Deseret First Credit Union

I joined Deseret First Credit Union (DFCU) in early 2023 as the UX designer on a small product team made up of me, the product manager, and four developers. I worked in this role until I began a graduate program at the London School of Economics.

Goal

As a product team, our goal was to increase the completion rate of new account openings with the credit union. Before I began my research, the credit union’s new account application rate was 8%. My team’s goal was to increase that rate to at least 30%.

1 Discover

This section gives an overview of the target audience and methods used in this research project.

To understand users’ decision-making when opening a new bank account, I leveraged qualitative and quantitative data to track the following: the drop-off point in the application process, areas of confusion on the webpage, and what users valued about banking with the credit union.

My research began by interviewing members who had recently opened an account. I learned that many new users valued the credit union’s promotional offerings and had opened accounts expressly because of them. I also discovered that consumers typically opened a new account in close proximity to a major life event. This led me to consider how we could better market account offerings in conjunction with common life events like going to college, buying a car, buying a home, etc.

In addition to interview data, I also leveraged heat mapping, surveying, and continual user testing to plot users’ actions as well as their words to gain a fuller picture on how I could best meet their needs.

2 Analyse

As I continually conducted research, my understanding of DFCU’s user base grew until I was able to create user personas and journey maps for a few typical members of our credit union. I relied on these throughout my design process to understand pitfalls in our existing application and continually tweak it to be the best experience possible for our consumers.

3 Design

During our research phase, we discovered that the ability to open an account on a mobile device was a huge incentive for our users. Because of this, we launched both a desktop and mobile flow for new account applications.

Because of time constraints, the desktop version needed to be launched first. Once it was launched we reviewed the feedback from the desktop site and used it to improve the mobile site.

A future version of the desktop account opening was planned based around the successful design of the mobile site as shown below.