Case Study · LendingClub · 2018
I defined, validated, and shipped a next-generation membership experience for LendingClub's 5 million active customers. While I'm proud of the measurable impact this project had on business metrics — a 30% lift in loans issued to existing customers, and LendingClub's first $1B quarter for these types of loans — I'm especially proud of the impact this work had in informing and enabling a customer-focused strategy for LendingClub for 2019 and beyond.
LendingClub is a peer to peer lending marketplace that connects borrowers with investors. They are the market leader in personal loans, having issued more than $15 billion in loans since 2018.
To get to where the company was, acquisition and growth were historically the primary focus of the product team's efforts. The result was a transactional and impersonal post-issuance experience with limited value to users. This created a huge experience and business opportunity: build lasting relationships with customers and treat them less like visitors and more like real members.
Because this was a true redesign project, it was necessary to establish a baseline understanding of the experience as it existed. I led user testing sessions to identify opportunities and gaps, combining qualitative data with competitive analysis to inform cross-functional brainstorms and workshops with clear goals.
The workshops provided the inspiration and fuel for ideation. Sketching design ideas allowed me to quickly communicate concepts to stakeholders and get directional feedback early.
Many of the concepts reflected significant hurdles in technical capabilities. Since getting stakeholders excited is meaningless if the design isn't feasible to build, I took a practical north star approach: start with the "in a perfect world" design and value prop, then thoughtfully and incrementally build toward it.
Our value prop was a broad yet simple echo of our UX goals — empower members to continue on the right path financially after they take their first loan.
Before fully committing to the new direction, we needed to validate our assumptions about the structure of the experience and its impact on key metrics. Specifically, we needed to show that the new design didn't negatively impact loan performance.
We A/B tested a stripped-down version of the design — one our engineers could build in a single sprint — against the control experience. The hypothesis was that improving navigation, visual hierarchy, and surfacing oft-requested payment information would lift loan applications.
In reality, we saw a 15% lift in new loan applications. This success gave us the validation to continue building toward the north star.
15% lift in new loan applications — our success metric.
A/B test results validating the new design direction
By collaborating closely with engineering, we shipped incremental updates sprint by sprint to what was now gaining recognition internally as the new "Member Center" — a far cry from the transactional post-issuance experience I had inherited.
By cutting updates into customer segments, we eventually routed all LendingClub customers to the new Member Center, building in improvements along the way to make payments easier, support customization, and other quality-of-life improvements.
By designing the experience as a modular, scalable platform rather than a static account page, we enabled the plug-and-play testing required to learn fast and innovate.
Thanks to the streamlined user experience, experimentation capability, and flexibility of the new platform, loans issued to existing customers crossed $1 billion in a single quarter for the first time in LendingClub's history — representing 30% growth year over year.
We released LendingClub's first set of financial health tools and trackers onto the platform, and continued to validate new features and additions to the experience.
We also worked closely with other product teams to integrate new cross-product experiences, enabling other business units to take advantage of the new platform's capabilities.
The most satisfying part of this project wasn't the business metrics — it was proving that a customer-focused strategy and strong business results aren't at odds. They reinforce each other.