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When the guys at SimplyCredit first approached me I thought“ Why would anyone need help paying their credit cards?”. Because over here in Iceland it is very unusual to have more than one credit card. Let alone a credit card issued by something other than a bank. Many even go for a prepaid credit card that they have to transfer money to, before purchasing what they want, because they are afraid of someone stealing their card and buying a Porsche online. But it wasn’t before long before I got very excited to help them tackle this problem and putting the _simply_ in SimplyCredit. ## In the beginning, my brain hurt I’m not going to pretend to be smarter than I am. So I admit wrapping my head around APR’s, credit scores (something we don’t have in Iceland), hidden fees and simply understanding how this whole system really works was not easy. But coming into things like this with a fresh perspective is a gift. It gives you the opportunity to look at everything with a completely new angle. Questioning everything that your client takes for granted and “standard practice” (TODO insert link about the harmfulness of this). I’m never shy of asking “why?”. Some people are afraid of asking why because they think it makes them look stupid. But asking why, even when you know why, can help everybody uncover biases. Asking why can help uncover old traditions that may not apply anymore. I could go on. On top of that, if I have trouble understanding a system then in all likelihood there are might be others who still don’t fully understand it even after being involved in it their whole lives. So me asking why can help everybody fill in the cracks. We were building a completely new way of paying your credit cards and wanted it to be easy as pie. It should fix the annoyances of credit card and be hands free for the most part. This kind of a service is meant to free your time and take your mind off things rather than being a hands on tool requiring your constant attention. !TODO insert image And so we set off on an iteration journey that would span many years. We constantly questioned and iterated on the user experience to simplify it even more and clarify things for our users. This kind of work is never finished. — ## A lot of problems There were countless complicated problems that had to be solved which I could write an entire book about. Maybe I will write that book one day but for this case study I will try to keep it focused. Our main problem from the start to the end was: Card enrolment. ## Card enrolment The process to enrol your card seems simple at first. Here is the list wrote down in the beginning: 1. Display cards to user 2. Select cards to enrol 3. Log into card accounts 4. Validate successful login Sounds simple. For the first iteration I came up with a simple UI that consisted of a credit card shaped box with the name of the card. (image: alt:Image of card) On click it would give you the login window for the card account (image: alt:Image of login) And when logged in it would make it clear that this card had been enrolled so you had nothing to worry about. (image: alt:Image of successful login) However things are usually not this simple in the world of finance. Here is another list I made with some of the complications that arise by signing on a credit card like this: * Can’t know for sure if the card number is correct so they have to be able to correct it. * This is where the money goes so it is important it goes the correct way. * Different cards have different length. * Cant know for sure any of the info such as APR and due dates are correct, so they have to be able to correct that as well. * ## Mobile finance We carelessly assumed that people would like to take care of financial things on a desktop or at least a tablet. So the for a while the dashboard looked like this: (Screenshot of desktop dashboard) (screenshot of mobile version) However as soon as we hit beta and got some real users it hit us that majority of our users preferred to use their phones and during the next iteration we skipped the desktop version altogether and wen’t with a single column mobile friendly design that is still entirely usable on desktop. (Screenshot of new dashboard) Logging in gives you a clear overview of where things are at. You don’t have to go any further as you will see that everything is running smoothly. Your payments are taken care of and your balance is in good standing. (Insert image) But if you do GO TROUGH NOTEBOOK DUDE + Improve your credit score + Target audience + Statement design + Made wrong assumptions about percentage that would use it from desktop. Apparently people use mobile for important finance things. + Designed hundreds of screens but in the end it only consists of a few. 1 Start with a brief overview of the product 1.1 First part should be about the market that the product belongs to. Ex. "There is no shortage of tools to sync your important data these days.." and so on 1.2 Then talk about the product itself, how it came to be and how I got involved. 2 Then talk about how you started analyzing the product and discovering its problems. 2.1 Talk about the problems you faced 2.2 Show some wireframes you came up with 3 Show and tell 3.1 Go over the process you used to find your design solution. 3.2 Show screenshots # TODO ## Iterations - evolution of small elements

SimplyCredit

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