Role
Tools
Timeline
3 weeks
Team
Rocket Pro
What is Rocket Pro?
Rocket Pro is a division of Rocket Mortgage that focuses on partnering with real estate professionals and independent mortgage brokers. It provides them with tools, resources, and support to help their clients achieve homeownership. Rocket Pro aims to streamline the mortgage process and empower brokers with technology and training.
Brokers are missing updates
One of the biggest problems for Rocket Pro partners is that brokers are missing critical loan updates. Notifications like lock expirations or new conditions are being lost because of a multitude of reasons. One of those reasons is that they rely only on email for loan and marketing notifications.
Problems with Rocket Pro
While I was working on the project, there were 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.
Providing Portal Notifications
When thinking about this problem from a higher level, there are many ways to solve the issue. We believed that providing Rocket Pro portal notifications would be a great way to tackle this.
Why Notifications?
There are many factors that played into our decision to create in-portal notifications. Prior research done on the typical workweek of mortgage brokers shows that they spend a majority of their time on a desktop device. This makes the Rocket Pro portal a natural place for loan notifications.
Brokers want a way to see notifications and access the loan pipeline fast. With in-portal notifications, mortgage brokers can have this luxury and it will also be beneficial for the business.
Not all problems can be solved with one solution
One of the most important things I learned during this internship is that very rarely there is a solution that solves everything. The biggest blocker for me when designing is thinking to myself: “What about when this happens?” I would psych myself out of a design because I would find ways to make it not usable when in reality, there isn’t a design out there that can solve 100% of the problem.
Brokers aren’t on the portal 24/7 so they can still miss notifications. This became a prominent criticism of any solution in my mind but I started challenging that thought after understanding that while brokers may still miss some notifications, the solution can definitely help with lowering that chance of brokers missing them.
Portal Goals
To work towards a goal and understand what success looks like, I outlined a vision for the future. With my designs, this is what I hope to achieve.
Notifications breakdown
Before brainstorming designs, we split the 58 different email templates into three categories. Categorizing each notification is a necessary step towards providing our users a positive experience when they look for notifications. This allows them to understand which notifications are urgent and which ones aren't at a glance.
This will also be beneficial in future projects where other types of notifications will also be implemented. This includes future Rocket Pro mobile app, SMS notifications, etc.
Bucketed View VS. Full View
When designs started, there were two trains of thought: one design where a notification overlay shows all notifications in on tab and one where the notifications are separated into their own respective tabs.
Early Designs
Here are some of the early designs that I came up with. The decision was to design for both the bucketed view and full view because we didn't know how our users would react. Once we had a good idea of what the designs might look like, we would bring that into user testing.
Tests with Users
Once I completed my designs and showed them to the lead designer, he wanted to test them out with real mortgage brokers. The test ended up being similar to an A/B test where people would give their opinions on how notifications are shown.
The goal was to understand what brokers want out of notifications rather than testing to see which design they think is more visually appealing. That isn’t to say that people didn’t like my designs, a majority of them gave positive comments on the visual design.
Design 1: All Notifications
Design 2: Bucketed Notifications
Test Results
Of the five tests conducted, four participants preferred the bucketed notification approach. While various reasons were given, the recurring one was a desire to see the most urgent notifications without the other notifications cluttering the display.
Next steps
While my time at Rocket Mortgage ended before the project was able to be finished, I thought about the next steps I would take if I had more time. All of these next steps are based on the feedback that we gathered from the A/B testing.
Making notifications look more interactable.
Explore other tier of notifications.
Re-imagine how lender updates are presented.
My learnings
I was fortunate to be on an amazing and supportive team where I grew tremendously as a designer. Here are some of my favorite takeaways:
Design with a "people-first" mentality, catering to different user preferences with an emphasis on accessibility.
Design isn't black and white; items like design artifacts are mutable.
Communication doesn't always have to be verbal, design artifacts are great for traversing through ambiguity.
Growth involves challenging yourself and going outside of your comfort zone.
