8m read
882 words
Designing a notification system for mortgage brokers
Role
Product Designer
UX Designer
UX Researcher
Prompt Designer
Tools
Figma
Figjam
Timeline
3 weeks
Team
Rocket Pro
PROBLEM
Mortgage brokers are missing critical updates due to a high volume of unprioritized emails.
There are 58 different emails that can be sent out to a single broker. That amount of emails plus how many clients a broker can have is a major contributor as to why mortgage brokers will miss emails.
SOLUTION
Introducing portal notifications
How did we get here?
IDEATION
How might we decrease the chance of our partners missing critical updates with the portal?
Designing for the portal was the most obvious solution because prior research done on mortgage brokers shows that they spend a majority of their time on a desktop device.
Web Portal
Mortgage broker's primary platform.
Current medium of notifications.
SMS Messaging
Not currently available.
Mobile App
Not currently available.
ORGANIZING
Categorizing 58 different email templates
We split the 58 different email templates into three categories. Categorizing each notification is a necessary step because it allows them to understand which notifications are urgent at a glance.
Urgent notifications
Give actionable steps to brokers to address something that's time-sensitive.
Loan updates
Inform users of workflow changes or approvals in loan pipeline.
Rocket updates
Inform users about Pro feature updates and market-related news.
EARLY DESIGNS
Showing my early designs
Once we had a good idea of what the designs might look like, we would bring that into user testing.
TESTING
Finding what's best for our users
Partnering with the internal research team, two of my designs were used in a research study with five mortgage brokers. The goal was to understand which of the designs best suited our user's needs.
Design 1: All notifications
Design 2: Tabbed notifications
TEST RESULTS
80% of participants prefer tabbed notifications
Of the five tests conducted, four participants preferred the tabbed notifications approach. While various reasons were given, the recurring one was a desire to see the most urgent notifications without other notifications cluttering the display.
FINAL DESIGN
Tab-separated notifications approach
For three weeks, I worked alongside content designers, senior UX researchers, and senior product designers to come up with the foundation of a notification system.
NEXT STEPS
What did I learn?
I was fortunate to be on an amazing and supportive team where I grew tremendously as a designer. Here are some of my takeaways:
Design with a "people-first" mentality, catering to different user preferences with an emphasis on accessibility.
Communication doesn't always have to be verbal, design artifacts are great for traversing through ambiguity.
Design isn't black and white; items like design artifacts are mutable.
Growth involves challenging yourself and going outside of your comfort zone.
