Human-centred design in FinTech: The case of designing a lending aggregator app for the KSA

Abstract

Access to relevant information when seeking to find competitive loan offers is a major challenge for most loan applicants. Within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), there are few services designed to support these processes. However, with the increased proliferation of mobile phones in the society, consumers are seeking more convenient ways to access credible and convenient information for making financial decisions. This study focuses on addressing this gap by proposing the development of an Android native loan aggregator application which leverages the modalities of a recommender system. The aim of this study was to investigate the process of searching for loan offers and the requirements of the pre-qualifying processes for loan applicants in addition to the requirements of the borrowers in the KSA for developing and evaluating a native prototype app. The study focused on how a mobile application could assist borrowers in identifying the most relevant loan offering while lenders could identify a better way of positioning their products for the borrowers. A user-centred design (UCD) was used for completing the project. Additionally, surveys, interviews, and hierarchical task analysis (HTA) involving brainstorming sessions were used for gathering the primary data from the target population. The surveys and interviews were conducted on 160 and 6 participants, respectively. The methodological triangulation was considered necessary for supporting the evaluation process and validating the findings. The data collection process revealed that among the borrowers, access to relevant information on loan offerings was a major challenge, whereas the lenders were more concerned with finding aspects which were valued more by the users in the delivery of loan offerings. On the basis of these findings, two personas were created, namely male and female, and subsequently, the relevant scenarios were established. The personas and scenarios informed the design of the loan aggregator application, which focused on delivering a solution to the difficulties experienced by the users. The design process involved both low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes prior to the development of the final application. In the process of examining the prototypes and the final product, user online navigation testing in addition to formal usability testing was conducted. The final version of the Android native app was evaluated by eight participants divided into two groups in two iterations through usability testing by using both quantitative and qualitative data metrics. There was mutual agreement among all the participants about the usefulness of the app, and they were satisfied with the version. Moreover, all the participants, even those who had loans before, indicated that the app was the first to be adapted in the KSA. Additionally, they reported that they would use the app the next time they needed to search and apply for a loan.