Refund Recommendations
Designing the MVP that'll help Members spend their refund wisely
Team
Product Management | Engineering | Product Legal
Role
Product Designer
Company
Credit Karma
Overview
Roughly 70% of Americans live from paycheck to paycheck. For these people their tax refund is the largest check they would receive for the year. Instead of using it to help them make financial progress with their goals, people would use their tax refund to“treat” themselves with expensive meals and tips.
The Challenge
Although Credit Karma members expressed their intention to save their tax refunds data showed that 50% of those who deposited their refunds into a Credit Karma Money account ended up spending the entire refund within 45 days. They tend to use their refunds to make purchases at popular retailers like Doordash, Amazon, and Walmart.
The Hypothesis
A financial tool that helps makes wiser decisions around the tax refund spending would build tax filing intent and drive tax filing off-season/ post-season for the Credit Karma's Income and Taxes products.
Designing On a Tight Deadline 🚩
We were under a tight deadline with expectations to jump right into designs. With everything solely based on un-validated assumptions. Refund Recommendations is meant to be a tool that required members to commit to one of the recommendations.
Uncomfortable with this approach, I was advised to move forward with designs. Hoping that by sharing the designs with the rest of the team we'd be able to build a case for use to take another approach.
Understanding
Tax Filing Seasonality & Timing
We strategically launched Refund Recommendation during the pre-tax filing season and integrated it with Credit Karma's Refund Estimator feature to better serve our members.
Our aim was to introduce Refund Recommendations after members completed their Refund Estimate, assuming that they would be more interested in suggestions for their tax refund only once they had a general idea of how much they would be receiving.
Understanding
50-30-20 rule
The proposed solution was to strongly recommend Credit Karma members to follow the 50-30-20 rule, a budgeting method that suggests allocating 50% of income towards needs, 30% towards wants, and the remaining 20% towards savings or paying off debt.
This recommendation would educate members on what educate members on what qualified as needs, wants, and savings/debt. Encouraging members to commit to this budgeting method.
Understanding
Savings and Other Ways to Spend
Streamlining a saving recommendation would help ensure that our members would put their tax refund into a savings account.
Additionally, Refund Recommendations would offer alternative suggestions for how members can use their tax refunds. Suggestions that were based on the increase activity that the other teams/verticals observed during tax season.
Design Critique Feedback
Is This the Appropriate Approach?
Uncomfortable with the process thus far, I brought these designs to Crit to get the team's feedback. The current solution gave definitive recommendations. Making it seem like Credit Karma is ready to start giving sound financial advice.
Nervous about what the team would say, I ended up receiving a lot of useful feedback from. Their feedback helped build our case that we should adjust the approach for Refund Recommendation.
We’re not ready to position Credit Karma to provide financial advice!
Understanding
Research findings [2019/2020]
From the old tax research we could that 40% of our members used their refund to pay down debt and 29% put into savings. This piece of data was just enough for us to move forward with our approach.
Understanding
Design's Proposed Approach
Make it easier for our members to do what they were already doing with their tax refund.
How can we make it easier for members to effectively use their tax refund in ways that align with their financial goals and priorities?
Design Decisions
Sketches
The original designs served as the foundation for the tool's functionality, indicating where members would be directed based on their status for a specific recommendation.
I had a mental model of how members would flow through Refund Recommendations. It seemed pretty straight forward, however I made these sketches just to get my ideas out of my mind and on to a physical medium. With all the friction up until this point, sketching was a way to just keep focus and an exercise to that'll help continue the work.
Design Decisions
Leveraging Copy in the Designs
We had to keep in mind that we don't want to use any language that sounds decisive. We really didn't want to make it seem like we were advisors. To accomplish this we leaned into the framework of “here’s what you could do.” While providing members with the benefits for each recommendation.
Final Designs
Refund Recommendation's goal is to make it easier for members to do what they are already doing. While priming members with other options to consider.
Refund Recommendation is only accessible to members after they finished their refund estimate. Once in the tool, members are presented with a list of recommendations. Members would then be redirected to the corresponding vertical for each recommendation.
Refund Recommendation would act as an aggregated list of actions members could take, while providing information on other ways to further their financial situation.
