PROJECT

Chase Home Buyer Advantage Campaign

CATEGORIES: Landing pages, Emails, Brochures
ROLES: Art Director
YEAR: 2018 - 2019

OVERVIEW
Home buying and refinancing processes are often associated with complicated procedures and tricky experiences. As one of the most prolific mortgage lenders, Chase is seeking a fresh new look to reinforce its relationship with customers as well as real estate agents, meanwhile updating their online mortgage calculator. Through a variety of marketing collateral and digital experiences, we created an engaging experience while eliminating the stress and hassles that comes along with the mortgage lending process.

TAKE THE MONOTONY OUT OF
HOME BUYING EXPERIENCE
The design objective is to engage customers into participating in Chase’s new Flexible auto mortgage payments. We created a campaign that uses a fun storytelling method paired with welcoming illustrations, in order to give the mortgage purchasing process a friendly and approachable look. We developed a series of newsletters, landing pages and print deliverables that depict customers' home buying journeys, each with a clever and inviting message. The project features a reassuring tone of voice, redefining the visual identity and adding a more approachable feel to the campaign as a whole.

PROJECT

Chase Mortgage Calculator Redesign

CATEGORIES: Websites, UX/UI, Prototyping
ROLES: Art Director, Designer
YEAR: 2017

DEVELOP A MORE EFFICIENT TOOL
Mortgage calculators are the most used tool for potential consumers to estimate the mortgage or refinance rates when buying or refinancing a home. Chase were looking to update their digital tools to be more efficient and accessible.

THE PROBLEM
The old Chase Mortgage calculator lacked choices, required extra inputs from consumers. Cluttered layout made final results seem overwhelming. User needs to re-enter all inputs entirly every time they made adjustments. 

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
I researched the common calculator UX and UI pattern that would be intuitive for consumers, and discover what would be the most influential when it comes to a consumer making a decision to move forward with a particular loan or mortgage lender. Visually, I wanted to design a calculator that would stand out among our direct competitors and big banks.

UNDERSTAND THE USER JOURNEY
To better understand users' pain point from their interaction with the site and tools, step-by-step journey maps were created. The process also helped our team to narrow down what kind of users used the calculators and how they manage infos and results.

KEY QUALITATIVE FINDINGS
From the user research we’ve conducted, we were able to find users major pain points and what improvements they needed from the calculator:

Fast and Accurate Results - Users wanted quick results, they wanted to be able to see potential cost and numbers easily without going through multiple steps and complicated input. Users felt most frustrated when:
1- lack of guidance on what the section means. 2 - the result doesn’t match their expectations and they had to refill everything to start over.

It’s not one tool for all - Different consumers have different task needs: some know how much they can afford and what information they need, while others are just browsing around for an idea.Users need to be able to calculate different scenarios easily in order to determine which one fits their best estimate for a home loan.

Trustworthy is the key - Home buying/refinancing happens at an emotional and often stressful stage in life — first home, starting a family, downsizing, etc. Minimizing room for error is crucial during this process. Users want their online experience to be equally valuable to their in-person experience with a mortgage officer. A cluttered and disorganized interface tends to discourage visitors to explore further.

DESIGN SOLUTIONS

Improve efficiency and usability - We simplified the process structure, automatically updating the calculation results as numbers being input, eliminating complicated steps. Both sliders and number input options were offered, users can get an estimated result right away.

Broaden capabilities - We streamlined the home page navigation system, highlighted 4 major calculators, catering to different users' needs, allowing the customers to choose accordingly. The new navigation is intuitive, engaging and customer-centric, presenting the results in a way that’s easy to understand even for first time home buyers.

Deliver an updated UI - To ensure a smooth task flow, all the UI elements are clear and consistent. Through icons, sliders and a well-structured layout with plenty of open space, users are able to perform the tasks quickly and easily, it doesn’t feel like a chore to consume information. All the while, Chase’s branding is consistent throughout, from color palette to typography, offering a cohesive tone and a reassuring visual effect.

Visit the site here.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
After launching the new mortgage calculator, the task time for calculating decreased from average 50 seconds down to 8 seconds. Chase mortgage calculator was my first time working on the UX aspect on a digital product. Though my initial role was in charge of the UI elements, working alongside another UX designer and the extensive design process gave me the opportunity to deploy my UX design knowledge, while further learning the methodology behind.