“Buy Now, Pay later” Shopping Payment Method — Minimum Viable Product Design
END-TO-END PRODUCT DESIGNER
About
The project at hand involved the comprehensive design and launch of a digital financial product. It originated from the idea of introducing a novel payment solution to the market that allows customers to buy on credit without the need for a credit card. This product provides a smooth and immediate credit access process, ultimately enhancing the overall shopping experience without introducing any unnecessary complexity.
Design Challenge
Conversion would be crucial in defining the new product, as those who would choose to use this payment method for the first time had to provide data to validate their financial profile. These actions added additional steps to complete the purchase, which often varies in length among different businesses.
At the same time, drop-offs in the process were the main concern for retailers. Frequently, they observed how shopping carts were abandoned. Any factor that could interfere with customer attention represented a risk that we had to consider in every decision.
Actions
My role as an end-to-end product designer for this product consisted of the following stages:
- Prototyping key interactions, mapping the variety of needs and requirements provided by the involved areas, to provide a visual reference point for recording adjustments to the strategy as it was being consolidated during our discussions.
- Identifying and documenting the needs of businesses with which we engaged due to their interest in the idea being developed and conducting a comprehensive analysis of e-commerce and payment methods in the market to define the scope of the new solution.
- With this new addition to the product portfolio, it was necessary to redesign interactive elements and promote the simplification of all our systems and processes.
- Consolidating the foundations for our own modular design language that would allow flexibility and scalability.
- Designing a new conversion flow with simple tasks and relevant information at each step to reduce the user’s cognitive load and increase the likelihood of completing the transaction smoothly.
Thoughts
This project marked my first experience into launching a technological product from scratch and actively participating in its post-launch strategy. It was a period of accelerated learning, and we witnessed exponential growth of the platform.
One of the most complex challenges was reconciling business needs with technical requirements without compromising the user experience’s fluidity. Often, this involved making decisions about what to include in the first version while keeping areas for improvement in mind for future iterations.
This experience provided valuable lessons on how to improve my working approach through critical thinking and observing a variety of contexts to empathize and act based on people’s relationships with their finances and shopping.
Thank you for taking the time to read this experience! 🤍
If you’d like to discuss this case further, let’s get in touch via LinkedIn.
— Hilde.
