Integrity Student Loans Application UX Design

Integrity Student Loans is an AI-Driven Browser Extension App to help students from different countries to understand how online Student loan applications work and it guides them to make the optimum use of loans.

With an A.I. focused on student loan expertise, the startup aims to accelerate the speed and scaling of student loan processing.

Due to confidential terms, I have modified the actual design concepts and deliverables.

“How might we make the process of applying for multiple international student loan applications more User compatible, efficient & transparent?”

More than 1 Million students come to the States for higher education

Whereas, Indian Students are the 2nd highest population at 202,014 (2018 Data).

And that is why I hypo zoomed on the problem for South Asians or more specifically Indian Student Community in the USA.

The process of applying for a loan online is very complicated and time-consuming. The application process takes 30-60 minutes to complete which is more than a traditional application method. It turns out that students apply for Education loans from different providers to get the best offer, which means filling out similar information repetitively. It will be logical to state that the Design of Application Form is at the fault here. The policies for the Loan Application are not clear enough for the user to understand, which leads to missing out on important information such as how much the student will end up paying once the installments will begin. As well as, the requirement of documents is not transparent which ends up with a delay in approval.

Even though there have been so many advancements in Online experiences, Form Design in Loan applications needs a major upgrade. The ISL Application will not only help the user to submit multiple loan applications but also help them understand the requirements, policies in detail.

By providing initial information, the user will receive the list of potential Lenders.

Utilizing LLM and Generative AI technology makes it even more efficient.

Ability to jump on to different steps

Understanding loan details with LLM/Generative

AI agent (Chatbot) to help

Ease and interactiveness

Use of Norms according to the user's culture (Ex. Fall Semester is called August)

Pop up information

Choices of color with white balance

78% of users found these features helped them with the web experience.

The separation between Mandatory and Optional requirements to save user's time

Customer Care service without emails and cellular calls

This gives the user instant guidance with anything that they have a question about

In case, they require additional information, a feature to make calls via internet

Feature to auto-complete the fields with notification for which specific information is been retrieved

Color highlights to indicate the completed fields

I compiled a list of colors, different moods that my brand resonates, and asked users to pin the colors with a title. And the following colors were part of the final mood board.

The Logo represents the interrelation between Indian International Students and the USA with both currencies under the security of the Umbrella i.e. Integrity Student Loans Application. The following color palette was selected from the mood board images selected by the targeted User-group with 83% votes.

Pop up information to Save a lot of time and reduces confusion. This app makes a boring and lengthy process easier and interactive.

The use of Icons added additional help to identify the information, Choices of color, and white space makes it feel a lot less stressful and assuring.

The Loading pop up helped them realize how much work the ISL app is doing at the backend

Aspiring Ashwini, she wants to study further in the field of Computer Science and wants to pursue that in the States, she requires an approved loan so that she will get a student visa as she doesn’t have financial backing. And the only option is to apply for loans in the states but that process stresses her out.

This is Enthus Arav, he wants to study further in the field of Graphic Design, he has limited financial support, so to cover the cost of attendance he requires a loan for some portion of his cost of attendance. To get the best offer, he is planning to apply for multiple lenders but filling out the same information, again and again, frustrates him.

This is Dedicated Divya, she is in her final year of Architecture Grad school, but unfortunately, a loan from her home country only covered 3 semesters and now she requires an additional loan and she finds the online application process is a very tedious job just the way it was in her country and doesn't understand the policies as well.

The process of applying for a Loan is lengthy.

Application has so many complex steps that it is very difficult to understand.

The whole experience is very text-heavy, and hard to comprehend.

Policies are not conveyed clearly.

Too much cognitive load

Status of application is not transparent

Too much information to process

Each process takes 40-60 min or more to complete the application

1-3 weeks for approval. The feedback that I received was the point when I decided to create a 3rd party platform where their problems will be addressed.

I did extensive research to gather information regarding the fundamentals of Form-Design from different sources.

Usability in forms

Plain language

Passive to Proactive

Why large device is preferred for important tasks such as an Online application?

Among all the Loan providers I have chosen these 3 because they were the ones that needed the updates the most.

I conducted research and used their existing Online Application system to find out the pros and cons.

Loan Application website needs improvements in -

Making the process shorter

Require improvements in Form Design arrangement

Trying to minimize Customer Service requirement

Communicating Policies clearly

Better ways of providing Document requirements upfront

Process and Approval period is longer than conventional loans

Form fields are unnecessarily extended beyond the requirement

Interaction points such as the Drop-down menu or Calendar icon are placed very from the form

Spacing between different fields is not definitive, it is difficult to differentiate which title belongs to which form field

Conditions are special terms that are not in readable font sizes

Form-Design principles suggest placing Title above the form field along with additional spacing to distinguish the correlation with specific elements

The use of Icons along with Titles help the user to identify the requirements regardless of cultural impact

The user cant jump to specific pages at their convenience, they'll have to go through each and every page in between

The Application Summary does not use a variation of text size, font, or colors to easily provide the information (This causes errors)

Outdated Terms and Conditions Layout

These policies and terms are not to inform the user but only for the legal reasons

The user doesn't get the important information unless they really go through the entire list of terms

One of the reasons why the majority of Loan applicants don't even know what they're signing up for

I used this method to define the features of my project, after listing out all the features, I listed down all the "Must have", "Should have" & "Could have" features

i.e. MoSCoW Method, which is represented as below, On the basis of experience maps, user’s needs, and challenges, I created a list of different features for the application, the most important features as well as the ones that won't be included. This helped me to prioritize the required features like distinguishing between necessities and luxuries. I will go through them during the demonstration.