Onward

Onward is a FinTech startup helping divorced parents in managing shared expenses effortlessly. I joined the product team to enhance the repayment experience and identify opportunities for improving customer retention.

MY ROLE

UX Researcher & Product Designer

TEAM

Product Manager

TOOLS

Figma, Dovetail, Miro, Respondent, Excel

Problem

As Onward's user base grew, retaining customers became increasingly challenging, especially with competitors expanding their offerings.

Process

Insights

Divorced parents want collaboration, not communication, in a self-protective way.

They interact contractually. The divorce agreement has a lasting impact on the co-parenting relationship.
They count every penny but only bother to communicate big expenses. Because sharing expenses can trigger old habits.
They track expenses for emotional reasons. They desire a sense of fairness, respect, and security.
They seek shortcuts in expense settlements. They make efforts to avoid confrontations.

Recommendations

Divorced parents prefer to settle expenses without having to communicate directly with their ex-partner, and they hire an app to do so.

To alleviate additional burdens on them, my recommendation for Onward was to facilitate "Zero communication, 100% repayment" for divorced parents.

Research & Design Process

// STEP 1

Aligning research questions to business goals

The business goals for this project are:

Increase retention rate by 10%
Simplify the repayment process by 50%
Uncover opportunities to augment the product roadmap

Correspondingly, the research goals for this project are:

Understand user behavior and mental model for managing shared expenses and repayment by April 30, 2023
Analyze the user’s Job-To-Be-Done in requesting and settling shared expenses by April 30, 2023
Identify product opportunities to formulate recommendations that align with the current product roadmap by May 5, 2023

// STEP 2
Forming null hypotheses

To develop sound hypotheses, I performed a brief market research along with online surveys to understand the overall user behavior and attitude. The null hypotheses are:

Our target customer tracks shared expenses for external & logical reasons, such as providing evidence to the court, managing personal finance, and making informed purchase decisions for their children. – Rejected
The repayment process is linear and "one and done". – Rejected

// STEP 3
Selecting the appropriate research methods

Due to time and budget constraints for this exploratory study, we chose primary and secondary research, with a focus on qualitative methods.

Research methods implemented

Survey (4 online surveys with target customers)
User interviews (interviews with 10 qualified participants)
User personas (5 proto-personas, 3 user personas)
Competitive analysis (2 main competitors & 13 other players)
User testing (2 moderated user testings)

We have been strictly following the participant criteria and only interviewing individuals who

are legally divorced
have at least one kid under 18 years old
communicate directly via text or email
share parenting expenses

// STEP 4
Reflecting & testing on repeat

Our research approach is agile and actionable. Once we gathered insights from the initial survey, we revisited our strategy and worked on narrowing down the focus while enhancing the research's accuracy. The process moves forward like the following:

Facts & Insights

SURVEY RESULTS

1. Managing shared expenses is more time-consuming and argumentative than other shared responsibilities.

Co-parents find figuring out finances and expenses more time-consuming and argumentative than scheduling the visitation and agreeing on the child's education & well-being.

2. Managing shared expenses is a very manual process.

86.9% of participants rely on email & excel, even memory, to track shared expenses and are mostly unaware of digital tools.

3. Communication dynamics influence the experience of managing shared expenses.

More conflicted co-parents find managing shared expenses very or semi-difficult.

4. Tracking shared expenses serves bigger motivations.

A sense of fairness, self-protection, personal budget, children’s well-being, etc.

INTERVIEW DATA

1. Divorced parents refer back to the divorce agreement for undefined shared expenses.

Participants feel that the divorce agreement either lacks specificity or becomes irrelevant as time passes.

2. Divorced parents tend to track expenses more for emotional reasons rather than logical ones.

Instead of doing it as a chore to manage a personal budget, they do it:

to “hold the ex accountable”
to “be fair”
to protect themselves when “shit hits the fan”
to “show that I’ve been doing a lot”
to “be able to trust again”

3. Divorced parents count every shared expense, but they only bother to communicate (texting receipts) the ones that reach a certain minimum threshold.

Even though the minimum threshold may differ, co-parents still desire respect for their contribution and don't want to spend their time and effort on something insignificant.

4. Request & repayments are not linear processes.

Divorced parents seek shortcuts to save time, money, and back & forth conversations.

Redesign

1. Help the user better manage shared expenses and feel good after.

»» The current design focuses solely on the display of information. In contrast, the redesign prioritizes action & progress.

Original

Redesign: dashboard with To-do List

Redesign: dashboard with weekly progress

2. Help the user get tasks done faster and easier.

»» The redesign allow users to batch edit, assign, request, and search expenses.

Original

Redesign: batch editing & sending

3. Streamline expense uploading.

»» From screenshots to expense requests. Right after a purchase occurs, the user can forward screenshots to Onward, edit directly, or save them to draft.

4. Simplify payout process.

»» The redesign cuts payout steps by 50%, and allows users to edit & set a reminder to pay later.

What could I improve?

One significant challenge lies in recruiting participants from platforms like Userinterviews.com and Respondent. These platforms often incentivize participants to provide "right" answers, leading to research biases. For instance, our initial interview, which required hours of preparation, turned out to be disappointing due to biased responses. This experience has taught me the importance of setting realistic expectations, improving survey design, conducting follow-up surveys, and employing various research methods to mitigate biases.

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