Renovate America Mobile App
Bringing a fledgling consumer lending product into the 21st century.
The opportunity
I joined the Benji team before the product was one year old. Benji operated as a lean startup within Renovate America and at the time only accepted credit applications over the phone. I was brought on to the team to design a digital channel for accepting applications in order to scale the product while limiting increases to operational overhead.
What I did with it
I shadowed the customer service representatives taking applications over the phone and did qualitative interviews with contractor sales representatives to determine the customer needs for a new application channel. The product team decided to build a mobile app using Ionic framework so that the same codebase could be used to build both iOS and Android versions of the app (and ultimately be re-used for a web application).
I wireframed and prototyped a multi-step application and conducted usability testing with some contractors to get quick feedback on what was working and what wasn't. After making a few content changes I worked closely with a visual designer to build out the final prototype.
Initial wireframes
I created wireframes of the entire flow and put them into a prototype that I tested with target users.
LOCATE HOME
Since contractors are using this application at sales appointments, I included a GPS locate feature to quickly locate the home's address.
Project Type
Large touch targets and friendly iconography.
Light confirmation
Rather than forcing the user to select monthly or annual income, I opted to calculate the annual income dynamically so there is a visual confirmation of the amount.
The Outcome
We piloted the mobile app for a month with several companies and sales reps before publicly launching the app on January 16, 2017 (the web version launched in March). By December 2017, web and mobile channels combined consistently drove 60% of the incoming Benji applications and resulted in over $55MM in funded loans.
