Investment Platform to Fund Education
My role
Product Designer - research, scooping MVP, interviewing, defining the problem, and using needed practices and methodologies to bring business and user working results.
Team
1 product designer; 1 brand designer; 1 lead product designer; 1 lead branding designer;
2 frontend developers; 1 backend developer; 1 lead designer; 1 project manager; 1 sales; 1 QA
Company
Turn is an investment platform that helps fund the students' education by matching them with investors. It's based on securitizations and auction models.
Initially, stakeholders came to us with a request to create a social network platform for students who will be able to receive investments from professional investors and use them to develop their professional qualities both through education and courses and sections. But over time, the scope was reduced to just one feature - securitization/investment. The development of this product was interesting but at the same time confusing, as there were a lot of legal and safety nuances.
Understanding & Empathize
Nowadays many students do not have enough funds to continue their studies and develop professionally. Jurna CEOs had their own opinions and ideas on this matter and shared them with us.Obtaining a student loan itself was quite difficult, especially for students who did not yet have a job offer or with a low credit rating. That was a problem we faced with the Jurna product.Also could be good to give an opportunity not only for students to raise but also for other interested investors to increase their income by using their investments in a good way.
Discover & Research
We did primary research - interviews with investors from the stakeholder’s side to get more info about the process and product. It helps us to get some frames on what type of product we gonna build.A lot of time was needed for secondary research and feedback from stakeholders. Banking and finance is a really specific sector and we went through the whole securitization, auction (Dutch and English), and other flows of works to be sure that future developed products will work right. Was gathered extra data from user interviews and got the answers to our team’s questions from the lawyers, which were provided by a client.
Mistrust
According to statistics, in 2023 Q2, 93.1% of all student loan debt was federal, while 6.9% belonged to private borrowers.70% of complaints about companies servicing student loans are related to mismanagement and deliberate deception. Common complaints include misapplied monthly loan payments, lost documents, and processing delays.
Student Loan Debt Scams
Student loan debt scams have been on the rise, with fraudulent promises of debt forgiveness and refinancing offers.
What statistics say
Federal Student Loan Defaults:
During the pandemic, approximately 8 million Americans were in default on their federal student loans. 67% of defaulted borrowers were Pell Grant recipients.62% hadn’t completed their academic program. Only about 22% were dependents, and 3.5% had taken out loans for graduate school. Older borrowers (over 50) constituted nearly one-third of those in default.
The main ideas are:
attract third-party investors who can provide an investment fund and in return offer them a return on their investment;
calculate the amount and calculate the funds directly from the student's salary, having previously obtained data on the job offer.
This could solve the problem of students lacking funds for education and improve the possibility of getting a position at work.
Also, in theory, it could minimize student default and increase the chance of debt repayment compared to the U.S. average.
RELATED.
This is exactly what Jurna's CEO and my team and I decided to bet on. Get data on job offers and calculate the approximate numbers that an investor can get, and that will be calculated from the salary (manually in the first MVP)
Wireframes.
We defined the MVP scope and after that branding was a little bit corrected.
Because we have done some work before (before the product view was completely changed from a social media platform with an investing feature to an investing platform) we updated personas and redone user flow.
Was created new wireframes, but with past patterns and color decisions.
Functional realization
The product has two different flows. One for students and, a second for investors. Each one was created from scratch and adapted while development was realized.
Investments were not made directly to each student individually. Pools of different numbers of students are formed, in which investors invest. Each pool was formed manually by the Jurna team based on a certain category of students. Most often this category was formed using professions/faculties. It is planned to automate the process in the next versions.
Payments for students were made in installments, depending on the amount, it could be 50% at once and then in equal installments, or the payment could be spread over a longer period of time.
Branding & UI
After the concept was changed, the branding was tweaked. Some parts were redesigned completely.
The already created pages of the original version of the platform became the basis for the investment platform. And based on the UI and UX patterns laid down earlier I created future pages for this product.
All the necessary pages on the student’s side were developed, such as personal account, general settings, education settings, and finance information, in which you can see information about the job offer, salary, additional bonuses, and so on.
The main interaction page was the dashboard. On it, the student helped to submit an application for securitization, view already submitted applications and active and past pools. Using the filters we created, we could filter and sort the ones we needed.
A Cash Flow page has been created, where transactions by pools (for students) and payouts by pools (for investors) are visible.
In turn, for the investor, there is the same flow, but it will reflect his interaction, available pools, settings about himself, and his financial capabilities.
Interaction between student and investor.
Much attention was paid to securitization cards. I created them as multi-components that depend on different variables. It is with their help that you can determine active/available and other or securitizations. This is kind of what connects the investor and the student. Since after the change of concept, the CEO abandoned the direct connection between investors and students of the pool.
In the general account, 2 types of cards were created, the 1st for a general pool, and the 2nd type when viewing your pools individually. From the investor's side, this is 13 cards. There are 16 cards on the student's side. Each of these means a specific state of the pool.
Increase successfully finished loans
One of the main goals was to create such a user experience that it would be beneficial for both students and investors to participate, but at the same time increase the percentage of disbursed loans due to the correct, automatic calculation of payments for both parties, linked to the job offer and salary.
Both the student and the investor were necessarily checked for compliance with participation in the pools by uploading the relevant documents and connecting to a bank account. Also, when applying/investing in a pool, both sides have the opportunity to look at and evaluate all the risks independently.
Upside down changing the platform goal.
This was unexpected news - a change in the paradigm, goals and essence of the platform. In essence, investing was just one function, and the basis was built on the relationship between the student/athlete - the platform - the investor. And after everything changed, this order of relationships remained.
Of course, I had to spend a lot of time studying a lot of information and reworking the design, but the result was worth it.
Law and financial side
For the correct and convenient display of business ideas for users we had to study many sections about finance, Dutch and English auctions, security in terms of transferring personal and financial data, to figure out how to implement investment on the basis of Dutch auctions without contradicting the law.
Development
Development started a month after the design phase began. All team members were involved in the development. Since I am the only designer on the project, I had to spend a lot of time keeping the development team informed, communicating and prescribing guidelines.
- Exciting project and process of interaction with stakeholders and team members. Everyone was open and each department was partially involved in different areas in order to better understand and build the product.
- To pay tribute to the project stakeholders, who can change course and make adjustments when necessary, rather than to go with the flow.
- The constant support of developers, managers, and designers from the CEO of the project, a positive and encouraging attitude to initiatives and ideas from the team.
- Despite the abrupt paradigm shift, I have gained a lot of experience in this kind of business, in the financial sector, not only superficially, but also at the security and legislative level.
- Finance is not boring :)