NorthStar
Customer Financing Application
NorthStar was partnering with a third-party finance company to provide more options for customers. This needed to be implemented into the sales process which is done in their proprietary iPad app.
A potential customer, wanting a connected home system, needed to be able to easily apply for financing from a third-party finance partner to finish the sale and reduce their monthly cost.
I was the sole UX designer and UI designer on an Agile team of 2 developers, an iOS developer, a product owner, and a scrum master. I lead the design direction for the project while collaborating with the team.
The third-party financing company offered two options for submitting applications:
Sending users to an online portal was the easiest to implement and with a small team of developers, resources were limited. Yet, I strongly felt that building an API integration would provide a better experience versus sending them to an online portal where we would lose control over what the user sees and touches.
Building an API integration allowed us to create a seamless and easy process for the customer to fill out an application without leaving our environment. They could apply right from the sales rep's iPad.
Flowchart created to identitfy when information would be pulled or pushed from either NorthStar's system or the third-party API.
Mapping out how the new customer process will fix into the existing sales process.
Early designs
Feedback from testing resulted in some user's feeling overwhelmed inputting all the information at once. So we came up with the idea to spread the form across several screens and walk them through the process.
We had to include specific elements in our interface mandated by the financing company. And at the end, we had to pass an audit with their legal team to begin processing applications.
The iPad app was a sales tool and wasn't designed for a customer to use it. We had to figure out how to create a smooth transition from the sales rep to the user without leaving the app.
The biggest challenge was that when we were just about done with this project, NorthStar decided to bring on a second finance company. Based on certain logic, the customer could apply with one company or with both. So even though the design was finalized and programming was just about done, I had to go back to the storyboard and iterate on the design to accommodate different scenarios and including requirements and restrictions from two different third-party APIs.
First prototype with one financing company.
Second prototype with both financing companies.
Implementing this process reduced upfront costs for both the customer and the NorthStar. Within a couple of months, over 50% percent of new customers were utilizing third-party financing options.
We were told by one of the financing companies that we had built the best integration of their process that they had seen.
A new sales manager recenlty came on board with experience working for multiple home security and automation companies and he was extremely impressed with how the application process was integrated.