After collecting all of our research we narrowed down two main problems we would be solving for.

1. 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.

2. 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.

DESIGN STUDIO

Via a remote design studio we were able to quickly flush out our ideas for creating an improved referral and onboarding process that better served our users. It was during this phase that we realized we needed to take a step back and create a framework to build trust with our users.

TONE OF VOICE GUIDE

We created a Tone of Voice Guide to help Savi build trust with their customers.

The Tone of Voice Guide is a 15 page document that outlines a streamlined and cohesive approach to humanizing communication with users. The main empathy guidelines are outlined below:

1. Hold the User’s Hand.

   Adopt language that is empathetic to the user's journey and potential mistrust with a friendly, warm, and knowledgeable tone that helps ease the user's insecurities and start bridging the relationship of trust.

2. Keep it Simple.

   In the world of student debt, there is a lot of jargon and complicated tears and concepts that can sound a little intimidating. At Savi, use simple, easy-t-follow language and break down technical terms whenever used. The goal is to encourage the user to use the service comfortably and in their own interest.

3. Avoid Pushing Too Hard.

   Users are often used to pushy tactics, emails, and spam mail from debt consolidators. A friendly, empathetic guide doesn’t need to use slang or tons of humor. Avoid “going overboard” and potentially trivializing the subject matter at hand. Keep a professional distance in tone.

CURRENT STATE

When we started working with Savi, if a current user wanted to refer a friend, the screen below is what they would see.

As you can see, where to refer a friend is not immediately apparent. If a user did send out an invite to one of their friends, the potential user would receive an email inviting them to join. When they clicked join, they would be taken to the sign up page below.

From all of our research, we knew that we needed to build trust with the user before asking them to register.

WIREFRAMES - REFERRAL FLOW

When designing the referral flow, it was important for us to increase visibility and streamline the navigation when a current user was logged into their account. We decided to add in a secondary navigation so the user could easily navigate between their application, profile, and refer-a-friend feature. During our usability tests with the first version of our wireframes we learned:

1. Users want to have the option to input multiple emails when sharing with their friends.

2. Users want the ability to customize the message.

3. Users felt that helping another teacher save was enough of an incentive.

Based off of the data gathered during our user tests, we iterated on our wireframes.

WIREFRAMES - ONBOARDING FLOW

When designing the onboarding flow we consistently referred back to our Tone of Voice Guide to create a clear and guided feel throughout onboarding process.

SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY

During our usability tests one of our most interesting insights was that before COVID teachers would connect and share tips with each other in the lunchroom or break room. We started to ask ourselves, how can we re-create this in-person connection online? This led to us exploring Social Cognitive Theory. This theory suggest that people learn and are influenced by seeing the experiences and actions of others. This insight led to us incorporating social sharing into our designs so Savi teachers could begin to build a community online. We incorporated social sharing in two key areas of the site:

1. When a teacher’s application has been approved, a huge milestone, they will have the opportunity to share their success story and enter to win a reward.

2. When referring a friend, teachers are encouraged to invite friends to the community of #Saviteachers and have the option to share on their social media.

PROTOTYPE

If you missed it above, you can see the interactive prototype here.

NEXT STEPS

1. Work with Savi’s dev team to divide the solution into smaller rollout plans.

2. By launching in increments, and focusing on key milestones, we can gather data from each phase and adjust our design solution accordingly.

3. Lastly, we’d look at some of the growth metrics to evaluate the effectiveness our solution, particularly the referral rate within the NEA members and conversion rate.