Pelican Invests
Pelican Invests is revolutionizing education funding for millions of Americans by providing a unique web-based platform. This platform empowers families and friends to support a child's future success through streamlined management of their tax incentivized 529 fund. Pelican simplifies the process, offering resources, tools, and transparent donation links that foster trust within the community.
Context
My Role
UX Designer
UX Researcher
Visual Design Lead
Client
Pelican Gift, Inc.
Pelican offers online self-help solutions for common education saving and planning needs and related educational content.
Duration
May - June 2023
Tools Used
Pelican's Challenge
Pelican sought to enhance their user experience by refining education fund creation, gift sending, and history tracking. Our team was tasked with improving the dashboard and fund creation features. We also aimed to enhance the overall ease of use for Pelican users site-wide. To accomplish these goals, we began with conducting interviews, competitor research, and usability testing of the existing site. Using this information, we were able to define who our users were and identify their key needs and pain points.
Investing in Our Future
The initial phase of our research began with user interviews, which quickly highlighted key goals and pain points for users. These were primarily centered around financial literacy and a lack of information about 529 plans and total costs of different types of education. Our users also expressed hesitancy both in asking for non-traditional gifts for their children in the form of donations as a parent, and making the decision to donate to a loved one over a traditional present.
Roughly half of our interviewees admitted to not considering themselves financially literate.
Our users sought transparency and security, knowing where their funds were going, and how they would be used.
When it came to gifting, users wanted the process to be quick, intuitive, and for a good cause.
Who Uses Pelican?
The insights gathered through user interviews helped shape characteristics of both parents and loved ones invested in the future of a child who will one day go to college. They provided valuable perspectives on the importance of education and long-term financial stability. With that information, along with some context done through a comparative analysis of other companies that already exist in the education finance space (which you can find by following this link,) we created two personas to design around. These personas were developed based on the understanding that individuals in our target audience share a common desire for both security and education when investing in their children and loved ones.
Pelican's Current State
As the visual design lead on this project, my initial thoughts and concerns with Pelican’s website centered around the existing information architecture and my struggle to differentiate between calls to action and what actually “belonged,” to account holders like Sam. As a team we discussed these concerns and ultimately decided that while the structure and frames that currently existed were functional and appropriately reflected Pelican’s branding, we needed to conduct a round of usability testing to identify pain points account holders struggled with to understand the current user journey.
Identifying the Problem
While it was clear that there was an IA problem with Pelican’s dashboard, it was difficult to pinpoint where it went wrong and what the best plan of attack was. We created a script and ran four usability tests that highlighted a typical first-time account creation scenario for someone like Sam and monitored how our users “favorited,” and recalled information throughout the process. Our goal for this phase of the project was to capture common patterns and roadblocks in the user journey, and pinpoint areas that needed immediate attention.
Users like Sam and Gene are invested in the future of their loved ones, and usability testing showed that they are seeking a more intuitive and secure way to navigate that experience through Pelican. It was our task to improve the dashboard experience so that it promotes an efficient and trustworthy experience for both account holders and loved ones who wish to support funding a child's education.
As expected, testing revealed some key insights. Pelican has an opportunity to guide the user’s financial literacy and cement their role in the user’s savings journey, which calls for more context and education throughout the account creation process. Pelican can also optimize user retention and conversion by creating a seamless and intuitive experience. Furthermore, the elimination of barriers to user adoption and ensuring key flows and functionality are highlighted accordingly would be crucial. These insights and analysis facilitated a much greater understanding of the user journey.
Designing for Our Future
With the insights garnered from usability testing and interviews, we identified two main challenges in Pelican's dashboard. Real-time educational context for informed decision-making during fund creation was a necessity highlighted in both our interview process and usability testing- all users expressed confusion in the goal setting portion of that process. Additionally, we introduced a new feature: personalized 'events' creation for generating funds on special occasions. This helped establish better information architecture across the site. We enhanced CTAs, search functionality, and improved the favoriting process, all while preserving Pelican's branding. The result? A seamless user experience, empowering users at every step.
Out With the Old
The client’s initial request was for a cleanup of the existing dashboard and an improvement of user flows. The existing design had plenty of space to incorporate educational elements that facilitate a more robust onboarding experience for new users, but there was a separate tab labeled “Education Fund,” that confused our users. It lumped the account holder’s education funds in with other funds from friends and family that they had saved, and ordered them alphabetically with no options to sort. This made for a difficult experience when users were tasked with finding a fund they had just created to share with friends and family. Brainstorming around how we could improve and fix this problem ultimately provided the solution to Pelican’s site architecture problems.
During our sketching and ideation process, I proposed to the group that instead of creating new navigation elements separating saved profiles for loved ones and account holders, that perhaps a more radical approach was needed. Having saved profiles and funds in one tab felt redundant with the favorite feature that already existed, so I proposed removing this Education Fund tab and nesting the Pelican account holders funds on the home dashboard page. This allowed for the new feature- My Events, which would allow users to set short term fundraising goals for milestones in a loved one’s life that would then funnel into the main account. Parents and loved ones could share links to fundraise for birthdays and graduations in the short term, while still managing their account longterm from the home portion of the dashboard.
Heuristics and the Back Button
The "My Events" feature also owes it’s existence to an extensive heuristic evaluation. As the visual design lead, I insisted on conducting an evaluation to understand our core redesign needs. As a result, both usability testing and the heuristic evaluation revealed many key issues with the existing design, such as a lack of edit or backtrack options. We addressed this by introducing a back button and edit functionality in the My Events flow. This addition proved successful in our second round of usability testing and was implemented throughout the website. Additionally, we improved user communication by using color fill to indicate completed forms, which we identified as missing during the evaluation.
Improving Onboarding
With the more forgiving user-flow from the “My Events,” tab, there was now a more intuitive structure in place to improve the onboarding experience. This allowed for an opportunity to provide the educational context and desired financial literacy highlighted in our initial interviews. The initial flow had a slider with confusing terms like “Just Getting Started,” and “Sky’s the Limit!” as reference points for savings goals. Our new onboarding and account creation experience addressed these flaws by providing options for public and private universities, with context and cost for each, and also provided other 529-eligible costs to consider. The redesign also features a link to learn more about costs and ways to save for college using a 529 plan.
Searching for More
With the dashboard’s information architechture improved, the next focus was the improvement of the gift giving experience. The original search experience was too ambiguous, and the dropdown/suggestions were confusing. With no CTAs in the old search window, it was a struggle for users to find the profile they were looking for. None of our users found it on their first try, and half failed the task completely. To solve this, more fields were added with clear instructions and a “Search,” button. I also made a heart icon for favoriting a profile. This proved to be more intuitive, it spoke a language to the user that they already understood. Our second round of usability testing showed a first-time success for all users.
Special Delivery!
Our client requested a redesign of their dashboard to improve user experience and provide a more intuitive interface for their customers. Over the course of a two week sprint, our team took on the challenge and successfully revamped the dashboard by improving site heuristics, streamlining navigation, and integrating new features such as the My Events flow and a revitalized searching and gifting experience. The redesigned dashboard (which is available as a Figma prototype here,) now offers enhanced usability, allowing Pelican's users to easily access and manage their information with greater efficiency and satisfaction.