Co-op Financial Services Springboard - Reducing friction when providing credit unions with real-time access to client account information on a global scale.

The nationwide Credit Union’s effort to modernize the stack of legacy applications was fractured and unclear, resulting in a technology platform that reflected a myriad of systems that was cumbersome to access day to day. This negatively impacted Springboard’s workflow and process when accessing real-time cardholder account information.

I identified this problem by talking to users in diverse roles and organizations, proposed redesigning a member-centric solution that fluidly ties the diverse systems and members’ products, and validated the designs through usability testing.

We minimized the time it takes for a user to navigate between products under the same member by 13%.

Role and Responsibilities
Product Strategist - UX Research, Strategy, IA, Product Design

Timeline
Feb 2021 -
Oct 2021

Tools
Figma, Airtable, Mural

Platform
Web Application

The stack was fractured and unclear, resulting in a technology platform that reflected a myriad of systems.

Springboard had a vast constellation of technologies with legacy applications dating back 20+ years, to provide financial credit unions real-time access to cardholder account information. The market for similar solutions was evolving while CO-OP risked losing market share to challengers.

Talking with stakeholders and subject matter experts, I learned that there are two types of users involved in the CO-OP Financial space:

  • The Front-line Representative - a generalist who services members of credit unions directly when calling in with questions or service requests

  • The Card Service Representative - a specialist who retrieves detailed information about the data in the back-office systems.

When the representatives were assisting with service requests, the member information, product details, and transaction data are dispersed across disparate systems, making it challenging to find clues about transactions, diagnosing and correcting errors, and resolving card mishaps. Service generalists and specialists had difficulty connecting the dots and needed to develop intuition about where to hunt for the information they need when resolving a request. This friction resulted in a significant decrease in workflow and an increased amount of time when helping the member leaving them frustrated. 

The Problem

Identifying frustrations with the inconvenience of disconnected systems when assisting members at different Credit Unions.

Through 1:1 discovery sessions with 12 Front-line and Card Services Representatives at 8 Credit Unions, I learned more about the internal tools and data both representatives use that are siloed and don’t interconnect seamlessly.

Front-line Representative:

  • Cardholder Maintenance - contains members’ personal card information 

  • Springboard - provides credit account information and details about debit transactions that Cardholder Maintenance cannot access (e.g., pending charges, technical details about the merchant, and conditions of the purchase type)

Card Services Representative:

  • Connex and Optis - financial service systems that can produce variations in data available for credit view and debit view

  • Data Navigator - often the foundation for checking and debit accounts that holds transaction, declines, and authorization information 

  • Extranet and Resolution Center - where transaction dispute cases are created and managed

UX Research

The Credit Union market is a large ecosystem of different roles, antiqued systems, and siloed team members and processes attempting to uniformly meet the goal of assisting members.

I used Airtable to map out insights after each session with participants and debriefed the team on the themes and patterns that began forming. This helped us analyze our findings after the user interviews and identify our key takeaways.

Analysis and Synthesis

Key Takeaway 1:

Springboard attempted to put all processors’ data into one view but each processors’ data components, APIs, and feature capabilities are not identical, which produces variations in the data available causing further confusion because representatives are already parsing through intricate card processing information. The antiqued and unsystematic platform with data transfer errors, results in the service staff using inaccurate data or in some cases, not having it at all.

I also learned that Front-line and Card Services Representatives service 2 different Credit Union members who are:

  • Single Entity Members - Cardholders that have an account with a single card number on multiple cards

  • Separate Entity Members - Cardholders that have unique card numbers on multiple cards tied to one account number

Key Takeaway 2:

I hypothesized and validated that the disconnected data also resulted in fractured understandings of single and separate entity members because Springboard’s data model is focused on plastic debit and credit cards, not the member. The card-centric model deprives credit unions of the opportunity to understand each member’s portfolio of products and services and how they might interconnect.

Key Takeaway 3:

I also hypothesized and validated that the disconnected data impacted cross-functional communication and collaboration. Springboard was not designed to facilitate the dynamics of team support scenarios. Front-line service representatives need to collaborate with specialists in other departments (e.g., card specialists, fraud team) to resolve a request. The disorganized documentation of financial service systems are inefficient channels for the needed cross-functional communication.

Get Front-line and Card Service Representatives to experience the value of Springboard faster and efficiently when obtaining real-time access to cardholder account information.

To get Front-line and Card Service Representatives to their members’ information, resolve requests as quickly as possible and find data input from different organized systems, we needed to reduce friction by scoping this project into 3 parts:


Opportunity 1 - Rebrand Springboard with WCAG compliance - to modernize the application for Front-line and Card service Representatives and bring value to the member information when accomplishing the service tasks they set out to perform without intrusive page layouts.

Opportunity 2 - A member-centric portfolio of products - to allow credit unions the opportunity to understand each member's portfolio of products and services, and how they might interconnect

Opportunity 3 - A service history operation of automated service lines - to reduce the time spent understanding the activity record and keeping Connex and Optis documentation of activity organized.

I worked on ideating the framework that holds and expands all of the complexities of information architecture and systems and designing the seamless experience for accessing a collection of services for the products in a member’s portfolio. 

Design Goals

Working strategically, I helped the team understand the complexity behind the systems and how the data can be displayed in a member-centric module.

We knew that Optis and Connex are financial service systems that produce variations in data available for credit and debit view and that the remaining systems provide members’ personal information and manage disputes. Throughout this entire process, we did not have access to navigate freely through the systems to gain an understanding of the structure and different flows since they are repositories for sensitive card information.

Relying on our discovery research, leveraging Springboard's existing site map, screenshots of the Resolution Center, Optis and Connex systems and looking at financial systems and payment services for design inspiration, I tried countless ways to brainstorm: 


How Might We:

  • Display a series of transaction activities related to a member?

  • Display relationships between members?

  • Allow users to view their members’ associated card details and actions? 

Information Architecture Ideation

Viewing activity under selected product in the top section with member overview and details

Highlight important activity and service done on each product when selected

Member and product info is in a horizontal top bar and surface remaining product detail on the left

I narrowed down the member-centric framework into a holistic platform that surfaces members on the account, product details, and transaction data.

We tested the concepts as early as possible and found that the concept aligned with the representatives’ workflow. Upon entering a member’s profile they had a better sense of the cardholders on the primary member’s account, were quickly able to view the callouts for account activity and information and had the option to immediately take action on the account after confirming they have the right member.

However, even though the concept surfaced transaction data, representatives needed to see the transaction details per line item to assist with service requests, which differed between credit and debit. This data mapping was not something that the screenshots of the systems were going to help us understand. 

I circled back to our subject matter experts to get a better understanding of how the data between credit and debit is sorted. This included weekly working sessions in our process to understand how the complexity of data would fit in our framework and get feedback on the evolving structure to fill in any gaps. I also followed up with users to understand how they use the data in their process

Meeting with the subject matter experts, I learned:

  • There’s overlapping data that needs to be reflected for both Credit and Debit.

  • The difference between the debit and credit transaction details is due to the different processing systems where credit transaction information derives from the pre-authorization for the bank to take the funds from a specific account where a credit transaction does not.

  • A Debit transaction has a sizable amount of data attributes stemming from the comprehensive data collection processing system Data Navigator intended to streamline back-office and customer service functions.

This helped me take a step back and re-evaluate our framework that only visualizes key member information and activity at a glance and reimagine the framework with a primary and secondary navigation to fit the robust and complex information we were working with.

The member-centric module 

The primary side navigation - displays the necessary member information on initial view with all products tied to the account to help the user understand each member’s portfolio of products and services and how they might interconnect.

The secondary top navigation - separates all the important sections related to the product. 

Main actions - accessible from the overview screen including starting disputes for lost/stolen cards in Springboard and processing the case to completion in the Resolution Center. 

A summary of cardholders - including the primary, secondary and additional cardholders on the account. 

Account overview information - including prioritized sections.

Testing the value propositions for a member-centric module and helping users seamlessly view their sorted credit and debit data.

I led 1:1 usability testing sessions with 10-12 Credit Union Front-line and Card Services Representatives per month across 21 Credit Unions to evaluate our redesign and uncover usability issues and opportunities.

The main takeaways from this research include:

  • Our validated hypotheses is that a holistic-back office platform as a member-centric module improves efficiency and adds value to our users’ workflow. 

  • There wasn’t a need for collective activity and service history data for Debit and Credit because a member is normally calling in about a transaction on a specific card and selecting the product first is the most helpful for their flow.

  • The transaction details in the embedded view for debit and credit could be broken out more to parse through it quicker.

Validation

Designing a more efficient system for users to obtain cardholder information.

Springboard is a massive application and key features needed to be built in order to complete the entire system. We’ve met with a total of 48 participants to help us uncover usability issues and opportunities through our testing sessions to get to this ideal state for the framework.

The Final Design Solution

Our design solution minimized the time it takes for Credit Union representatives to navigate between member products and find transaction data by 13%.

I worked with our developers to implement the design, and they delivered React UI components for Co-op’s engineers to use. Co-op Springboard launched as a single application that gives credit unions real-time access to cardholder account information as part of one system. It is now live helping over 1,000 global Credit Unions deliver improved member services and increase productivity due to the simplified account management experience.

Delivery and Results