Achieve Debt Tracker

2023-2024

Achieve’s debt tracker helps everyday Americans see their finances including spending, creditor accounts, payments, and credit score, all in one place.

Achieve helps thousands of Americans get out of debt with their financial solutions, but didn’t have a way to give people a single destination to see all their options all in one place, whether it’s just improving their financial fitness, checking out their available options, to signing up for a debt resolution program immediately.

I led the design team to bring the company’s products together and created the company’s next generation in consumer finance products.

Role Principal Product Designer
Deliverables Mobile first responsive app
UX design
UI design
Motion design
Player / coach mentorship
Storytelling
Usability testing
Interaction design
Low fidelity concepts
Prototyping
Duration 10 months

Background

Achieve (formerly Freedom Financial Network) is an industry leader in the debt resolution industry with more than 20 years of experience. The company has overhauled its digital presence to provide better financial tools to every American.

The company typically helps people get of debt through debt resolution programs, personal loans, and home loans, but not every person is confident in pursuing these options.

Achieve needed a new digital experience that combines all of a person’s finances into a single destination. Based on the information provided by a potential customer, Achieve is able to determine the best product fit for that customer’s unique circumstances and financial knowledge.

  • Most companies keep consumers in debt

  • Those companies usually don’t provide meaningful solutions to get out of debt

  • The Achieve debt tracker helps consumers better understand their debt so they can make smart decisions about it

I looked into consumer finance habits of Americans, how the finance industry takes advantage of people’s lack of financial knowledge, and what can be done to help.

Problems

  • Achieve traditionally follows an acquisition approach, focusing on enrollments and performance marketing strategies

  • The organization heavily invests in first time, single visit experiences without much consideration towards repeat visitors who need trust building and more information

  • The organization is siloed by teams often had duplicative solutions solving the same problem

  • Achieve’s financial products had never been combined into a single product which meant handling endless edge cases by becoming an expert in each of those products and their business rules.

Achieve’s existing way of showing financial information required lots of scrolling up and down to compare rows of disparate data. I designed financial information in a side by side format that was validated and much more preferred in usability testing.

Goals

  • Achieve needed a new product to grow its member base in an increasingly competitive personal finance industry.

  • Provide a new, compelling, personalized experience driving product enrollments

  • Help users understand Achieve is the premier company for everyday Americans get out of debt

  • Acquire new, low-cost visitors to Achieve

I conducted a competitive analysis to look for patterns of displaying data visualizations across other financial products, as well as in other industries to see what could help consumers get a handle of their finances in an easy fashion, always with accessibility in mind.

Process

  • Guided senior leadership to hone in on a vision that increases consumer opportunity, relationship building with prospective, uncertain consumers, and a destination where a prospective consumer can see all of their debts in one place.

  • The team evaluated comparable patterns across multiple industries, leveraging the knowledge of our research team, and created solutions that would help the average consumer get out of debt.

    • Or at the very least, make those consumers slightly smarter about their debt

  • Iterated from low fidelity concepts to high fidelity solutions, validated through regular usability testing with our target audience.

  • Success was measured through KPIs including

    • New account signups

    • Customers connecting their financial accounts to our debt tracker dashboard

    • Loan applications submitted

    • Debt program enrollments

Lots of ideas were evaluated through medium fidelity wireframes, allowing me to explore novel concepts and get validation through a combination of executive stakeholder feedback and usability testing.

Outcomes

  • The product launched on time and successfully to the market in April 2024

  • 288% month over month (MoM) weekly customer signups within the first quarter of MVP release

  • Five new customers within first six weeks of the MVP release

  • Created standardized screens / flows for simplified enrollment of new customers

  • Created standardized data visualization pattern for evaluating the debt resolution program against one’s actual finances

  • I moved to new projects after growing a junior product designer to take over the debt tracker project for new functionality and incremental improvements

Our product showed great promise in early analytics, giving Achieve a new vehicle to both bring all of their financial solutions into one product and a brand new offering to millions of Americans who need the help.