Kiva User Research

Uncovering millennial perceptions of microfinance

Timeline
January 2020 - April 2020

Tools
FigJam
Qualtrics

Disciplines
Design research

Process
Stakeholder interviews
Ethnographic interviews
Usability testing
Affinity mapping
Journey mapping
Insight synthesis
Stakeholder presentation
Hand-off

Kiva wanted to understand how to penetrate the millennial market.

I worked on a mixed-methods research project for 3 months, delivering 25 qualitative insights for the Product team on user behavior and product strategy. 

context

Kiva is a non-profit organization that allows people to lend money to low-income entrepreneurs and students in 77 countries. Kiva's mission is "to expand financial access to help underserved communities thrive." Lenders on Kiva can make one-time contributions, or contribute monthly via a subscription called "Monthly Good."

Through Berkeley Innovation ↗, I had the opportunity to work alongside the Head of Design, Oliver Farshi, and a team of four other consultants (Pranavi Javangula, Noe Abe, Chibuzor Obiorah, and Yuhan Xie) to tackle this overarching business question:

How might we encourage more people to do good with Kiva?

Stakeholder interviews

But, what exactly is Kiva asking us?

To better understand Kiva's design question, we performed generative research relevant to the problem space. We interviewed Henrique Saboia (VP of Growth) and Aaron Goldsmid (Chief Product Officer).

From these interviews, we learned that millennials represent an untapped market Kiva would like to explore. However, as with any demographic, millennials possess distinct preferences and opinions — including a general distrust for systems and desire for instant gratification.

Kiva also currently operates under two models: a one-time loan and a monthly contribution ("Monthly Good"). Kiva would like to understand how to convert users directly to a monthly subscription.

With a better understanding of Kiva's business situation and goals, we distilled the design prompt to the following question, which would guide the scope of our UX research project:

How might we encourage more millennials to use Kiva while improving the experience for existing users?

method 01: ethnography

Uncovering millennial’s motivations through ethnography

We sought to understand millennials' general motivations, perceptions, and opinions on social good, philanthropy, and microfinancing. 

research goal

How do millennials do good acts — particularly philanthropic acts of good — in their daily lives?

Methodology

To obtain diversity in responses, we interviewed millennials from four locations across the Bay Area: UC Berkeley, Salesforce Park, Lake Merritt, and the San Francisco City Hall.

Our interview questions and conversations sought to understand millennials' motivations and opinions on social good.

Here’s a few questions we asked:

→ Are there any particular organizations you'd be interested in giving to, either now or in the future?
→ When you try to do good, where do you usually go?
→ How do you feel about loaning money as opposed to donating it?

 
method 02: usability testing

How can we improve the experience?

To understand the second part of our problem statement ("improving the experience for existing users"), we conducted usability testing from 13 existing Kiva users. In this stage of research, we sought to understand this: 

research goal

How does the Kiva product experience enable or disincentive engagement for users?

Methodology

We also conducted usability testing with 16 millennials that hadn't used Kiva previously to better understand how the Kiva product experience enables or disincentives. engagement for millennials.

In both samples, we asked our participants to explore the landing page and make their first loan. 

journey map

With a better understanding of millennials’ needs, here’s what their journey interacting with Kiva might look like: 

insights

We synthesized our research into 25 actionable insights using affinity mapping. Here’s a few sample insights.

lightbulb People want to support causes that resonate with their personal experiences and values.

lightbulb Lenders value achieving milestones.

lightbulb People want to follow the story of a loan and engage with its direct impact.

 
Recommendations

With all this robust research, we had some recommendations for Kiva

We individually ideated design recommendations based on our insights, then synthesized our ideas into a list of design recommendations for Kiva. We segmented these recommendations into UI recommendations and products.

bolt Quick wins in the UI

We had some small but impactful quick wins for Kiva.

bolt More Exploratory Product Recommendations

But we also had some more blue-skies conceptual ideas for Kiva to consider, rooted in our research.

Imagining the onboarding experience

This wasn’t part of the scope of our research project, but I tinkered and made an onboarding flow concept for Kiva just for fun!

This prototype weaved together many research insights we uncovered: people's desire for transparency about how microfinancing works, explaining Kiva clearly and understandably, personalization capabilities, and the ability to support causes people resonate with.

And… I went on to actually ship an onboarding flow ↗ later that summer!

Reflection

This was my first foray into user experience, and I'm glad my first consulting case study involved UX research.

It was important that my first industry case study involved the essentials: understanding and empathizing with a user, learning how to conduct and collect legitimate UX research, and undertaking the time-consuming process of synthesis and distilling insights. The lessons I learned about UX research are invaluable.

Thank you to Oliver Farshi for being a great client and mentor for the team! I had a blast.