UI/UX + Mobile Product Design + User Research + Design Systems

Honeycomb Credit’s 🐝 newly launched mobile app reimagines the investment experience in small businesses, empowering investors with greater convenience.

Timeline —

Summer 2024 (2 months)

Role —

User Experience Intern
Mobile Product Design
Visual UI, Design Systems
User Testing

Tools —

Figma
PostHog
Typeform

Team —

Director of Product: Joe Lipple

Featured in…

OVERVIEW

Honeycomb Credit

A platform for anyone who wants to invest local, a first-of-its-kind community lending platform with over $27 million invested into small business across thousands of local investors. Put your money into vetted small businesses and support communities traditionally underserved by banks.

MY ROLE

User Experience Intern

As a User Experience intern, I worked closely with Honeycomb’s Head of Product to successfully launch their mobile investment platform by the end of my internship. I took the lead in designing key investment interfaces, formulating their design system, conceptualizing new user features, and strategizing comprehensive user testing sessions with early adopters to optimize the platform’s usability. I also played a pivotal role in visual QA testing the app before its soft launch in August 2024.

BACKGROUND

How does Honeycomb Credit work?

Small, local businesses run their investment offerings on Honeycomb Credit while receiving help from the team with marketing, funding, and everything in between. Everyday, local investors who love to engage with small businesses lend their enthusiasm and provide community-focused financial backing.

*Fun Fact: Most of Honeycomb Credit’s web app visitors were iPhone users, but the vast majority of power investors were Android users! Therefore, we designed for both :)

CONTEXT

Why develop a mobile app?

The main reason Honeycomb decided to go mobile was all about boosting revenue—specifically through repeat investments. Customer demand for a mobile app paired with the opportunity to create new, exciting ways to connect with small businesses made launching the app an obvious top priority for the Honeycomb team. And with a new digital platform came endless opportunities for me, the UX intern, to shape the way investors could stay engaged with their local community and their investor journey.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

A formidable investment platform better than the last

During my time as a UX intern, I designed several key pages for Honeycomb Credit’s mobile app including the portfolio screens, the initial log in and welcome screens, investment screens, and other essential investor features. In this case study, I’ll only be going in detail about the portfolio redesign.

Check out my designs in iOS and Android app stores starting Fall 2024!📲

PROBLEM SPACE

How can we design a robust and comprehensive mobile app that drives revenue by enhancing user-friendliness and encouraging repeat investments?

INITIAL SURVEY

Early Adopters Program

I started by design process by really getting to know Honeycomb’s users through casual conversations and structured interviews. I was able to do this by joining the Early Adopters Program, a strategic way to gather valuable feedback from diverse investor perspectives on the mobile app. Investors part of this program provide opportunities for the Honeycomb team to user test, evaluate new app features, and receive feedback on all aspects of the mobile user experience.

The initial survey that were sent out to the early adopters sought to gauge users’ mobile app expectations, feature preferences, and current use cases on Honeycomb’s website.

Browsing investment opportunities is the most frequent use of HC

Notifications about repayments, promotional events, investment updates, and local offering launches are highly desired

Paying with bank account is the most common payment option

Most investors (on avg.) use HC on a weekly basis

INITIAL SURVEY

Survey Insights

We gathered over 45 responses from early adopters through our initial discovery survey, which provided valuable insights into investors' preferred payment methods, notification preferences, usage patterns, and expectations for the mobile app.

As the primary goal of this survey was to understand user expectations, I continued to narrow the scope of the mobile app into a defined problem space prior to exploring solutions.

BETA PROTOTYPE

What do we have so far?

When I joined Honeycomb as their sole in-house designer, I was introduced to their off-shore development team that had already began designing the mobile app. This team helped Honeycomb with a starting point for their design system and created several pages that I redesigned later on with user feedback.

When I was presented with these mockups, I had to lead the team in one of two directions: 1) Iterate and polish the designs before showing the Early Adopters, or 2) Ask for feedback from Early Adopters before proceeding. I made the decision to go with the latter, heavily basing my decision on further exploring how their expectations would change when presented with an interactive prototype.

    1. Setting ground rules for discussion

    2. Explaining aggregate data from initial survey

    3. General impressions

      1. What are your initial thoughts/reactions?

      2. Why would they use an app instead of the website? What would you get from an app that you wouldn’t get from the website?

    1. Notifications

      1. Which one of these would you prefer: push notifications or SMS? Why do you feel this way? 

      2. What would you NOT want to be notified about? 

      3. Show mock-ups of notifications and ask for feedback 

    2. Investment process

      1. Have the user walkthrough what they would typically expect when investing

      2. Ask the entire group for their pros, cons, room for improvement

    3. User features (portfolio, Wallet) 

      1. Have the user walkthrough what they would typically expect looking for the portfolio information most important to them

      2. Ask the entire group for their pros, cons, room for improvement

    4. Navigating the “explore” page and offering pages (searching and filtering, readability) 

      1. Have the user walkthrough what they would typically expect looking for an offering to invest in, identifying information that is important to you, testing out searching and filtering  

      2. Impressions on map feature 

      3. Ask the entire group for their pros, cons, room for improvement

    1. Any final thoughts? 

    2. Explain next steps

      1. Explain upcoming prototype survey

      2. Soft launch

    3. Thank you! 

USER INTERVIEWS

How did we do it?

Honeycomb investors who joined the Early Adopters Program were granted an exclusive preview of the upcoming mobile app release. This allowed them to actively participate in feedback sessions and explore the prototype at their own pace, providing me valuable insight for the design process.

I conducted 4 think aloud sessions on 13 Honeycomb investors with varying levels of investment experience and familiarity with the platform. Later, I created semi-structured interview questions that consisted of three major sections: 1) Discussion 2) Prototype testing 3) Final thoughts.

USER INTERVIEWS

Key Takeaways

After conducting think alouds and user interviews on Honeycomb’s first mobile app prototype, I compiled and synthesized all user feedback to present to Honeycomb Credit’s CEO. In the presentation, I broke down the user feedback by providing an overview of the testing group, general observations, and feedback by app area. Since this was the first step in evaluating our prototype, I began thinking of new solutions for our problem areas afterwards.

PROTOTYPE SURVEY

A little taste of the app…

For early adopters who couldn't attend the user feedback sessions, we distributed prototype surveys which allowed them to explore the mobile app at their own pace and provide feedback. I created a prototype survey with 20 questions with questions similar to the semi-structured interview, though with more emphasis on receiving feedback by specific app area and why investors would use a HC mobile app over the website.

While I gathered valuable feedback on visual design aspects on each app section, I also gained deeper insights into investor needs, which centered primarily on portfolio tracking (repayments, investment status, etc.) and browsing campaigns.

PROTOTYPE SURVEY

Mobile investing can be scary

Interestingly, impressions towards investing on the mobile app did not surpass that of the website, despite more users feeling that the mobile app offered better navigation, ease of use, and greater potential for user engagement. Even more surprising were the preferences of investors who saw themselves browsing on the mobile app, then switching gears to their desktop or laptop to actually complete their investment.

It was clear from survey responses and interview feedback that mobile investments were not only unfamiliar, but also potentially inferior in terms of the perceived security and confidence investors felt when completing financial transactions.

From another power investor –

“…As a user I just generally prefer desktop interfaces for investing. The app as presented seemed to be about as good as I could imagine you making it so this is a user preference. I might use the app to monitor my portfolio and track any upcoming offerings, but I would finish the offering on my desktop.”

DESIGN PROBLEMS

User needs and goals

From all the insights formed from user research, I developed three major user need areas for the mobile app. For example, convenience in the app refers to its ability to be used on-the-go, offering ease of use for portable or time-sensitive investment decisions. Through our user discovery sessions, I learned that Honeycomb investors are diligent; they often browse offerings with multiple tabs open, carefully comparing their options. Therefore, the mobile app should cater to investors when they’re unable to make meticulous decisions, providing a seamless experience that supports quick, yet informed, investments.

DESIGN GOALS

Narrowing the scope

Where do I begin? Unconventionally, I joined the Honeycomb Credit team in a mix of their building and researching phases. As the sole UX team member, I led the design iteration and user testing processes when I joined.

Based on the product launch timeline and the OKRs set for the mobile app, I prioritized ideating and iterating on the features that Honeycomb investors found most valuable. Therefore, my primary focus during the internship was on designing the Portfolio page, streamlining the investment process, and enhancing offering browsing.

For this case study, I’ll only be walking through my design process for the portfolio redesign.

HOW CAN WE

How can we empower investors to easily track their investments and stay engaged with their progress?

PORTFOLIO - PROBLEM CONTEXT

Initial Prototype

Portfolio tracking was unanimously deemed the most important feature on the mobile app for HC investors across all feedback sessions. Unique to the mobile app, investors would be able to track their repayments in real-time, with more detailed breakdowns of their investments and features that reinforce HC’s credibility.

It was critical for the mobile Portfolio to be intuitive, transparent, and comprehensive.

PORTFOLIO - PROBLEM INSIGHTS

From the investors

Based on the feedback from the initial portfolio prototype, investors appreciate a detailed breakdown of their investments (debt and revenue share, equity SAFE convertible note), a summary of their investment history, and a repayment tracker. Here’s what a few investors had to say about the portfolio page:

“I need to know: original amt, amt paid, if finished, what my final return was, projected total potential by month into future.”

“Maybe adding when investments will be repaid on this page, instead of having to click on each investment to see that information.”

“The term "total value" felt confusing. I feel like "total invested" may be more clear.”

PORTFOLIO - COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

Looking at other investment platforms

As part of my research prior to redesigning, I looked at existing investment apps and their features. I compared our current designs to stock-focused apps like Robinhood and Dub and start-up/small business apps like SMBX, Republic, Kickstarter, Climatize, and Start Engine. This inspired me to incorporate relevant elements from both types of apps into our portfolio page while also identifying opportunities where our app could further excel. This was especially helpful for ideating return metrics and investment details.

PORTFOLIO - HIERARCHY

Information Organization

In my initial redesign ideas, I aimed to incorporate as much of the information investors requested as possible, based on their feedback. However, as seen in v.2, this approach resulted in a cluttered interface that made navigation difficult. Although my goal was to enable investors to easily access their total investments, repayments, and projected returns, the overemphasis on numerous details ultimately led to a confusing user experience where key information was difficult to locate.

PORTFOLIO - ITERATIONS

Focusing on features

After identifying the features that required redesign and improvement, I began iterating on key functionalities. A significant part of this process involved reorganizing feature cards on the same page to address the information clutter that was a major problem in the first two versions.

As you can see, I began grouping features such as the investment summary and investment history onto a single page, while dedicating entirely new pages to high-priority features such as the repayment schedule.

PORTFOLIO - NEW FEATURES

Details and Repayments

We wanted our mobile portfolio page to be easily understood by both power investors and new investors. To achieve this, we added an information button in the investment details section that clearly defines all key investment terms relevant to Honeycomb Credit.

Additionally, we introduced a repayment schedule feature designed to engage investors by highlighting their upcoming repayments and enabling them to track previous ones. By creating distinct sections for upcoming and past repayments, users can effortlessly monitor their investment activity and stay informed about their financial progress.

FINAL DESIGNS

And what else?

To keep this case study concise, I'll wrap up my explanations here. Given that my internship spanned two months, there’s so much more I wish I could share. But don’t worry! If you're interested in learning about the other projects I worked on at Honeycomb Credit or want a deeper dive into my thought process, feel free to reach out!

REFLECTION

Post-internship thoughts

Creating a new product from the ground up is scary, exhausting, and exhilarating. I am incredibly grateful to be trusted (especially as an intern) to work on consumer-facing projects with such a large scope. This was an incredible two months and I feel like I’ve grown so much as a new designer. Coming into my internship, I wanted to apply my understanding of HCI to real-world problems to solve design problems. I'm grateful I had the opportunity to do exactly that. 💛

⛳️ Checkpoints matter

At Honeycomb, I met with my supervisor almost daily and could ask questions whenever I felt stuck or needed guidance. This support was incredibly valuable to me, enabling me to iterate more quickly and boosting my overall productivity. It wasn’t just about design feedback—casual interactions with the Honeycomb team sparked ideas and inspiration that I might not have found elsewhere.

As I continue to explore my design and research interests, my experience at Honeycomb will continue to inspire me to create impactful digital experiences. I resonated so much with Honeycomb’s mission and I am incredibly grateful to have been a part of small business’ growth.

🍯 Product that makes a difference