Lendu product design
Better financing options for small businesses in Australia and New Zealand
Lendu is a business financing marketplace concept spun out of IAG’s Firemark Labs incubator.
Challenge
How might we improve business financing for small to medium-sized enterprises in Australia and New Zealand?
Objectives
Discover if there is an opportunity for IAG to disrupt business financing in Australia and New Zealand.
Develop a product concept and roadmap that demonstrates feasibility, viability and desirability.
Role
Lead Designer
When
2020, 4 months
Team
Venture Lead, 2 Venture Architects, Technology Lead, Graduate Designer (who I mentored).
Discovery
Interviewing small business owners to understand their business financing
Small-medium business owners feel neglected and misunderstood by banks.
Key raw notes from discovery interviews.
“They need to understand the volatility of the fruit market. When mangoes come in we go from $100k a week to $500-600k per week overnight.”
First concept test and pivot #1
Once we started showing concepts to business owners, we started hearing about their accountants.
Low fidelity prototypes for quick concept testing (created by our graduate designer, mentored by me).
“My accountant handles all of this, I’m not a finance person. I trust my accountant to advise.”
Building an understanding of the roles of accountants and brokers for small businesses
We ran more customer interviews, a survey, and then expression of interest testing via Facebook and LinkedIn.
I created a fake brand and ads to target our key audiences and gain registration of interest via Unbounce.
With insights building and and idea forming, I ran a vision workshop with the team
Screenshot from our vision workshop Miro board
We developed a lending marketplace concept and created prototypes to test the idea with accountants and brokers
Example screens from our interactive prototype testing.
Our insights led us to higher confidence and more detailed journey maps
Customer journeys into Lendu (we were mentored by a Lead Experience Designer to create these).
Outcomes
UI prototype
Product concept UI prototype ready to be iterated and refined with further testing and product definition
Brand blueprint
A foundation brand blueprint based off a competitor analysis and team workshop to define initial positioning and personality
Business case approval
The business case was presented to the board and approved for further funding and investigation.