Problem

Lenders told us they felt like we had “given up” every time they logged in — that we had prioritized the public-facing website but not the logged-in state.

Those comments validated what we already knew. The goal of the MVP of zomia.org was to test whether peer-to-peer lending for higher education was a viable solution to filling the financial aid gap in Myanmar. We never put effort into the dashboard, the logged-in state for lenders.

Challenge

How could we improve the lender experience through the dashboard?

Role: Co-founder, Product Manager

Impact: Within a year, two core features introduced as a result of this project created >$6,000 in new funding. As of this writing, ~$400 is added each month. Although not formally tracked, engagement went up as well. E-mail updates from student repayments and student grades result in lenders returning to the website and funding new students.

Discovery

• User interviews

• Card sorting

Definition

• User stories & epics

• Prioritization

Ideation

• Prototyping

• User testing

• Reprioritization

Delivery

• The Build

• Marketing launch

Discovery

We conducted user interviews and card sorting activities with eight Zomia lenders. Some questions we hoped to learn:

• What motivates people to lend to students through Zomia? 

• What information do lenders want to see about their students/loans? 

• What impact are lenders out to create through Zomia and how can we reinforce that? 

• Do lenders want to interact with their students/other lenders? To what extent?

Discovery: interviews & card sorting

Altogether, we recruited eight lenders for the study. In exchange for their participation, they received a $50 Amazon gift card.

Through screensharing, we asked lenders to think out loud as they navigated the website and their dashboard. We then asked them to categorize a list of possible data points related to lending into “Very Important,” “Important, “Somewhat Important,” and “Not Important.”

Meaningful metrics

Upon logging in, lenders expected to see a summary of their lending data and biographical information (name, photo, school, program, etc.) about the students they supported.

No personal relationships

Although lenders wanted updates and to follow their students’ journeys, they did not want to form personal relationships.

Impact

Lenders defined “impact” in terms of student happiness, whether the student worked in a field related to the subject they studied, and how the student applied their knowledge to benefit others.

Updates, delivered

Lenders desired updates about students they supported, but they didn’t feel like they should have to log in to zomia.org to see them.

Doing good on autopilot

Lenders saw Zomia as a vehicle to change someone’s life in a very direct way with just a few clicks of a button.

Donations, not loans

Lenders with < $1,000 on the site saw their loans as donations. Some didn’t even want repayment.

Definition

Informed by our research, we listed explicit changes and features requested by lenders and brainstormed potential new features to the dashboard. These were then written into user stories and epics.

Myself, our designer, and our two engineers then categorized the stories and epics from “Mandatory” to “Low Priority” based on what we learned during the lender interviews. The engineering team also ranked each feature based on technical feasibility.

We then reconciled features and assigned each one a global priority for incorporating into the new lender dashboard.

Ideation

We iterated on wireframes that mirrored the insights gained in our research — emphasizing the lenders’ expectations to see lending data and student biographical information front and center upon logging into the site.

User testing

We then tested the wireframes with lenders through moderated usability sessions, and then continued to iterate on the wireframes based on their feedback.

Reprioritization

Satisfied with the direction after a few cycles, we did a final re-prioritization of the scope, this time spiced up with emojis.

Delivery

The build

We translated features into tasks that went into Asana. As the engineering team started working, I helped conduct QA and worked on marketing the launch of the new dashboard.

Marketing launch

We decided to direct all communication channels (social media posts and an e-mail campaign) to the Zomia blog. The blog would include longer-form content that explained the rollout and its features in greater detail. The goal of each marketing channel was to pique interest and drive lenders (and potential lenders) to the blog to learn more.

Key to our content strategy was reflecting the lenders’ motivations in using Zomia that we learned during the user study.

The new portfolio

Mirroring feedback from lenders who saw Zomia as a place where they could manage funds dedicated to impact, we renamed the dashboard the “portfolio.”

Before

After

My responsibilities

• Leading the discovery phase (e.g., creating the user study, recruiting and communicating with participants, analyzing and sharing findings, etc.)

• Facilitating prioritization sessions — what features to include and why.

• Writing user stories and epics.

• Breaking down each feature into actionable tasks in Asana.

• Tracking progress and providing the team with status updates.

• QA, flagging and creating tickets for bugs.

• Leading marketing efforts of the new dashboard launch across Zomia’s blog, listserv, and social media channels: content creation, SEO, feature/banner images, A/B tests.

What went well

➜ From discovery to delivery, Zomia lenders guided us every step of the way to build what they wanted.

➜ We read between the lines and the “say-do gap” — lenders wanted to help but didn’t have time to put effort into it. Repayment recycling and monthly lending enabled them to do good on autopilot while e-mail updates kept them informed without needing to visit zomia.org.

➜ Content, timing of delivery, and imagery — the marketing of the rollout was comprehensive and well executed for such a small team.

➜ We hired a product designer to create wireframes and prototype until we were happy with the direction of the designs.

What could have gone better

➜ Although we scoped this project much better than the MVP of zomia.org, we could have still been more ruthless with our priorities and focus.

➜ If we had more resources, a UI designer and project manager would have been great additions. 

➜ We could have tracked more data points that were affected by the rollout of the new dashboard.

➜ We could have shipped smaller pieces earlier in a more agile fashion than building everything in pre-production environments and pushing all changes at once into production.

New features

In addition to dashboard improvements, listening to our lenders inspired the creation of four entirely new features:

• Student reports: automated e-mail notifications to lenders when students make repayments and report their grades.

• Repayment recycling: enable lenders to allow their repayments to automatically “recycle” to fund new students (vs. logging in and choosing a student to fund every time repayments are received).

• Monthly lending: allow lenders to support a new student(s) each month.

• Donations: enable lenders to just give to Zomia and receive a tax receipt for it.

Lending & engagement

In less than a year, repayment recycling and monthly lending — two features we tracked closely from the outset — created >$6,000 in new funding for students. That’s money that hadn’t existed on the platform before! Today Zomia lenders add ~$5,000/year in monthly lending alone.

Although not formally tracked, engagement went up as well. Delivering e-mail updates from students resulted in lenders returning to the website and funding new students.