UX Design · User research · Product strategy · UI Design Launching a new savings product for Klarna
Co-lead cross-functional team to strategize and launch new savings product into the Klarna ecosystem in Germany.
Role
Senior Product Designer
Team
Product Manager, 4 Engineers, 2 Content Designers
Duration
8 months
The Situation
Klarna is a Buy New Pay Later company that historically built it’s business on shopping. When I joined in 2020, the company was shifting towards building out a larger suite of financial solutions for customers with the goal of supporting more holistic financial flexibility and control.
The Goals
Develop a product strategy that encourages Klarna customers to start and sustain a consistent savings habit.
Support the brand perception of Klarna as a hub for financial control and responsible spending.
Increase total deposits held in Klarna accounts.
Researching
1. Jumped into consumer trend reports, marketing research and competitive analysis that already been conducted and started to identify the gaps and unanswered questions.
2. Created a research plan, wrote an interview script, recruited participants and conducted 12 interviews over the course of two weeks.
Key research questionWhat really motivates people to want to save and what is preventing them from doing so successfully.
3. Documented and analyzed all the conversations, then put together a research summary to present to stakeholders and provide guidance for how the results would influence our team mission and roadmap.
Key research takeawayPeople save to feel safe and as that security increases they become inspired to save for other goals
Product journey pillars that we developed from the research and used as guidance throughout the rest of the project.
We purposefully wanted to stray away from creating personas based too much on demographics and focus on more behavioral personas that users from any variety of income levels and backgrounds could fit into.
Sprinting & Sketching
1. Developed and facilitated a off design-sprint with key stakeholders to shape the UI/UX vision for the product.
2. Established routine of monthly usability tests to validate design concepts with existing Klarna users.
3. Organized weekly design reviews with larger design team to ensure consistency with design system and adjacent products.
4. Developed JTPD alongside product manager and established criteria for three MVP launch stages.
Splash, burst or bloom?
As a part of the product strategy, I worked with German and English content designers to develop the name of the product and key features. The primary market was Germany but we needed naming that could also easily localize to 10+ other markets.
Task
Choose a memorable product name that clearly communicated savings but was easily differentiated from the other Klarna banking products
Develop memorable and catchy names for the automated transfer features
Ensure clarity across 14 languages supported by the app with potential for additional market localization
Actions
Participated in weekly brainstorming and feedback sessions.
Developed wireframes with the naming in context to support communication to stakeholders
Organized Maze research and developed summary reports.
Designing & Building
As the project moved forward, we gradually expanded our team by hiring an engineering manager and three mid-level to senior engineers. I worked closely with the team to begin to move towards implementation.
1. Designed and delivered tech specs for full account creation and management experience for mobile/web.
2. Collaborated in agile sprints, working closely with engineers to quickly and efficiently resolve blockers and ensure successful implementation.
3. Coordinated and collaborated with legal and back-office operations teams to ensure legal compliance and safe banking practices.
4. Performed weekly design QA and release candidate validation.
Key moments of the final experience
🏁 Support a strong start
Provided users with popular goals as inspiration and focused on bright, positive imagery to encourage them to get started.
🍏 Build a habit
Developed 10 unique automated transfers, ranging from practical to pushy (i.e. Roll the dice which randomly pulls money from main account to savings).
🎉 Celebrate & elevate milestones
Goal tracking and progress encouragement to keep users engaged and motivated along the journey.
Results
4,000 new Pool accounts opened in the first 3 months
70% increase in volume of incoming monthly transfers in first 6 months
€ 100+ million held in accounts, as of January 2024
Key learnings
People are imperfect and we should optimize for that
It was easy at many points during the project to idealize how our product would allow users to instantly become savings superstars when the reality was that savings can be messy and life happens. Leaning into this insight and being very grounded in our expectations resulted in an even more understandable and successful experience for the users.Keep product pillars present
I can sometimes be quite cynical about product principles as they are often labored over and then swiftly forgotten. For this project I purposefully kept the pillars as a part of every review and challenged the team to raise concerns if we ever felt that a particular feature or decision was deviating from what we had decided on from research.Content designers are magical
It was the first time I worked more closely with dedicated content designers and it was incredible how much richer the experience became as a result of these consistent conversations.
The team 💚
Niklas Eklund – Product Manager
Sean Pavlov – Senior Engineer
Swarup Karavadi – Engineering Manager
Michelle Tucker – Content Designer
Alfonso Maestro – Content Designer
Me – Senior Product Designer
