Increasing usability while cultivating user trust:
finEQUITY
Background
finEQUITY provides financial health resources to people impacted by incarceration as well as organizations serving returning citizens. After receiving negative user feedback, finEQUITY’s leaders were concerned that the organization’s website design hindered their mission to help formerly incarcerated individuals achieve financial wellness.
Indeed, my review of finEQUITY’s web metrics indicated that 78% of visitors left the website without visiting a second page. Collaborating with a team of designers, developers, and product managers, I set out to create a more inclusive and accessible design that increased conversions.
Fostering empathy for vulnerable populations
Given that few team members working on the website redesign had experience working with people impacted by the justice system, the research team set out to develop personas representing finEQUITY users.
Due to constraints in accessing members of this vulnerable population, we conducted secondary research to understand financial literacy, technology usage, and digital inequalities among community members impacted by incarceration. Critically, this research illustrated how time spent in prison correlates with people’s levels of technological and digital literacy, financial knowledge, and perceptions of control over personal finances.
To deconstruct some of the assumptions stakeholders had about users, I led the research team in crafting personas based on psychographic rather than demographic data. Instead of focusing on traits such as age or the socioeconomic status of users, our personas focused on attributes such as comfort with new technology, financial goals, and past experiences with financial institutions.
Outlining inclusive language practices
The finEQUITY website referred to formerly incarcerated populations as “justice-impacted.” Team members reworking the website’s copy recognized the need to use language that respected the experiences of formerly incarcerated individuals but wondered if formerly incarcerated people knew that 'justice-impacted’ referred to them. In fact, a past finEQUITY user had mentioned this exact issue:
To ensure team members were using respectful and inclusive language, I spearheaded a research program focused on the language around incarceration.
“If I'm recently released, I see that Reentry [tab], that's who I think I am…I still don't think most people would know that they're justice-impacted.”
- Past program participant
I led the research team in a review of academic articles, reports, and blog posts published by advocates for justice-system reform to track language considered outdated and language recommended by reform advocates. Our research outlined how stigmatizing language can influence public opinion of people impacted by the justice system and, in turn, public opinion of criminal justice reform. Following best practices established by justice system reform advocates, we compiled a list of language that focused on the person rather than their status.
This research not only informed the development of respectful, inclusive website copy, but also guided the language of internal team discussions and ensured that team members were not inadvertently perpetuating negative stereotypes about users. The impact of my leadership was not limited to a single design project but encompassed our team culture more broadly.
“Why are you helping me out? What's your goal, what's your mission? What's, you know, why are you doing this? I mean, you're complete strangers. And here we are on the phone talking. Why me, you know somebody who society really wants nothing to do with? Why are you here helping me? And what are your expectations from me? “
- Past program participant
Building user trust
After receiving negative feedback from project participants, finEQUITY leadership conducted several interviews with past participants.
My secondary analysis of these interviews highlighted that financial service organizations marketing to formerly incarcerated people can seem predatory and that these populations are often the target of advance fee scams. Users arriving at finEQUITY questioned if finEQUITY had ulterior motives.
“And so I was pretty desperate, you know, looking for insurance, and like saying just nobody would call or they would call, and you couldn't understand what they were saying, or it was some kind of a scam I got. I got hip to it pretty quick.”
- Past program participant
To understand how finEQUITY could better serve its users, I led the research team in a competitive analysis of other organizations that worked with people impacted by incarceration.
We concluded that peer organizations put significantly more effort into “peopling” their websites. Users saw the faces of the organizations’ employees and past customers. Users also had multiple opportunities to read stories highlighting why employees were dedicated to working with formerly incarcerated individuals as well as the success stories of past customers.
Including concise mission statements on the homepage, more comprehensive background information about the organization’s history and leaders in an About Us page, and customer testimonials and success metrics built credibility and feelings of trust among users.
Testing the solution
Earlier user interviews and heuristic evaluations highlighted challenges with identifying finEQUITY’s services and costs, website navigability, and overall brand credibility. After reworking the website’s navigation, copy, and content features, team members wanted to gauge how effectively the redesigned website addressed these issues. We designed a usability test meant to address the following questions:
Can users identify the services finEQUITY offers?
Does the new website navigation and copy fit with users’ mental models?
How trustworthy does finEQUITY feel to users?
After moderating usability testing sessions with 7 users, the research team delivered a report that outlined 8 critical findings including features that worked well, recommendations for quick wins, and strategic opportunities to further improve the website.