Refund Recommendations
Helping members wisely spend their tax refund
Overview
Approximately 50% of our Members who deposited their tax refund into a CK Money account spent the entire amount within 45 days, often in unwise ways.
Post launching the MVP we observed a 39.1% unique CTR. Prompting us to believe that our Members were looking for such an experience. Our Members were seeking ways to help them spend their tax refund wisely.
Team
Product Management | Engineering | Analytics | Product Legal
Role
Product Designer
Company
Credit Karma
The Challenge
Our objective for the next phase was to increase engagement after tax filing and boosting the 39.1 % unique CTR by 16%.
Hypothesis
Letting our Members tell us what’s important to them; showcasing what we already know about them; and providing more financial education around what they could do with their tax refund will increase Refund Recommendation’s engagement and CTR by 16%.
Ideation Workshop
Since launching the MVP, I was unsure of how to iterate on what was shipped. We started to gather some quantitative data, but not enough to make a strategic decisions. I gathered leads from the cross-functional team for an ideation workshop. Hoping that the workshop would spark ideas for our next steps.
Ideation Workshop
Setting the Tone
The secret to expand your creative thinking is getting into the right frame of mind and most importantly ensuring you’re in a psychologically safe environment. I achieved this by starting off the ideation session with an ice breaker. Asking the group to
“Discuss alternate ways to use a paper towel roll”
Ideation Workshop
How Might We
After providing the team with some context of how the MVP was performing, I asked the group to generate as many ideas as possible and to lean into their imagination. To help the team to come up with their ideas, I prompted the question;
How might we “optimized” and increase “personalization” to the current experience?
By the end of the allotted the team generated a total of 36 ideas.
Ideation Workshop
Prioritization
To further refine our ideas, I asked the team to distill the 36 ideas into actionable priorities. We accomplished this by assessing the potential impact and effort for idea by using FigJam’s Prioritization Matrix Widget.
Subsequently, my analysis identified 3 of ideas that stood out as the most promising. With the many closely related ideas, I then grouped these similar ideas and identified a common theme amongst them.
Generated Ideas
- Provide Members with more personalization
- Understand what’s important to our members
- Provide more financial education and literacy for our Members
Usability Testing
With the completion of the ideation workshop, the team had aligned with conducting user research.
Limited with resources, I was left with usability testing to gain qualitative data. Testing the current Refund Recommendation I sought to understand members' tax refund spending motives, actual spending habits, and their perceptions of Refund Recommendations.
Test Results
- Focus on what’s important to them; “I only want to see recommendations that are relevant to me.”
- More personalization; “I want to see more of what Credit Karma knows about me.”
- Year round engagement; “I want to learn more about what I can do with my money throughout the year.”
Problem
Recommendations were presented to them like a menu for them to choose from. Creating too much of a cognitive load and inhibiting users from taking action.
Solution
Personalizing the experience by tailoring the recommendations to the users needs would boost it’s engagement and increase its click-through rate.
How might we tailor our user’s recommendations so they can better focus on using their refund towards their financial priorities.
Design Decisions
Quick Questionnaire
To help us learn what financial priority is important to our our members, I began to design a questionnaire screen. Displaying what we know about them, that way our members could make an informed decision. This questionnaire would provide personalized recommendations based on their responses.
I explored several design ideas for the questionnaire screen. Exploring ways to bring in their financial data and how they could tell us what financial priorities are important to them at this moment.
Staying within KPL guidelines, I chose the vertical stack choice chips for this interaction. While working with Content Design to refine the copy for this screen.
Iteration 1
Iteration 2
Iteration 3
Final
Design Decisions
Updated Recommendations View
Thinking back on the member feedback from the user research, I explored several ways to display their personalize recommendations. Allowing members to focus on one recommendation at a time.
Ultimately deciding to move forward with the tabbed navigation interaction. This allowed for all the necessary content to be contained on a single screen. While allowing our members to fully focus on one recommendation at a time.
Horizontal scroll
Vertical scroll
Final; tabbed screens
Design Decisions
Recommendations
These recommendations are based on an alignment between Design and Product for the MVP. Without supporting data or user research, we agreed to align on these recommendations without giving users the perception that Credit Karma is giving financial advice. To learn more about this decision, click here.
Build Savings
Pay Down Debt
Build Credit Score
Auto Purchase
Home Mortgage
To further enhance personalization, we used an 'If-Then' approach to determine the content for the recommendations.
**Click on the image to view more recommendations.
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Discover more
Curious to know how it all began for Refund Recommendations? Explore here.