Re-designing the
Toast Capital loan tool

[ROLE]

Product Design Intern

[CREDITS]

Manager - Lisa Agustin
Product Designer - SooHo Choi
Sr. Product Manager - Lauren Folk
Sr. Product Designer - Martin Reilly
Sr. Researcher - Sabina Cao

[ABOUT]

Toast is a cloud-based restaurant management software company that provides an all-in-one point of sale system that helps restaurants improve operations, increase sales, and enhance guest experiences.

[background]

what i worked on

As part of my internship, I worked with Toast on the Fintech team where I supported senior designers on my team in multiple projects, such as Toast Capital loans, payments and financial reports dashboard, and the mobile checkout experience.

I closely collaborated with the Product Manager, Designer, and Engineering throughout the entire process.

my responsibilities

- Co-led the design process with senior designers
- Produce a high-fidelity, clickable prototype.
- Supported user research through collaborating on research plans and iterative usability testing.

[context]

what is toast capital?

I dived into an ongoing redesign of a loan tool and dashboard for Toast Capital–the team that generates the 3rd-most revenue company-wide. This tool is used by over thousands of restaurants to help fund and power restaurants.

[problem]

Currently, only 1% of Toast customers are enrolled in Toast Capital loans. Why could this be?
‍
1. Taking out a loan can be a confusing and overwhelming process due to financial jargon being inaccessible to those who aren’t as familiar with financial terms.
‍
2. It is difficult to see which loan option or term is best fit for the customer’s needs and therefore discourages the customer from choosing any option.
‍

[problem statement]

How might we make Pre-Qualified offers easier to understand and digest as someone not familiar with our product?

[solution]

To create scalable loan tool that allows our customers to customize a loan option and easily view different loan offer outcomes in order to help them decide on a loan that’s best suited to their needs

[hypothesis]

1. By offering flexible and customizable loan options, customers will be more inclined to take out a loan that aligns with their needs and at the comfort of their restaurant's health.
‍
2. By offering educational material and financial terms that are familiar, it will help them make decisions to get a loan.

[the process]

research

Prior to hopping on this project, the Capital team sent out a survey to Toast customers. After reading the results, I found these key themes:

1. Unfamiliarity with Toast Capital is the #1 reason why non-converters haven't applied yet.

2. There are 3 main concerns when it comes to applying for a loan: Product Fit, Familiarity, Financial Literacy.

competitive examples

I looked at different competitors who offered loan tools to see which sliders are most important in helping a customer make a decision, and to see any patterns that exist.

design sprint

With the engineering team, we did Crazy 8 sketches to come up with these most voted on ideas. Some features that stood out to the team included:
‍
1. The amount of control we wanted to give to the user for the scale and the different parameters
they can control.

2. What resources we could give to help the user build trust and familiarity with Toast Capital.

final sketch

I baked the most voted on ideas into a final sketch.

One of the biggest decisions made during this step was to leverage the level of control. We wanted the user to play around with certain parameters without being overwhelmed with how much they could play with.

Another big decision was where to place the value props without overshadowing the scalable tool as the CTA.

usability testing final prototypes

We conducted usability testing through the UserTesting platform.

WHY? : To validate if customers are able to understand how to craft their loan offers and what actions need to be taken to move forward, and to gauge the level of 5 value props content give customers enough confidence to see pre-qualified offers.

HOW? : Created an unsupervised usability testing plan with our UX Researcher and Sr. Product Designer that would ask subjects to go through the first iteration of our prototype.

testing value propositions

testing disabled states

testing re-finance page

[conclusion]

what i learned

During my 3 months at Toast, I was given much freedom over what I wanted to learn and was given an environment where I got to own my work from start to finish, with the help of the huge support system that my team gave me. Here are some takeaways from my experience:

✸ work hard to know what you don't know #AlwaysBeHungry

One of my goals for this internship was to figure out what my ideal work would consist of. In order to figure this out, I set up multiple weekly 1:1s with designers, researchers, managers, and engineers to learn more about them, the decisions that led them to their careers, and what their daily tasks are like. I would ask them about opportunities where I could try out different things or shadow meetings which eventually led me to work on projects outside of my main scope and learn more about the direction that I want my career to go in.

✸ whipping out the w.i.p. #OneTeam

Initially, I was intimidated by design reviews and was under the impression that I should present polished work during these critique sessions. I soon realized how important collaboration is regardless of what step I’m at in my design process. I realized that having constant feedback on my work even in its bare bones state was super valuable and helpful to me in creating action items in the right direction.