Feature Solution Design
A user-centered, automated solution for managing legal entity changes
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Year2022
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RoleProduct Development & Design
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Website
Introduction & background
In the start-up phase, the company focused on providing loans to small entrepreneurs, specifically self-employed individuals without employees. As these businesses grew, their legal entities evolved, leading to complexities in managing these changes. Initially, there was no automated process to handle legal entity changes, which was manageable with a few clients. However, as the number of clients increased in the scale-up phase, it became critical to address this issue to avoid operational inefficiencies and potential risks.
Objective
Create a user-centered, automated solution for managing legal entity changes, addressing various entity types, ensuring regulatory compliance, and integrating seamlessly with existing systems. The solution aimed to enhance efficiency, reduce manual intervention, and support clients' business growth through iterative improvements based on user feedback.
Stakeholders:
UX Research
Product (Stream) Teams
Engineering Teams
Customer Service
Project Scope and Challenges
The project involved developing an automated solution to manage clients' legal entity changes, including solo proprietorships, private limited companies, partnerships, and general partnerships. It required integrating information from multiple third-party systems, ensuring compliance with risk and regulatory requirements, and handling changes in directors, shareholders, and signatories. The project aimed to streamline processes, reduce manual effort, and maintain clients' loan and credit eligibility, emphasizing cross-functional collaboration and iterative user testing for continuous improvement.
Key Considerations
Change of Directors and Shareholders
Changes in legal entities could involve changes in directors and shareholders, adding complexity.
Risk & Compliance
Different legal entity states have varying regulations, impacting risk and compliance requirements.
Third-Party Information
The complexity increased due to information coming from third parties, which could not be edited via our platform, introducing legal and financial risks.
Loan and Credit Impact
Changes in directors and shareholders could affect a company's eligibility for loans or credit.
Signatories
All shareholders, directors, and their spouses (if legally responsible) needed to sign off on changes, adding another layer of complexity.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Given the complexity and the insights gathered, we decided to develop an MVP version of the solution. The MVP focused on key functionalities, allowing us to test with users, gather feedback, and make necessary improvements. This approach ensured that we learned and iterated on the feature based on real user interactions.
My role and responsibilities
As the Product Design Lead, I played a pivotal role in the development of the Legal Entity Change feature, ensuring a user-centered approach while aligning with business and technical requirements:
Research and Exploration
- Approach Analysis:Conducted thorough research on different approaches to handling legal entity changes.
- User Insights:Collaborated with the UX researcher and Customer Service to gather comprehensive user insights, ensuring the solution addressed real user needs.
Stakeholder Alignment
Refinement Sessions: Organized and led multiple refinement sessions with stakeholders to understand the complexities of the systems involved and how they could be integrated with user needs.
Collaborative Workshops:Facilitated workshops with BAs, product teams, and engineers to brainstorm potential solutions and assess their feasibility.
Design and Prototyping
User Flows: Developed detailed user flows that mapped out the entire process of changing legal entities, ensuring a seamless user experience.
Wireframes: Created wireframes to visualize the proposed solution and gather early feedback from stakeholders.
High-Fidelity Screens:b> Designed high-fidelity screens that reflected the final look and feel of the solution.
Prototyping: Built interactive prototypes to allow the UX researcher to test the solution with users and gather actionable feedback.
Approach
Alignment Sessions
We conducted multiple alignment sessions with key stakeholders to define a clear scope. The sessions were crucial for understanding the intricacies of each legal entity type and the corresponding internal and external processes involved. The sessions board (refer to the attached document) highlights the depth and breadth of discussions and decisions made.
Exploration and Solution Design
Collaborative exploration
During the collaborative exploration phase, we conducted workshops with business analysts, UX researchers, product teams, engineers, and customer service representatives to brainstorm potential solutions and understand the complexities involved. We gathered user insights to ensure the solution would meet their needs and address pain points effectively. The engineering team assessed the technical feasibility of proposed solutions, ensuring they could be implemented within the existing system architecture. Additionally, we consulted with compliance teams to ensure the solutions would meet all relevant legal and regulatory requirements. This collaborative effort allowed us to define a clear and feasible scope, prioritize features for the MVP, and ensure a user-centered, compliant solution.
- BA Analysis: Detailed analysis of business requirements and regulatory implications.
- UX Research: User interviews and usability testing to understand user needs and pain points.
- Product Teams: Brainstorming sessions to explore potential solutions.
- Engineering: Technical feasibility assessments and prototyping.
Solution Scenarios
We explored multiple scenarios, considering both scaling up and scaling down options. Key scenarios included:
- Automating the change of legal entity process.
- Streamlining the onboarding process for new legal entities.
- Ensuring seamless data transition between old and new legal entities.
- Maintaining compliance with regulatory standards.
Solution Development
User-Centered Design
We adopted a user-centered design approach, ensuring that the solution met user needs effectively. This involved creating UI screens that were tested with users to gather feedback and make iterative improvements. Thereby, as Product Design Lead I'm the advocate of the user and to make sure we'll never forget the most important stakeholder I always put an empty chair in a meeting (even it's online!) which represents the user.
Implementation
The final solution integrated multiple systems and processes, automating the legal entity change process. Key features included:
- Automated workflows for different legal entity types.
- Integration with regulatory databases to ensure compliance.
- User-friendly interface for clients to update their legal entity information.
- Real-time notifications for changes in directors and shareholders.
- Comprehensive signing process ensuring all required parties (shareholders, directors, and their spouses) sign off on changes.
Results & Learnings
The Legal Entity Change feature development project was a complex but rewarding endeavor. By aligning closely with stakeholders and adopting a user-centered approach, we delivered a solution that not only met business and regulatory requirements but also significantly enhanced the user experience. Developing an MVP allowed us to test and iterate on the solution, ensuring it met user needs effectively. This project underscores the importance of cross-functional collaboration and thorough exploration in building effective solutions in a rapidly scaling environment.
Key outcomes
Efficiency: Significant reduction in manual effort and time required to manage legal entity changes.
Compliance: Enhanced compliance with regulatory requirements, reducing risk.
User Satisfaction: Positive feedback from clients on the ease of use and transparency of the new system.
This project provided invaluable learnings on managing complex feature development in a scaling environment. One of the key insights was navigating the complexity of integrating information from various systems, each with its own requirements and constraints. Coordinating with a large number of stakeholders, including business analysts, UX researchers, product teams, engineers, and customer service, was crucial to align on the diverse and sometimes conflicting requirements. The project underscored the importance of user testing; gathering continuous feedback from users was essential to refining and improving the solution iteratively. By developing an MVP and testing it with real users, we could identify pain points and areas for enhancement, ensuring that the final feature was both user-centric and compliant with regulatory standards. This experience highlighted the necessity of cross-functional collaboration, thorough research, and continuous iteration to successfully deliver a complex and impactful solution.