Onboarding experience

PEXA is an e-conveyancing platform that lets you settle property transactions online.

Overview

Buying or selling a home is a personal experience and can be highly stressful. Conveyancers or solicitors (referred to as ‘members’ in PEXA) representing their clients are often the middlemen in property transactions. This project involved broadly looking at the entire PEXA platform to discover how we might be able to improve the experience for them.

Challenge

To understand the key issues members are experiencing when using PEXA Exchange. Using applied research, provide some recommendations to solve the problem.

The challenge to improve the entire platform for all users (members and financial institutions) was very broad so I decided to narrow it down to identifying members’ main pain points when using PEXA.

Client
PEXA

Role
UX research
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Collaboration
Lea

Duration
May 2021 - 2 weeks

Tools
Excel, Figma, Whiteboard

I first heard about Nextdoor from my mom, who had made an off-handed remark about seeing a neighbor's post about rattlesnakes in the area. After asking her more about Nextdoor, I was intrigued — I loved the idea of being able to connect with and help out neighbors. However, after exploring the app myself, I noticed some problems with the visual design and user experience that could hinder the user, making Nextdoor less accessible.

Background

This research was initiated based on an understanding that users are experiencing a variety of in-platform issues and we want to fix these issues so they can enjoy a better experience.

Users are experiencing a variety of issues and we want to fix it for them so they have a better experience.

Objectives

To identifying key pain points users are experiencing when using the platform.
Uncover insightful behaviour of user’s

The research process

To understand the problem a little bit better, I decided to narrow down the scope of the research

Competitive analysis
Website heuristic evaluation
Task flow mapping

Research methods

This research was initiated based on a general understanding that we have many issues in the platform and we want to improve the experience but we don’t know where to focus on.

Users are experiencing a variety of issues and we want to fix it for them so they have a better experience.

Pain points

Multiple external touchpoints
Poor information architecture
Multiple passwords
Poor transparency

From my user research, I noticed that many users complained about unwanted content and the cluttered nature of the newsfeed, which made it difficult to navigate through the app. Additionally, there were some things that I observed about the interface when I first looked through it that I thought could be improved.

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2. Unaccessible for Older Neighbors

For older users like Steven, as mentioned above, using Nextdoor must be difficult. As their vision naturally worsens with old age, the small font size used on the mobile application is difficult to read. Additionally, it is harder to discern smaller details such as the bolding of the subject line at the start of posts, where the post starts and ends, and more.

3. Complicated Information Architecture

From talking to Nextdoor users, many reported that they felt that the app was disorganized. To visualize the current organization of the app, I decided to make an information architecture diagram. Just at a glance, without even zooming in to read the text, one can observe the disorganized nature of Nextdoor's IA. Countless kinds of posts are placed in the feed with no rhyme or reason.

4. Unwelcoming Design

One conversation with my mom stood out to me. While interviewing her, I asked her if she actually felt connected to the community, which is Nextdoor's ultimate goal. She told me that while she did learn a lot from our neighbors, the design of the app did not play a part in making her feel welcome and part of a community.

User feedback

After exporting the user feedback from Medallia, I saw that the feedback was categorised by topics: general, digital certificate, practitioner, banks, other, and system errors. I decided to break down the feedback into periods and extract an average - 3 years, 12 months, 3 months to identify any spikes in any categories. If a spike was present, it could indicate that a new feature or change may have caused additional noise.

However, since there were no spikes, I based my research on the last 3 months and narrowed down the data to the first 20 comments from each category to get a spread across different categories. I then used affinity mapping to categorise the feedback into themes. It became apparent that feedback related to delayed settlement caused many members frustration. Although the reason for delayed settlement varied, a pattern stood out that banks were often the ones who delayed settlement.

User interviews

To dive a bit deeper, I listened to 11 recorded customer journey mapping user interviews conducted by a third-party agency, Transpire. The user interviews were roughly split evenly as large firms and small firms.

Again, a similar pattern emerged in the user interview. it was apparent to me that the thing that commonly occurred is

selected the first 20 comments in each category (banks, general, practitioners, system errors, and digital certificates) and used affinity mapping to categorize the comments into themes.

I also spoke to the Member Experience team to ask about their

After consolidating the feedback from Medallia and the user interviews into the affinity map,

It became apparent that feedback related to delayed settlement caused many members frustration.

Insights

From my user research, three main points stood out to me:
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1. Many lack an explicit source of motivation, either intrinsic or external, that is necessary to maintain productivity levels.
‍Most people find that they tend to complete tasks sporadically, getting spurts of motivation from random and changing sources in their lives.
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2. To-do lists, priority-ranked, are a popular method.
‍The majority of our research participants reported that they used daily to-do lists, whether it be digital or physical, to write down tasks and goals. Many reported feelings of satisfaction in crossing off items or checking boxes.

3. Accountability from friends (societal pressure) can serve as a motivational push to complete tasks.
‍Some feel pressure to accomplish goals after hearing about the productivity of others, while some get a push from sharing goals with friends and having them check-up on them.

Designs

/ Information architecture

There are two types of users in PEXA Exchange: Practitioners/Solicitors and Financial Institutes. who also may have goals of their own. Thus, we decided to design two main pages — the user's goals and partners' goals — and also the flow of creating a goal. To start, we laid out the IA to align ourselves with the structure of the product.

/ Mockups

After consolidating the feedback from both sources into the affinity map,