A Three-Bureau Credit Report for Everyone
TL;DR
Equifax needed a standout product to strengthen consumer trust and engagement. My team and I transformed overwhelming and indecipherable credit reports from all three bureaus into an effortless tool for understanding your credit history and empowering you to improve. The results were wildly popular, with users rating it 8.8 / 10.
Background
Equifax had endured a few hard years and needed to demonstrate its commitment to consumers. So as the company refreshed its brand and IT systems, it started looking for premium features that would attract customers and build confidence. In collaboration with our team, an idea emerged: Enable users to view and compare all of their credit information across Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, and help them take steps to improve their credit scores.
The catch? Look at this thing. We needed to turn this (and two more reports like it) into simplicity itself.
The Challenge
Limited Vision
Equifax initially saw this as a pure data-visualization exercise with no self-service or support baked in.
Limiting Design System
Equifax’s design system was strong on basic navigation but weaker when it came to navigating data.
Missing User Guidance
The concepts behind credit scores can be tricky to say the least. Equifax’s approach to education needed to grow.
Information Overload
Standard credit reports are dense, jargon-filled documents that most consumers find impenetrable.
Our Approach
Discovery & Product Strategy
We started with a series of workshops to surface user pain points, technical constraints, and success metrics —anchoring the design in our twin goals of “caveman simplicity” and “educate & empower.” Equifax had already carried out extensive consumer research, courtesy of a pair of brilliant champions of the customer-first mentality. We eagerly took in their data and worked with them to brainstorm a series of features that would put American consumers in the driver’s seat of their credit histories.
Deep Analysis
Together with our partners at Equifax, we dove down the rabbit hole of credit reporting, data, algorithms, disputes, consumer rights & options, and much, much more. All to make sure we fully understood the myriad elements a 3-bureau credit report would need to cover. Plotting all of these elements out, we used a form of affinity mapping to build a hierarchy that would enable lay users to see logical connections and draw conclusions about what was affecting their credit and how to improve.
Collaborative Concept Creation
Armed with this hierarchy, we put pen to paper (and so did our client partners) to start coming up with page layouts, component ideas, and visual metaphors. We needed to make sure that all of the data was available and transparent. But we also needed to ensure that it couldn’t overwhelm. We saw using this credit report as an exercise in playing detective, and we needed to provide a visual “scent” of where people should go. Through multiple rounds of critique, debate, and co-learning, we crafted a pair of concepts to let real consumers tear apart.
Lab-Based Focus Groups
Everyone packed their bags for sunny Dallas, where we spent three days at Usability Sciences, a user testing lab par excellence (seriously, I love these guys). Together, we ran as many as four focus groups per day to pick apart what worked and (even more importantly) what didn’t. This can be a bit of an emotional rollercoaster for clients, but our champions could see that getting crystal-clear direction means that some things will be wrong on the first pass. We gathered both quantitative and qualitative feedback on our competing concepts and carried out an in-depth review workshop to refine our design direction.
Responsive Wireframing & Prototyping
Back home, we pushed ahead with to rework the most promising overall concept. Our ability to produce cutting-edge visuals was constrained by Equifax’s design kit. But that kit provided enough for us to refine the concept it into a much better version of itself. We prepared highly-interactive prototype covering both desktop and mobile devices. Features were refined, additional helper elements added, and secondary & error paths accounted for. After a healthy dose of QA and more reviews with Equifax stakeholders, we were feeling downright bullish.
Lab-Based Usability Testing
A month after the focus groups, it was back to Dallas. This time, we knew we had the right overall direction and we strode through the airport like rock stars on our way to four days of in-person usability testing. The initial response was fantastic, but we knew we could do even better and wanted to make the most of this opportunity. So each night we stayed up in our hotel. With the help of alarming amounts of caffeine, we refined the prototype based on the day’s feedback, tested it for quality, and shipped it for the next morning. After three rounds of this we were both delirious, mostly with pride. Mostly.
Fine Tuning & Delivery
At the end of our second round in Dallas, we knew we had something special. We went home and met with a broader set of business & IT stakeholders (along with our friends at Usability Sciences) to present our design, our findings, and our recommendations. Buy-in was immediate; the next step was to implement a final set of tweaks and ship it to Equifax IT. So we focused on talking with Equifax’s IT team and on adding the assets, views, and annotations they’d need for success. On the downside, development would be drawn-out and largely out of our hands. We also wouldn’t be able to access analytics data due to Equifax IT policies. But so long as the production version was close to what we’d designed, we knew the 3B report had a chance to be a winner.
My Role
Led the Macquarium engagement with Equifax
Drove all discovery, strategy, and design activities
Planned and facilitated workshops for customer journey mapping, affinity mapping, design co-creation, and testing review
Created both conceptual and detail designs while overseeing junior designers doing the same
Ensured thorough quality assurance in a very complex set of interactive prototypes across multiple platforms
Served as the primary liaison with Usability Sciences
Collaborated with Equifax and our project management team on scheduling, resourcing, and cost
And, just for fun, booked the hotel rooms.
The Solution
Quick score comparison and modular report with built-in alerts
Responsive design with tabbed multi-bureau comparison
Credit history drill-down views with natural reading patterns and quick consumer actions
Guided deep credit score diagnosis
Walkthroughs and helper content to educate consumers
Focused view for quick checkups
The Results
User Rating
8.8/10
We had a goal of testers giving the 3-bureau report an average rating of 7.5. By the time we finished, we were well beyond our target.
Pro-Consumer Benefits
A number of testers had felt like the credit “deck” was stacked against them. The 3-bureau report gave them a real sense of control. Many said they finally felt motivated and empowered to take control of their credit scores.
Elated Stakeholders
Equifax’s Product, Marketing, and Customer Support teams were thrilled. Complaints & call center volume would decrease while consumers newly embracing Equifax would drive increased revenue.
A Few More Views
This was easily some of the most fun I’ve had on a project and the results were beyond gratifying. I hope you’ll indulge me while I share a few more photos.