Auto loan worksheet and information
The CFPB created resources to educate the public about purchasing auto loans as part of its mission to “make markets for consumer financial products and services work for Americans.”
- Date: 2016
- Role: Lead product designer & co-UX researcher
- Stakeholders: Consumer Engagement office at the CFPB
- Audience: American consumers who are buying a car with an auto loan
- Problem: Buying a car is often are the second largest major financial purchase that a consumer will make in their life. The auto loan process can be complicated and daunting. The CFPB was interested in educating consumers about how to purchase auto loans.
Goals:
encourage consumers to shop around with confidence
Inform consumers about the auto loan process.
We created a worksheet to help users understand the parts of an auto loan, comparison shop, and be more prepared to walk into a dealership with confidence. Consumers physically take the paper form into the dealership to feel more confident about the process. The materials are focused on the total cost of the loan, instead of just the down payment. The sheet had to be simple and short enough that people could do the math at the dealership and wouldn't be intimidated by using the worksheet.
User Research
When starting the project, we led the subject matter experts through a user story dot voting exercise to help us understand and prioritize the needs of people using this product.
Worksheet Design
The auto loan worksheet includes simple definitions of key terms and steps in the process that can be confusing. Negotiable items were marked with visually distinctive icons to remind consumers of their potential flexibility. It was important that this worksheet be printable, as research suggests that looking and feeling prepared is critical in helping consumers find the right loan.
Webpage
We made a series of webpages organized by each step in the process: planning to shop, exploring loan choices, knowing what is negotiable and finishing the deal. Organizing the materials to fit the sequence of events facing consumers made them more useful and accessible to our target audience. We placed a heavy emphasis on creating materials that would meet consumers’ real-world needs, and breaking things up into easily understandable chunks.
I worked with a fellow designer to create the illustrations. Each of the bold circles conceptually ties together a car concept with the main point of the section.
Data visualization
An important visualization clearly illustrated that longer loans—while they may have smaller monthly payments—result in more interest paid over the loan’s lifetime.
Outcomes:
As a key part of creating these materials, we did user testing using a role-playing simulation where consumers had to navigate the car-buying process using the worksheet prototype. We made changes to the language, simplified the math, increased the prominence of the “negotiable” icon and simplified the directions. More testing could be done to see if these changes are working effectively for all consumers.
These materials, which launched in 2016, are an unbiased product in the marketplace to help consumers negotiate auto-loans from a position of knowledge and confidence.