lendlabs

A next generation loan origination platform to enable seamless digital lending experience

I embraced an iterative and user-centered design methodology grounded in Lean UX principles. My process involved continuous cycles of ideation, prototyping, testing, and refinement, ensuring that user feedback informed every design decision.

This approach allowed collaboration, quick iterations, and validated learning through flexibility and responsiveness so that the final product meets user expectations aligning with business goals.

Validating the solution (Usability testing of early prototypes)

We built a Beta version (working prototype) out of the concept to test out and validate our solution to see what would work and what's not for potential users.

I conducted a moderated usability test with around 7 participants (from 4 different customers) asking them to perform specific tasks, which were then observed to see how the users responded while completing those tasks.

The findings were then analysed to derive some key insights on usability improvements required to be done before we release it.

Further, I relied on the discoverability rating and participants' comments to inform my process and list usability issues in order of priority. This list is then shared across Product, Engg and Design to further prioritise based on UX/business objective and Developer LOE in order to decide on the execution order.

Prioritizing the product requirements to address key problems first (MVP scoping)

As a next step, we categorized the user and business needs into broader milestones to further breakdown into user stories and provide visibility on what are we going to accomplish. This not only helped to prioritise key features in order of need but also helped to shape the product roadmap for the quarter.

Ideating over solution (IA, Concept sketches and wireframe)

Once we had a clear picture of product roadmap I started crafting information architecture for the entire platform (a 10,000 feet solution) narrowing down the scope to the form designer further (a 100 feet solution).

IA from 10,000 feet...

IA from 100 feet...

Crazy 4's

While I was getting closer to the solution I conducted a quick crazy 4 brainstorming session with a mix group of users and stakeholders to come up with lightning ideas around our form designer concept.

Brainstorming over the concepts

Link to more concept designs here

Project overview (What and how)

Redesigned the Loan Origination System to create a scalable, flexible, and efficient multi-tenant SaaS platform. The new system supports increased business transactions, configurable third-party APIs, user-defined fields, and a centralized customer repository. It seamlessly manages the entire loan acquisition lifecycle, from customer walk-in to underwriter decision for disbursement, meeting peak season demands.

My Role

Lead Product Designer
User research, Interaction, Visual design, Prototyping and Testing

2021 - 2022

Background (Why, when and who)

Lendlabs is India based early stage fintech startup that enables banks and non banking financial institutions to scale, automate and elevate their digital lending experience seamlessly.

Learn more here.

I grew up from a sole experience designer to lead a team of designers here.

I joined a 5 member core R&D team, which included a front end architect, a product manager, a back end architect and a product head to initiate research and conceptualization around this greenfield project. Further, this team expanded to 10 engineers, 3 quality analysts, 2 product managers, 2 UX designers and platform leadership.

I supported design across every aspect of our business and was responsible for leading UX and UI across key parts of the product side of the platform.

I grabbed this opportunity to elevate my skillsets, few key achievements are as below:

Inculcated a design process - I had to onboard all the stakeholders and mentor new hires to adapt and follow standard product design process consistently. This helped our team to establish a framework for our way of working and gain visibility across product roadmap considering user experience at its core.
Improved usability emphasizing UCD - Implemented UX enhancements in existing as well as new features through internal audits and by conducting user research, design validation tests wherever applicable.
Establishing design guidelines - Started following common design guidelines to maintain consistent look and feel across.
Created a design library - A single source of truth for all Product, Engineering, QA and design team members through a component storybook and library.

The problem

The existing Loan Origination System was not scalable or flexible and had an unmanageable code base across customer base. They needed to implement an efficient system which could accommodate increased business transactions to meet peak season’s demand.
They were also looking for an efficient solution for loan disbursements with requirements such as configurable third party API’s, configurable forms, user defined fields and a centralized customer repository.
This should eventually support the entire acquisition lifecycle from customer walk-in to decision by the underwriter for the disbursement, basically a multi-tenant SaaS platform.

Business challenges

Long turnaround time to complete the change request.
Change requests are being coded into the app.
Unmanageable code with lots of branching and code duplication.
Difficult to accommodate run time state changes.
Not reusable and scalable solution.
Heavy time and resource investment is needed.

Understanding the typical LOS journey

Gathering insights and validating the problem

Before hiring a product designer, an earlier version of the product was implemented based on the designs created without any usability testing and had little consideration for the technical and product limitations in terms of scalability in future.

I conducted stakeholder interviews with focussed groups of business analysts and sales reps to uncover any pain points that they were experiencing with the existing platform.

These inquiries helped me getting answers to:

Who are our potential users and what are their needs, expectations?
What are their jobs to be done and in what context?
What are the problems with existing system and how do they tackle it to complete their job?