Heuristic Evaluation

Being a start-up, I worked closely with the founders to understand the company’s process and the user needs. I noticed the MVP lacked the basic usability heuristics and decided to do an Expert Review of what was done until that point. The results gave an initial guideline of things that we could do better.

Deep Dive into Product Thinking and the Users

I needed to define the problem the product was trying to solve in order to build a successful experience. After analyzing the stakeholders' general opinion of the product, I created the framework to define the problem, the users, the vision, the strategy, and goals of the product.

This process helped me define the path of the users’ journey. Wemlo’s platform is composed of three different experiences, which correspond to three different users: broker, processor, and borrowers. Additionally, I broke down the information architecture of each platform to better understand the flow and journey of Wemlo’s users.

Finding User Problems.

The Heuristic evaluation and Product Thinking framework gave me a path to follow to design the platform, but it was not enough. I sat down with the users and started to understand their pain points using the platform. These interviews were insightful to find problems to be solved and improve their user experience.

For example it was considered that loan processing is a linear process, but a big insight was that loan processing is not a linear process. There are several variables that can happen at any time during the loan lifecycle that can affect the outcome of the process.

Coming Up with Solutions

To improve Wemlo’s UX, I began drafting multiple solutions while asking myself if there was another way to solve the problems. Together with the head processor, I validated or asked the outcomes of certain procedures. I polished the solutions into prototypes, tested them with the users, and collected their feedback. Based on the outcomes, I continued iterating solutions until we had a viable solution.

Brand Identity

As part of the process to revamp the UI, I started working on defining the brand of the company, by establishing its branding guidelines. With a solid brand established, I could proceed to set a Design System based on Atomic Design.

Tools used during the process were Sketch, Invision, Zeplin, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Principle, Jira, Slack, Zoom, and eventually started migrating design from Sketch to Figma.

Website

As part of the business strategy, I needed to rework the website to fulfill the needs of the company.  Based on the company needs I analyzed  the original website and completely revamped to fit the business needs.