Case Study
FICO Score Planner
Empower users to achieve their credit goals.
Credit insights and personalized plans to help consumers track and achieve their goals.
Experian's B2B2C business unit, Experian Partner Solutions, provides financial wellness and identity protection solutions to our partners' users via white-label platform portals, APIs, or custom solutions. We had an opportunity to take a customer from a competitor, but the competitor had one feature we needed to include. We added this feature to our platform to secure the deal.
FICO Score Planner enables individuals to select a FICO Score goal and timeframe to achieve it. The algorithm analyzes an individual’s current score, credit report, and these two inputs to produce a set of actions consumers can take to reach their goal. Because FICO Score Planner is based on a proprietary FICO API and we had similar existing features, this project leaned more toward UI than UX. Still, I found opportunities to enhance the user experience.
On an aggressive timeline, leverage FICO's existing API for a new product that helps users set and achieve a credit score goal while being more engaging than a competitor’s offering.
Financial Education
May 2023
Product Design Lead
Stakeholders
Product Owner
Product Designer Researcher
Tech Product Manager
Developers
A competitive analysis uncovered numerous opportunities for improvement.
Two of the competing products I analyzed used a dragging motion in a novel way that I initially struggled to understand. At least two eliminated user options and selected a time frame for you. I believe it auto-selected the shortest timeframe, which would be the most aggressive plan.
Several of them were very text-heavy and needed more visual interest. When checking your progress, it wasn't easy to ascertain how you were doing at a glance. Some were even completely static after setting an initial score, providing no feedback at all.
After a library audit, I determined that a modal would be the most consistent pattern for selecting a score and timeframe. We frequently used that paradigm for product setups when we did not want to navigate away from the product page. However, I felt the modal seemed like a lot of interface for a two-step process, so I designed two versions, and we did an A/B test.
We ultimately used the new pattern I designed: a two-step progressive disclosure.
Lastly, in step two, unlike some of our competitors, I displayed all plan options and grayed out any that were unavailable, allowing the user to choose the timeframe.
I repurposed our existing score chart with a simple enhancement to add visual interest and enable the user to see their progress at a glance. I added a horizontal line to the chart for the user's target score.
I noticed a design issue in the score chart some time ago and entered a change ticket in the backlog. The designer of the original chart had truncated the score range to save vertical space. Having the full context would significantly improve users' understanding of where their scores fell within the entire range. Since we would be making an edit to the chart, I also took the opportunity to make this improvement.
One of the first things I noticed about our competitor's products was that once the user selected a score and plan, the product could be utterly static until the user reached their goal up to a full year later. Adding the chart remedied this, but I decided to go further: I wrote a simple calculation comparing the user's updated score to their current point on the timeline and created encouraging header text reflecting their progress.
So for just improving my score as a target goal, this would be really helpful. As someone who declared personal bankruptcy last year, this would be very, very helpful.
This project underscored the importance of competitive analysis and focusing on minor UX improvements to differentiate your product. It also reinforced several fundamental design principles for me.
Through effective collaboration, strategic decision-making, and incremental UX improvements, we acquired a partner from a competitor.
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