Kiva Zip - Redesigning communication : Phase II

KIVA ZIP

Alagu Chockalingam Camille Grigsby Rocca Travis Kupp Lucy Sweeney Kristine Yuen

WEB EXPERIENCE REDESIGN AND APPROACH

KIVA ZIP+ CCA | SPRING 2016

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Leadership By Design A New User Experience

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Kiva Zip is growing program, launched by Kiva.org, that works to drive innovations in person-to-person lending.

Kiva Zip provides 0% interest loans for small businesses and entrepreneurs, offering financially excluded and underserved individuals and communities a chance to grow and thrive. These loans are ‘crowd-funded’ by individual lenders on the Kiva Zip website, connecting business owners with dozens of lenders, who act as financial supporters, cheerleaders and evangelists.

KIVA ZIP HAS A POWERFUL STORY. TOTAL LOANED

$10,641,805 SMALL BUSINESSES FUNDED

11,390

REPAYMENT RATE

88.9%

Helping borrowers understand their role in that story is crucial.

KIVA ZIP + CCA

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09

INTRODUCTION

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TOPIC & PROPOSITION

17

TEAM MEMBERS

35

APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY

27

DESIGN RESEARCH

41

INSIGHTS

49

DESIGN STRATEGY

57

DESIGN DELIVERABLES

75

DESIGN IMPLEMENTATION

79

CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

PROJECT II For our second project with Kiva Zip, we delivered a set of web redesign recommendations and strategic guidelines for improving the website.

As a team of MDes Interaction Design, Strategic Foresight MBA, and dual MFA Graphic Design and MBA students, we based these suggestions on deep user research conducted in the Fall term, during which we identified new borrowers’ information needs, and where Kiva Zip’s current messaging strategy (including on their web platform) was leading to pain points.

With the support and partnership of the leadership team at Kiva Zip, and other key stakeholders including interns and fellows, we worked to identify what was happening internally, that led to difficulties in transmitting important information externally.

Identifying challenge areas, and the equally great strengths of the team as well, allowed us to develop a design that was more than just a “pie in the sky” or a moon shot, but a team-building, fun-inciting goal to strive for — and the tools the Kiva team needs to succeed.

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TOPIC AND PROPOSITION

HOW MIGHT WE: How might we redesign the Kiva Zip website, incorporating fun and play into the design process?

KEY QUESTIONS: How will the integration of the Kiva.org and Kiva Zip websites impact the overall design?

How can we make the primary goal of each page clear?

How can we use existing borrowers to tell the Kiva Zip story?

How can we better prepare borrowers for the application process?

How can we build off of what already works on the site?

How might we set up the Kiva Zip team for success sustaining, and building on, the designs we present?

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TEAM MEMBERS

MEET THE TEAM We are students of the DMBA and M.Des program at CCA and came together to work with Kiva Zip as part of our Live-E class on communication.

Camille Grigsby-Rocca PAST AND CURRENT WORK EXPERIENCE: Camille received her Bachelor’s degree in History from Portland State University in 2012. She worked as a writer and researcher for magazines, brand strategy studios, creative agencies and digital advertising houses for several years, mostly on consumer and tech brands, before hitting the road in a search for greater “meaning.” She found it in the healthcare sector, where she had already worked with her family on global health and philanthropy projects for many years.

Camille hopes to continue her work in the clinical and consumer healthcare projects, using the skills she’s got and the skills she’s getting in her DMBA program to move ever further forward.

SKILLS AND STRENGTHS: Camille’s strengths include writing, from long-form editorial to shortand-snappy ad copy, research (and more research, research, research), editing, team-building, project management, mission and message building, and leading strategic discussions.

CULTURAL DIVERSITY/GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE: Camille is as west coast as they come. Brought up in Napa, California by a pair of winemaking doctors, she moved to Portland, Oregon, bastion of liberal values and obscenely long brunch lines, before making the recent move to San Francisco. She has spent time abroad in Europe, Asia, and on several trips to Malawi, where she worked with her family to establish the Palliative Care Association of Malawi, among other projects. It was on these trips that she was inspired to support low-resource, high-need areas with thoughtfully designed health and community-building services.

Travis Kupp PAST AND CURRENT WORK EXPERIENCE: After graduating from UC Davis with a Mechanical Engineering degree in 2009, Travis spent two years abroad in Brazil and returned to California in 2012. He then worked for the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) for 6 months before joining PG&E as an Engineer in Gas Transmission Engineering and Design. After a little more than a year of working on risk analysis and managing various projects, Travis moved on in 2013 to work on enterprise project governance. His interest in strategy development and futures thinking eventually led him to join the Utility Enterprise Strategy group in 2015, where he works today.

SKILLS AND STRENGTHS: Travis’ skills include strategy development, development and enforcement of governance, project management, and public speaking.

CULTURAL DIVERSITY/GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE: Travis is a native of the San Francisco East Bay, and lived in various cities in the state of Minas Gerais Brazil from 2010 to 2012. He has also traveled much of the United States, and visited Japan as a shortterm exchange student. A lover of all foods and languages, Travis speaks Portuguese as a second language and has dabbled in Spanish, French, German, and Japanese.

Alagu Chockalingam PAST AND CURRENT WORK EXPERIENCE: Alagu is a visual designer, over her short career (2-2.5yrs) she has worked in India and the Bay Area. In India she founded Ladyfingers co. a design collective with 3 friends from design school. At Ladyfingers she did a lot of work in the Education space.

SKILLS AND STRENGTHS: Alagu is great with adobe creative suite and really good at using limited resources to come up with an amazing solution that fits the ask.

Her portfolio includes logos, Illustration, Websites, Books, Game design and packaging. She enjoys Typography and likes to think of herself as a type geek.

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CULTURAL DIVERSITY/GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE: Alagu grew up in India, spent most of her childhood in Chennai a city in the south of India and travelled and worked in other major cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore learning new cultures and languages and people along the way. She also learnt the concept of ‘Glo-cal’ meant and how important it was. She moved to the Bay Area recently and enjoys the diverse and cultural place that it is.

Kristine Yuen PAST AND CURRENT WORK EXPERIENCE: For the last 5 years, Kristine has worked as a Senior Consultant at Deloitte Consulting within Deloitte Digital. She has worked with 12 different Fortune 500 companies in the retail, consumer and industrial products, healthcare, financial, and high-tech industries. Her focus is primarily in the technology space within mobile, eCommerce, and portals. She has project experience varying in different phases of the SDLC (software development lifecycle) such as strategy and planning, design, implementation, and testing. She has experience as a functional business analyst doing process design, functional requirements gathering, project management, and testing. She also has done user experience work around developing personas, building user journeys, conducting usability research, and creating wireframes, and visual designs. She was also formerly involved with campus recruiting, training initiatives, improving company diversity and inclusion efforts, and organizing community building events.

SKILLS AND STRENGTHS: Kristine’s background in business, techology, and design bring specific skills around leadership, digital strategy, technology implementation specifically for web and mobile platforms, user experience design, and public speaking.

CULTURAL DIVERSITY/GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE: Diversity is very important to her. Kristine’s background is Chinese American and she speaks Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese Chinese, and a little French.

In college, she studied abroad for a semester in Shanghai, China and Taipei, Taiwan. She has traveled to 36 different countries, including 3 countries for work. During college, she had two internships working in Shanghai, China and Guangzhou, China. Her line of work has her working with very diverse

backgrounds and people. Especially in technology, she frequently works with colleagues in India. At work, she was active with diversity initiatives such as creating a program to recruit diversity students from my alma mater Notre Dame, creating a diversity orientation program for the Midwest region, and helping the Asian Business Resource Group with recruiting and retention efforts. At school, she worked at the Office of Undergraduate Admissions for 3 years focusing on recruiting first generation, low income, and diversity students. She was also active with the Asian American Association, being the President my senior year. I created key programming to help diversity students learn how to network with business professionals and improve career prospects.

Lucy Sweeney PAST AND CURRENT WORK EXPERIENCE: Lucy previously worked as an Art Director and Graphic Designer at a large architecture firm throughout the Midwest. Her responsibilities included developing and designing various print and collateral, advertisements and communication pieces. She helped lead the company’s rebranding which included logo design, fresh copyright and messaging, and updated brand identity guidelines. She directed and styled photoshoots, and at times, photograph projects. Her greatest accomplishment in this role was developing, designing and building a completely new website for the company.

As of 6 months ago, she has been a self-employed Art Director and Graphic Designer. Her biggest client is the architecture firm she was previously employed at, but she currently has about a dozen clients that she is consistently doing work for.

SKILLS AND STRENGTHS: Ideation, Intellection, Input, Connectedness, Developer.

CULTURAL DIVERSITY/GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE: Lucy has always been influenced by a ‘Can-Do’ attitude or ‘Minnesota Nice’ expectation, so sometimes it is difficult for me to overcome that and truly focus on what her needs are. She is very well traveled and have experienced living in different cultures/geographic locations. She is also curious and empathetic towards other ways of life and people different from myself.

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APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) asks us to discover and articulate why people are proud to be affiliated with their organization

Our research and design process was guided by Appreciative Inquiry — with the understanding that Kiva’s leaders and team members want their organization to do purposeful and meaningful work, and that they want to, and are well equipped to, be powerful change agents when needed. Appreciative Inquiry (AI) asks us to discover and articulate why people are proud to be affiliated with their organization, and design new opportunities to leverage this pride, and to capitalize on existing strengths.

Acknowledging the current challenges with the website, our group has evaluated potential improvements using a design centric perspective. Our objective with this project was to focus on positive aspects of the existing site to make the initial user interaction friendly, fun, and intuitive.

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DESIGN RESEARCH

METHODOLOGY During the course of the 3 months, we conducted three design sprints.

For each design sprint we gathered research, mocked up wireframes, and conducted design reviews with key stakeholders. Each design review provided key insights on features and visuals that we incorporated into the next iteration of our design sprint.

DESIGN SPRINT

RESEARCH

WIREFRAMES

REVIEW

FUN AND PLAY Fun and play are integral with helping organizations stimulate creativity and productivity. By integrating these aspects into the workplace, fun and play can create the ability to build great rapport between coworkers and helping them take ownership of their work.

We integrated fun and play into our design methodology as a way to inspire others. In our wireframe reviews and meetings, we had goal of making the website a fun and approachable topic.

Our ultimate goal as a team was to make the website experience fun for borrowers visiting the Kiva site in order to encourage more conversions for loan applications.

PARTICIPANTS A critical part of leading a successful redesign effort of the website was getting the buy-in and participation of the right stakeholders and Kiva Zip team members.Various team members from Kiva provided insightful feedback into the process.

In particular, we had representation throughout the process from Jonny Price, Senior Director; Justin Renfro, Senior Program Manager; Claire Marsh, Associate Product Manager; Adam Kirk, Digital Marketing Manager; Suzanna Rush, Operations Manager; and additional fellows and interns.

TOOLKITS As part of our design research process, we used various toolkits to help with defining goals and priorities of the website and areas of improvement for the design. The specific tools we used were wireframes and prioritization maps.

WIREFRAMES We created high-fidelity mockups of what we envision for the new Kiva website. Wireframes were a great way to visually represent concepts and gather quick feedback about the structure, content, and visuals of the website.

PRIORITIZATION MAPS We used prioritization maps to help organize goals and priorities of the website. Prioritization maps help teams visualize their goals and help create agreement on the levels of different priorities.

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WIREFRAMES Sign In

ABOUT

BORROW

KIVA.ORG

LOG IN

A BO UT

LOANS FOR ENTREPRENEURS DOING AMAZING THINGS.

O UR P RO CESS

K I VA CO M MU N ITY

G E T S TA RTE D

LOANS FOR ENTREPRENEURS DOING AMAZING THINGS.

LEARN MORE G ET STA RT ED

0% Interest, No Fees.

The Kiva Zip community provides access to 0% interest loans and a

community passionate about helping entrepreneurs in the United States.

With over a million lenders, corporate sponsors, and local governments, our network will help you find the resources you need to grow your business.

0% Interest, No Fees.

Kiva provides 0% interest loans to new entrepreneurs and established small business owners in the United States. We aim to support the

entrepreneurial spirit, to stimulate new business activity, and help great ideas grow.

L EARN MO RE

About

Borrow

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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, an hinc nonumes sapientem usu, has veri dicunt ponderum et.

LE A R N M O RE >

G ET S TARTED >

Character Over Credit.

We believe your character matters more than your credit. Unlike other

lending platforms, we won’t approve or reject a loan based on your credit score. Instead, we measure the strength of your ties to your community, and your potential to successfully utilize and pay back the loan.

$11,727,155

H O W IT WO RKS

TO TAL L O ANED

72,255

11,565

0%

88.7%

INDIVIDUAL LENDERS

SMALL BUSINESSES FUNDED

INTEREST RATE

REPAYMENT RATE

Real People. Real Stories.

We work with over a million lenders, corporate sponsors, and local

governments who are passionate about supporting entrepreneurs like

HAV E Q UE ST I O NS? V I SI T O UR BO RRO W ER RESO U RC E CENT ER.

you. Together, we’ve funded more than XX loans, with a XX% repayment rate.

FOLLOW

C O N N EC T

L EA R N

READ OUR BLOG

BECOME A BORROWER

FAQs

KIVA.ORG

VIEW TRUSTEES

BORROWER RESOURCE CENTER

CONTACT US

BECOME A TRUSTEE

D IS C O V ER MO RE

TERMS OF USE PRIVACY POLICY

Calculate Your Loan Request.

Lending through Kiva Zip involves risk of principal loss. Neither Kiva Zip nor Kiva Zip trustees guarantee repayment or offer a financial return on your loan.

Copyright 2005 - 2016 Kiva. All rights reserved. Kiva is a U.S. 501(c)3 non-profit organization.

$0

$10,000

6 MONTHS

12 MONTHS

24 MONTHS

Monthly payments for a loan of $3,525 would be $587.50 for a period of 6 months

G ET STA RT ED

FEATURED PROJECT

THE KIVA STORY

MAKE A LOAN

Welcome.

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consetetur efficiendi et. Vel ne reque feugait, et denique singulis eum. Ne wisi similique duo, sed at etiam fuisset pertinacia, qui graece fabulas ad.

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L EARN MO RE

HAVE QUESTIONS? VISIT OUR BORROWER RESOURCE CENTER.

FO LLO W READ OUR BLOG

CONNECT MAKE A LOAN

LE A RN FAQs

KIVA.ORG

VIEW TRUSTEES

TERMS OF USE

CONTACT US

BECOME A TRUSTEE

PRIVACY POLICY

Lending through Kiva Zip involves risk of principal loss. Neither Kiva Zip nor Kiva Zip trustees guarantee repayment or offer a financial return on your loan.

Copyright 2005 - 2016 Kiva. All rights reserved. Kiva is a U.S. 501(c)3 non-profit organization.

PRIORITIZATION MAP

SHARED GOALS TEAM MASHUP

+

1 2 3 Express Yourself!

Sketch, Take Photos!

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WEBSITE AUDIT We conducted a thorough website audit to determine where Kiva Zip’s web content had room for improvement, and where navigation, content, and usability standards needed to follow standard web or design best practices.

Most of the following list of items have been incorporated into the final proposed designs.

BORROW PAGE COMPONENT

COMMENTS

Main Banner Image

Down arrow looks like a button. Clicking on it doesn't work.

The visual element is confusing.

Main Banner Copy

"Entrepreneurs Doing Amazing Things" ... does a taco truck count? What if they don't identify as "amazing" ?

Main Banner Copy

Difficult to read on the photo background

Apply Now Button

Drives to bottom of page which is a loan calculator, not an application. Action of the button is confusing.

1-5 Steps

No visual hierarchy of numbers. Content is off centered.

1-5 Steps

The list and content looks clickable, but isn't. Content should be updated to show after the brand value proposition

Old Landing Page

The old Kiva Zip landing page sometimes shows up and sometimes redirect to /borrows

Old Landing Page

On mobile devices, the old Kiva Zip landing page shows up

Newsletter Pop-Up

Shouldn't prompt people with asking to sign up for newsletter before knowing what it is

Newsletter Pop-Up

Not consistent with messaging or navigation

Farmer Image

Awkward sizing next to length of text to right (Character Over Credit section)

Loan Request Form

Unclear where "loan calculator" begins and "application" begins. Should there be a "not ready" button with more info?

What is the drop-off when people have to login or register?

Loan Request Form

No submit button to do the calculation until fields are completed.

There are no visual cues that users should be able to apply

Loan Request Form

Steps are misleading because the content isn't for applying for a loan, it leads users to a registration site

Copy Video

Too much text all over page, remove the text next to video

Borrow Page Link

Make borrow and resource center larger so it’s more obvious that is a link

Make larger and more visible

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ABOUT PAGE COMPONENT

COMMENTS

Main Banner Image

Down arrow looks like a button. Clicking on it doesn't work.

The visual element is confusing.

Main Banner Copy

“How it Works� text and button looks like it should be clickable, but isn't

Main Banner Copy

"Does my business need to be a nonprofit"? (I..e 100% social good)

Make A Loan Copy

Change content to sound more borrower-centric

Buttons

"Have an Impact" button and "Make a Loan" button lead to the loans page, but messaging is different

Bottom Headers and Links

Should not have giant links that say "Click Here" could instead embed links in text

Content

Content is all for lenders and not much for borrowers. Confusing content structure

FAQS PAGE COMPONENT

COMMENTS

Content

Need to comb through whole list and remove old content and/or rephrase existing content

Navigation

No top level navigation, hard to find page

List Anchors

Missing anchors to take you back to the top of a page

Organization of Content

User have to scroll back and forth, easy to lose placement in the list

BORROW PAGE COMPONENT

COMMENTS

Kiva Zip Follow Button "How It Works" and "About Page" Terms of Use Page Trustees Page https://zip.kiva.org/ trustees Home Page and Borrow

Not clear on the purpose of this link

Checkout

Link is confusing in terms of name - should be renamed to Give or make it relevant to loan specific

Logo Footer Footer Footer Footer

Size is too small and hard to see

Links are similarly named, but lead to the same page Content has not been updated since 2012 Include some borrower-oriented content at the top Actively connect borrowers with trustees by making this page easier to reach Leads to the same location

Change "Email Us" to "Contact Us" More links there, some should be elevated to top navigation "Make a Loan" term confusing Clean up links, remove that Kiva icon

OTHER COMPONENT

COMMENTS

Login Page

Need to display benefits of signing up for an account before asking users to sign up

Press Page

Lack of press page, and should have more things about the Kiva story

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KIVA CITY OAKLAND LAUNCH During our phase of work, we participated in the Kiva City launch for Oakland. As part of our design research, we took the opportunity to speak with various small business owners, fellows, and lenders.

The stories we gathered from our conversations helped us determine how to mold the Kiva Zip story into a compelling one for visitors of the new website. Through our designs, we wanted to convey the same experience of the powerful stories from Kiva City launch into the website experience

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WINE + WIREFRAMES In the spirit of our fun and play approach, we brought wine, snacks and our new design concepts to the Kiva Zip office.

We met with representatives from various levels and departments and together, we worked through an activity that allowed everyone to have a voice and express leadership in a supportive and organized (and fun) environment.

The main activity was structured in the following manner: WIREFRAMES AND PRIORITY MAPPING Pinned up new high-level designs for zip.kiva.org web pages. Next to each web page printout was a priority map that was organized from one to three. ‘One’ being top priorities, ‘two’ being medium priorities, and ‘three’ being lower priorities.

POST-ITS AND SHARPIES Each Kiva Zip attendee was given a stack of post-its and a sharpie. We asked them to review each proposed web page wireframe and write down items and content they deem vital to that page.

RANKINGS We then asked each person to rank what they’ve written down by placing their post-its in the ‘one’, ‘two’, or ‘three’ section next to each page based on how they would prioritize them.

DISCUSSION After everyone was able to get their post-its up, we led the Kiva Zip team to an open discussion about their prioritized items and contents for each web page.

Through this activity, we discovered new perspectives and ideas. Each participant had different experiences and interactions with the current website and therefore had different needs and concerns. Our key takeaway was to push the web designs further to create inspiration for the Kiva Zip team and borrowers. With that, we shifted our attitude from a logistical approach in creating a practical and functioning website to a more artistic approach in designing a beautiful, intelligent and simple zip.kiva.org concept.

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INSIGHTS

ORGANIZATIONAL HEALTH Kiva Zip — true to its branding — falls firmly into the Green Organization category, as defined by Frederic Laloux. A “Green” organization is community-driven, and values the opinion of all of its members.

At Kiva Zip, each member of the team takes on work duties, and contributes to strategy and implementation, far outside the scope of what someone with a similar job title would undertake at another organization.

This is typical of non-profits, and lives extremely large at Kiva.

While offering interns the opportunity to make substantial changes to the website made it possible to even have certain functions, like a Borrower’s Resource Hub, it now means that these powerful, public-facing tools are passed from hand to hand at an alarmingly regular rate, and intentions or relevant experience aside, without a deep understanding of the Kiva message and audience built up over time, this has led to some of the messaging and design clarity/continuity problems we see today.

We believe that as an organization, Kiva Zip can benefit from elements around efficiency, structure, and innovation to better streamline maintaining the website in the future.

ORGANIZATIONAL HEALTH RECOMMENDATIONS: + Hosting monthly meetings as a team to evaluate the existing website metrics and identifying potential areas of improvement + Prioritizing top needs around the website and making goals to achieve them in a timely manner by allocating the work amongst the team + Reducing the amount of people who can make changes to the website to one primary person and a secondary person as backup + Designating a primary point of content to review any content changes, including smaller changes such as the FAQs before publishing on the website + Holding regular design sprints such as the ones pioneered by Google Ventures to answer critical business questions through rapid design, prototyping, and testing ideas

DESIGN INSIGHTS

1 CONSISTENCY IS KEY: AND RIGHT NOW, THERE’S ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT. Currently the website lacks a standard structure in terms of messaging and page structure. This lack of consistency causes confusion to site visitors, which ultimately leads to additional manual work for the Kiva Zip team to address questions and assist borrowers through the website.

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2 INTEGRATION BETWEEN KIVA AND KIVA ZIP IS COMING. We recommend that Kiva “own” how it presents the Kiva Zip + Kiva story on its own messaging channels — including its website. Right now, inquiries into Kiva.org drive visitors directly to the website, where messaging is presented in the Kiva.org voice. By describing the relationship themselves, Kiva Zip has the opportunity to create a clear identity of who they are to the world.

3 EACH WEBPAGE SHOULD HAVE A CLEAR GOAL. Each webpage should have a clear goal so when a borrower lands on the page they are not confused about what that particular webpage is for. Every time there is a website update or a new page introduced, Kiva Zip should spend time evaluating what that goal is before implementation.

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4 USE EXISTING BORROWER EXPERIENCES TO TELL A STORY. A lot of people who decide to borrow through Kiva find out by word of mouth or through a successful borrower story. There’s a lot of media stories that are very compelling that should be harnessed more on the website.

5 PREPARE BORROWERS BEFORE ANY CALL TO ACTION. Expectation setting before collecting information, particularly in the loan application was an issue that caused a lot of drop off. We wanted to help borrowers follow through calls to action on the website by providing helpful information so they would not go into the process blindly.

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DESIGN STRATEGY

A set of strategic principles and priorities were followed as part of our strategy during the design process.

We have offered these to the team at Kiva Zip to help achieve their goals — with changing design and engineering resources, and many jumps and starts ahead in the organization’s continued growth, we hope how that having a foundational understanding of design and web best practices tailored for their needs will be a valuable tool.

VISUAL DESIGN USE TYPOGRAPHY HIERARCHY Websites should have a standard of 3 Headers and Body Text.

ESTABLISH RULES Establish rules and commit to them by following a web style guide.

Pick what your visual indicators will be — for buttons, for hyperlinks, etc. — and use those, and only those every time this instance occurs.

(One master button style, one master hyperlink style).

KEEP THE DESIGN SIMPLE Use strong visuals sparingly, users pay close attention to photos more than text and using too many or irrelevant ones can distract away from core messaging. It’s important to keep copy, images, and other content simple and clean.

USER EXPERIENCE KEEP CONSISTENCY Keep consistency in voice, consistency in tone, and consistency in descriptive language wherever possible. The borrower audience is varied in education level and language backgrounds, so keeping complex financial information clear, simple and streamlined is key.

SET PRIORITIES Decide what the primary goal of each page is (Drive to Application?

Contact us? Log In?) and let that inform your call to action strategy, and content hierarchy.

KEEP THE DESIGN SIMPLE Before you lead someone off your website, be very, very clear about why you are doing that (and sure it is the right move). I..e, to the Borrower’s Resource Hub, to a slideshare document, etc., every click you add between your user and your optimal call to action is a sharp decrease in likelihood that they will go where you want them to.

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WEB CONTENT KNOW YOUR VOICE Kiva Zip is not Kiva.org, and it is not Kickstarter, or Lending Club, or GoFundMe. Every Kiva Zip team member spends hours talking with borrowers on a regular basis — let those conversations inform how you present information, and how you present your own story on the website.

REPETITION IS IMPORTANT Repeating the same call to actions on one page multiple times (i.e., “Get Started”) is a compelling tool to drive clicks and conversation. If there is key information you want to share, i.e., “0% Interest,” repeat that several times throughout the website as well.

USING HEADERS Help users read content quickly by putting the most important information in the top and by using headers to break up paragraphs and sentences. Users spend an average of 15 seconds on a webpage.

CONCISE TEXT Text should be very short, and very clear. Find the absolute best, onbrand voice, shortest, most concise way to describe things, and use them everywhere.

PLACEMENT OF CONTENT Be aware of how much content you have behind your registration shield. Requiring users to begin an application is a compelling tool to get them “in the funnel,” but be sure you’re providing any important information before this as well.

PAGE PRIORITIZATION While some pages may have multiple Calls To Action (CTA), make sure to select the one per page that is most important, and tailor content and CTA placement accordingly. Including many different CTAs is not recommended (two or three is fine, but again, it should be clear which one is the priority). Repeating the same CTAs on one page multiple times (i.e., “Get Started”) is fine.

NAVIGATION AND INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE USE STRUCTURE When you organize information into a framework — for instance, the five-part “Borrower Onboarding” process we have presented here — repeat that framework elsewhere. When you describe what the onboarding process will be like anywhere else, repeat that framework.

INCLUDE EASY TO FIND NAVIGATIONAL ELEMENTS When filling out forms, it’s a best practice to include navigational elements to go back and forth, show progress, and have visual cues to know how much is left.

REPEAT FRAMEWORKS Repeating frameworks, like the five-part “Borrower Onboarding” process mentioned above, is crucial to “drive the message home,” especially for complicated messages like this one. Doing this creates well-equipped brand evangelists, guides users smoothly through the process, and keeps your human-interaction hours to the necessary high-touch, high-impact moments.

EDITING AND REVIEWING THE SITE HOLD REGULAR WEB AUDITS Have a designated person or persons conduct a thorough web audit at least once a month, to find broken links, outdated content.

HAVE A REVIEW PROCESS What must be changed quickly, and what can be batched with other changes and applied later? Keeping change events to a minimum helps the website change “owner” see how the web landscape is affected by every change, and where one may have a ripple effect on another.

MAKE CHANGES CONSISTENT ACROSS THE SITE AND OTHER PLATFORMS Changing any information or messaging framework that is repeated elsewhere. For instance, the “our process” 5-step framework.

Removing or changing this in the “Our Process” page, should be mirrored in the process it actually describes, and in upcoming emails and other materials.

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FUN & PLAY Kiva, a Green Organization, incorporates fun and play in a number of ways already.

The team itself is made of a group of passionate, proud, fun and funny leaders, with professionalism in spades and humor to spare too. Each one finds intense personal gratification in the work they do, and finds great meaning in the interpersonal interactions they have with borrowers. Over and over, we found proof that there was already a lot of fun in the Kiva Zip organization.

There was one place we couldn’t find it, though: on the website, or in any of the work that took place on it. Through our research, we discovered that the website was a long-term, low-grade problem, one just apparent enough to inspire anxiety and worry, but never acute enough to pull the full power of the Kiva team’s abilities over to solve it. From the outside, we knew the opportunity cost (and negative impact) of not putting their “best face forward” publicly was huge. But internally, it was the higher-touch, personal relationships that seemed more important on a daily basis, and provided the crucial positive feedback for the time and energy investments made that the website just … wasn’t.

To inspire a new sense of ownership, and a new outlook on the website (absolutely necessary to sustain positive changes in the longterm), we looked to include fun and play back in the world of the Kiva Zip website using the following measures: LOOPING THE ENTIRE TEAM, from interns to Senior Director, in on website meetings when appropriate. This offered interns the feedback and positive reinforcement they needed from upper management that the website was a priority and was worthy of solid, serious time investment.

WINE AND WIREFRAMES: we gathered the team together for a post-work workshop session, sharing snacks, wine, and a few hours of time to connect over the website, and to collaborate on improvements we could make, further inspiring a feeling of “ownership” over the website within the group.

OFFERED THE TEAM A “MOONSHOT.” There’s nothing exciting about an outdated, hard-to-use, and hard-to-fix website, and we noted a general lack of “inspiration” around the visual presentation of the website. With an updated, modern design recommendation, we saw the spark of excitement in the team leaders again. Being able to visualize a solution to a long-standing problem is a beautiful thing! (Just like our designs).

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DESIGN: FINAL DELIVERABLES

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DESIGN IMPLEMENTATION AND NEXT STEPS

Kiva Zip is coming up on a profound shift in the way their messaging reaches key audiences — for the first time, lenders and borrowers won’t share the same website, opening up a world of potential to better cater to the unique needs of borrowers.

With our design recommendations and strategy, we hope to help this process not just go smoothly, but ultimately be more successful.

Understanding the limited engineering and design resources available to the Kiva Zip team, we know that simply recommending that the team “implement and maintain our designs” won’t suffice. Instead, with our design deliverables and strategic recommendations, we attempted to capture the best practices and learnings that will equip the team to move steadily forward in this process, regardless of the technical resources they have to implement specific visual or UX features.

Our key recommendations for a successful implementation include: CENTRALIZE OWNERSHIP OF WEBSITE CHANGES. While temporary team members may be helpful for implementing changes once they have been approved, that approval should always lie with a permanent employee. Certain changes should be carefully considered, and implemented only when absolutely necessary, including: + Driving potential borrowers off the website to find new information (including to the Borrower’s Resource Hub). + Adding new modules or sections to a web page. + Adding a new Call To Action (CTA) to a web page that competes with the primary CTA. STRIVE FOR MESSAGING CONSISTENCY ACROSS WEB PAGES, AND ACROSS PLATFORMS. The most crucial parts of the borrower journey — like the steps in the new-borrower onboarding process — should be explained the same way every time. While it may be presented in shorter or longer versions, in visual interpretations or in writing, the core framework should always be the same.

STRIVE FOR VISUAL CONSISTENCY ACROSS WEB PAGES, AND ACROSS PLATFORMS. A button should always look like a button, and a hyperlink should always look like a hyperlink, adhering to the visual brand manual guidelines. We provided visual recommendations for these design elements as a starting point.

WEBSITE IS A PROFOUNDLY IMPORTANT PART OF THE KIVA MESSAGING TOOLKIT Most importantly, perhaps, we hope to impart on the Kiva team that the website is a profoundly important part of the Kiva messaging toolkit. For a team as competent, passionate, and agile as Kiva’s, stepby-step instructions for every eventuality simply aren’t necessary.

With the right toolkit, a visual design “moonshot” to strive for, and the crucial knowledge that the website is every bit as important as personal interactions for the long-term health and scalability of the project, there’s nothing they can’t accomplish.

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CONCLUSION

Kiva Zip has a powerful story — and now, a powerful platform to tell it on.

By cultivating a clear understanding of the internal capabilities, strengths, weaknesses, and group dynamics within the Kiva Zip team, we were able to tailor our design deliverables to a unique group of professionals. Most importantly, cultivating a fun and playful atmosphere around a website that had been a previously painful experience allowed us to receive “buy-in” to upcoming changes, and longterm maintenance, that we otherwise would not have had.

We would like to extend our gratitude to our partners at Kiva Zip, who shared their time and resources with us freely, and welcomed us into their world. The opportunity to participate in, and help support the important work the organization does was truly an honor.

We would also like to thank our professor, Sharon Green, for the encouragement, resources, and unbounded empathy that carried a classroom full of design students forward, and past the finish line.

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Prepared for Kiva Zip at California College of the Arts LEADERSHIP BY DESIGN WITH SHARON GREEN | SPRING, 2016

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