Product Design · 2022
Every Step, Considered
My internship at Earnest, a fintech lender, came with two real problems and real numbers attached: one confusing choice quietly leaking students out of the loan funnel, and a support team buried in routine calls.
- Headquarters
- Salt Lake City, UT
- Founded
- 2013
- Industry
- FinTech
- Company size
- 250+
Rate Check
One confusing choice, redesigned to keep students in the funnel
The Problem
Rate Check lets students see an estimated rate without a hit to their credit score. But its pivotal choice, an independent or a cosigned loan, was confusing, hid the details that mattered, and nudged some students toward the wrong pick.
What Tripped People Up
- No way to compare the two options side by side, so people clicked back and forth until frustration set in
- The copy nudged toward Independent while the Popular tag nudged toward Cosigned
- Undergrads loved the fast, no-cosigner option, but 99% of the time it ended with no rates, and some gave up on Earnest entirely
The Approach
I built a choice-outcome matrix for undergraduates to see which option was genuinely good for the student and for the business.
Then I explored solutions that reused existing components to keep the dev load light, made the right path the easiest one, and added friction only where a switch would hurt. With the UX Research Lead, I A/B tested the two strongest ideas on UserTesting.com.
The Final Design
After the A/B results and a few tweaks from Product, I worked side by side with front-end developers to ship it. The key decision factors now sit next to each other, and the ambiguity is gone.
The Dashboard
A new home for 200,000+ borrowers, built from 0 to 1
The Challenge
Customer service was getting buried in calls about simple things: making a monthly payment, finding a tax document, checking a payment status. Customers just had nowhere good to do it themselves.
How I Built It
Discovery & Research
Three user personas built from the old dashboards, a PRD with the Product Manager to prioritize every feature and plan the rollout, then wireframes.
Design, Test, Design
Months of iteration and user testing to get as close to right as possible before launch.
Developer Handoff
A component library and a well-annotated Figma file, so nothing got lost between design and development.
The Final Product
One self-serve home for every Earnest customer. Fewer calls for the support team, and a lot less waiting around for borrowers.
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