Promotional Plans are special financing offers that allow customers to pay for large purchases over time, often with low or no interest for a certain period of time. Despite offering these types of plans for many years, the Account Center platform has never supported showing plan information, leading to a lot of customer confusion and calls to our care centers. Recently a project was finally created to show plan information on our site, and I was excited to lead UX design efforts on such a customer-centric feature.
Company
Alliance Data Card Services
Project Timeframe
Dec 2018 - May 2019
Responsibilities
UX Project Lead
Competitive Research
User Research & Scenarios
Wireframing
High Fidelity Design
Prototyping
Moderated User Testing
Specification Document
Tools
Axure
The Challenge
Customers are often confused about how much they owe on a plan, when they need to pay a plan off, and how their payment is distributed across their plan and non-plan (i.e. revolving) balances on their account. This information is displayed on a customer's physical statement but is often misunderstood or overlooked completely. So the main question was: How might we educate and empower users to successfully manage their promotional plans on Account Center?
Example of how promotional plans are displayed on statements
Understanding & Market Research
As I wasn't very knowledgeable of how promotional plans worked, it was important to understand exactly what I would be designing. I met with various stakeholders to learn about the different types of promotional plans offered by our clients, what data points were most important to our users, and common questions and issues that came up in care center calls. From there I performed market research, looking specifically into examples from Synchrony, Citibank, and PayPal. We looked at the sites as a team and noted what we liked and didn't like about each experience to help guide design decisions later.
Competitive Research
Personas & Scenarios
After learning about promotional plans and common issues our customers face, I found it necessary to create two personas. The first would be a user that signs up for a promotional plan as a convenience; this user doesn't necessarily need the plan to make their purchase but it helps ease the pain on their wallet. They also wouldn't need as much education on how plans work, but would benefit from having added tools to help stay on track with their payments. For this user I would use a modified version of our enterprise persona, Jane.
The second persona would be a user that depends on promotional plans to make their purchase, and needs a little more help understanding how their plan works. Due to having less financial flexibility, this user should be provided with as much information as possible around how their payments are distributed, when their plan expires, and the consequences of not paying off their plan in time.
With help from one of our care center representatives, I identified the common scenarios both personas experience over the course of paying off a plan. These scenarios were then used to help map out what areas of Account Center would need to be updated for the project.
Jane & Betty, the personas created for the project
Brainstorming Concepts
With an idea of who we were designing for and the areas of Account Center affected, I brought the key stakeholders together for a brainstorming session. We split into two teams and thought up various solutions to our design challenge. Following this session, I mocked up some of our favorite ideas for the group to review.
Concept sketches from our brainstorm session
Mockups (from left to right: Secure Homepage, Plans page concept 1, Plans page concept 2)
Design & Prototyping
When the team reached a consensus on concepts to move forward with, I transitioned the lower fidelity mockups into our Account Center styling. I also added complex prototyping to the experience, utilizing Axure RP's interaction builder to layer in animations, working input fields, and custom variables that would make the prototype feel like a fully working website. You can test it out here.
High fidelity mockups created in Axure
Click to view the desktop prototype
Usability Testing
When it came time to test the prototype, we did things a bit differently for this project. We worked with our interal CX team and an external recruiting agency to find real cardmembers with experience using promotional plans. Over the course of two days, we brought in a total of eleven people to the Alliance Data campus to interview and run through the prototype. I personally moderated three of the tests, while working behind the scenes and taking notes for the other eight.
Through testing, we found that nearly every participant left with a positive reception of the experience. We did find some issues with how some of the plan information was displayed (particularly with the payoff bar, as seen below), as well as with content and findability. After making slight changes to the experience I tested with a second group of users remotely via UserTesting.com, finding previous issues to be resolved.
A findings document was created following usability testing, highlighting insights and quotes from participants
Payoff bar. Before (first example) some users were confused by the bar loading in from the right, thinking it was showing payoff progress instead of a date countdown as intended. Once changed to better meet those expecations, users understood the concept of the bar immediately.
Documentation
need content here
The annotated specification document helps clarify functionality and requirements for the development team
Status
All work to this point was actually completed before the project was prioritized and scheduled for development. This was one of the first times our team performed early engagement work, meant to help the business owner narrow down their needs and get closer to prioritization. Once this initial experience was drafted, the business owner and I presented it to leadership, and the following day it was added to the development schedule for an early Q2 2020 launch.
As of September 2019 I no longer work at Alliance Data, but the project was left in very capable hands. You can view my final version of the UX specification here.
Click to view my final specification for Promotional Plans
