Project
Greenlight : Platforming for the future
Greenlight was growing and we needed to take a hard look at how we could create a scalable platform that also exposes existing features and functionality.
Jan 12, 2022
Jan 12, 2022
8
minute read
Design thinking
Visual design
CLIENT
Greenlight
SERVICES
Platform design
ROLE
Lead designer
Project summary
Greenlight, a product that has the ambitious goal of teaching the next generation financial literacy, was at a pivotal moment. Two new features were coming soon, and the app in it’s current form couldn’t support the placement. Additionally, some existing features were hidden from users and needed to be elevated.
The current design seen below used a take on the traditional tabbar or bottom nav but with a placement that was more common to web than mobile. It was packed with features but some were not as discoverable as others. I worked with the data team to get usages stats on our feature set and found that our flagship features, the ones that customers said was core reason for purchasing the app were getting very poor adoption, and seeing even a significant drop after first exposure.
Exploration
After exposing these trends and knowing we had a new feature that would heavily compete with our 2 core features, spending and saving, I went to work. Here were the core outcomes (KPIs) I used for the re-platforming of the Greenlight experience. 1. Performance / Latency 2. Discoverability : Features / Functionality 3. Scalability 4. Testability.
Having established these these benchmark metrics I got to work. For the first metric (Performance) I did a full audit of our application and worked with the engineering team to try to normalize, or componentize as much as we could. Each section should look, feel, and behave the same way. So I started looking at all the commonalities and where we could modify to create cohesion.
For the second and third metric (Discoverability & Scalability) I didn’t want to fall into the typical battle of what is exposed in a tabbar and what is hidden under a traditional catch all drawer menu. I tried different options but landed on having a feed like jump screen. Every thing gets to live in one harmonious view, and we could decouple feature sets like allowance and chores, savings and savings goals. We would also create room for our two new features; Investing and Learning.
For the fourth metric I focussed on outcomes. It was fine to get click event data, but we needed to bind that to specific measurable results. Just tapping on a button only takes you so far, but actually establishing the expected journey and measuring the path would give the product team the ability to make informed and actionable decisions.
Where I landed after extensive user testing, developer feedback, and of course ideating with my fellow designers and product team members was each feature would be its own microcosm with a templated layout. Think of the apple app store. Our main display would have relevant important data but would have a gesture centric interaction to dive deeper.
After exposing these trends and knowing we had a new feature that would heavily compete with our 2 core features, spending and saving, I went to work. Here were the core outcomes (KPIs) I used for the re-platforming of the Greenlight experience. 1. Performance / Latency 2. Discoverability : Features / Functionality 3. Scalability 4. Testability.
Having established these these benchmark metrics I got to work. For the first metric (Performance) I did a full audit of our application and worked with the engineering team to try to normalize, or componentize as much as we could. Each section should look, feel, and behave the same way. So I started looking at all the commonalities and where we could modify to create cohesion.
For the second and third metric (Discoverability & Scalability) I didn’t want to fall into the typical battle of what is exposed in a tabbar and what is hidden under a traditional catch all drawer menu. I tried different options but landed on having a feed like jump screen. Every thing gets to live in one harmonious view, and we could decouple feature sets like allowance and chores, savings and savings goals. We would also create room for our two new features; Investing and Learning.
For the fourth metric I focussed on outcomes. It was fine to get click event data, but we needed to bind that to specific measurable results. Just tapping on a button only takes you so far, but actually establishing the expected journey and measuring the path would give the product team the ability to make informed and actionable decisions.
Where I landed after extensive user testing, developer feedback, and of course ideating with my fellow designers and product team members was each feature would be its own microcosm with a templated layout. Think of the apple app store. Our main display would have relevant important data but would have a gesture centric interaction to dive deeper.
the result
After some refinement and addressing some stumbling blocks that came up during build we landed on a platform that would enable all of our exiting features and those to come room to breathe, and our users the opportunity to explore areas of the app that were tucked away. For example chores adoption rose 800% and we even saw kids creating their own to negotiate earning with their parents. Savings goals adoption also rose 200%. And newly implemented educational material saw a fantastic 92% click through rate. All in all it was a tremendous success.
final thoughts
This was an exercise of love and not just for our users but for our team. It’s not that our app had gotten stale, or that we weren’t putting out fires every other day, but even though I claim to have led this process it was a team effort. The engineers weren’t just developing, but finally had a say in what they were building. The product team was able to feel like every part of the app was elevated, and the marketing team was given real estate and just relegated to email messaging. It was a win win win.
It’s been 3 years (at the time of writing this) and for the most part the experience is still in tact and has weathered a litany of new features and gone through rotating design teams. I didn’t go into the timelines and the pressure that we were under but this effort shaped the future of Greenlight and helped solidify the way product, engineering, and design worked together.
final thoughts
The result
This was an exercise of love and not just for our users but for our team. It’s not that our app had gotten stale, or that we weren’t putting out fires every other day, but even though I claim to have led this process it was a team effort. The engineers weren’t just developing, but finally had a say in what they were building. The product team was able to feel like every part of the app was elevated, and the marketing team was given real estate and just relegated to email messaging. It was a win win win.
It’s been 3 years (at the time of writing this) and for the most part the experience is still in tact and has weathered a litany of new features and gone through rotating design teams. I didn’t go into the timelines and the pressure that we were under but this effort shaped the future of Greenlight and helped solidify the way product, engineering, and design worked together.
After some refinement and addressing some stumbling blocks that came up during build we landed on a platform that would enable all of our exiting features and those to come room to breathe, and our users the opportunity to explore areas of the app that were tucked away. For example chores adoption rose 800% and we even saw kids creating their own to negotiate earning with their parents. Savings goals adoption also rose 200%. And newly implemented educational material saw a fantastic 92% click through rate. All in all it was a tremendous success.