RBC MORTGAGE APPLICATION PORTAL (HOMEX)
PROJECT DETAILS
Timeline:
Jun - Aug 2024
(3 Months)
Role:
UX Researcher, Interaction Designer,
Visual Designer
Collaborators:
Designers (Me),
Business,
PMs, POs
The content of this case study is protected under a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). The case study presented here is intended to showcase a high-level view of the project without compromising the privacy or intellectual property of RBC.
Project Summary
The RBC Mortgage Application Portal (HomeX) is an online platform designed to help internal partners facilitate the application and management of RBC client's mortgages. RBC HomeX provides a seamless, user-friendly experience, making it easier for partners and clients to apply for and manage their mortgage easily online.
Impact
Currently in Pilot Launch for Document Upload Features with Improved Initial User Satisfaction Feedback
Modernization of Legacy System: Successfully replaced a 30-year-old legacy mortgage application system LINX, bringing modern, efficient workflows to RBC's mortgage processes.
Pilot Rollout Success: HomeX is being piloted regionally across Canada, with iterative improvements based on real-time feedback, culminating in nationwide availability.
Increased Usability, User Satisfaction, and Adoption: Observed higher System Usability Scale (SUS) score point increase of 10 for the entire HomeX platform and larger adoption of features (18% adoption rate increase for Title Search Feature on HomeX) during the cohorts, as more regions gained access to the platform.
Enhanced Efficiency in Application Submission: Initial feedback from internal mortgage brokers, showcasing shorter application submission times and improved user experience.
How might we help our internal RBC Mortgage Brokers provide the safest and most enjoyable mortgage application process for clients?
PROBLEM SPACE
The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the Canadian housing market, with changing housing preferences and historically low borrowing costs driving record levels of new lending. RBC anticipates a large surge of mortgage renewals related to those historically low interest rates, in late 2024 and into 2025, as many clients who took advantage of low rates will face higher interest rates during renewal, further intensifying the already stressful process. RBC is targeting all levels of service by trying to design solutions for internal Mortgage Brokers and Partners, RBC clients, and Adjudicators through the Mortgage Renewal Tool (MRTx), Mortgage Application Portal (HomeX), and Mortgage Adjudication User Interface (MAUI).
With the impending wave of client renewals combined with new clients, RBC mortgage brokers are struggling to maintain their workload and streamlining the mortgage application in a post-COVID environment where in-person appointments are limited will reduce the friction that our internal partners and clients face during the mortgage application process. HomeX serves as an all-in-one secure access portal, facilitating safe document transfer, reducing wait times for partners and clients, and providing up-to-date application statuses. After 9 regional rollouts, HomeX is now piloting across the country serving approximately 1500 RBC partners. With these abilities, our internal partners will be able to service more clients seeking mortgages while keeping them informed in the application process.
The RBC HomeX portal allows internal mortgage broker partners to:
Apply for a Mortgage: Users can start and submit their mortgage applications, providing necessary details and documentation through the online platform.
View Mortgage Details: RBC clients can freely use the portal to view the status of their mortgage application decision.
Document Upload and Organization: The portal allows partners to request document type folders with instructions and provides clients a way to upload their required documents securely. The new documentation tagging will organize uploads by their document, helping the application review process later.
Secure Communication: It provides a secure channel for customers to communicate with RBC mortgage brokers about application support.
(Government of Canada, Statistics Canada, 2021)
CHALLENGE
Reduce friction for users and clients by providing an all-in-one secure access mortgage application portal (HomeX) to streamline and facilitate task management, document sharing, and status review.
ROLE & RESPONSIBILITIES
As the UX Researcher for RBC's HomeX, I focused on identifying user pain points in the current system and validating design solutions to align with user needs and business goals during provincial rollouts. This work supported key objectives, such as reducing workload for mortgage brokers, improving client service efficiency, and minimizing friction in the mortgage application process. My primary responsibilities included:
User Research: Led 10 focus groups, conducted 22 user interviews, and administered 43 surveys to gather ongoing feedback and understand existing pain points. Used techniques such as contextual inquiry and moderated testing to explore opportunities for innovative design solutions that address unmet user needs. UserTesting and WebEx were utilized to streamline testing sessions, allowing for consistent and insightful feedback gathering.
Design Validation: Conducted iterative usability testing, preference testing, and concept testing to evaluate feature-specific implementations. I validated the interaction, visual, and content design approaches in Figma to ensure each iteration reflected real user insights. By facilitating semi-moderated testing sessions and concept testing, I gathered critical feedback to refine wireframes and prototypes.
Insight Synthesis: Applied analysis methods including coding, thematic analysis, affinity diagrams, and cohort analysis to extract actionable insights from research data. Mural was used extensively for organizing research planning, note-taking, and creating affinity diagrams for data reduction and prioritization. Insights were synthesized through narrative and content analysis, creating a foundation for iterative design improvements.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Worked closely with interaction, content, and visual designers, leveraging Slack for daily communication and Mural for collaborative synthesis sessions. I provided continuous, data-driven feedback that informed the refinement of prototypes and helped align design decisions with user-centered principles.
Stakeholder Engagement: Delivered weekly presentations to stakeholders across development, product, and business teams. These updates fostered transparency, reinforced UX priorities, and cultivated a shared commitment to the HomeX project’s success. The engagement also supported the continuous prioritization of UX feedback and design alignment.
Usability Assurance: Played a key role in ensuring HomeX’s usability by refining and validating designs through iterative research methods, including cohort analysis and user journey mapping. These efforts contributed to a seamless user experience, ensuring HomeX effectively supported both RBC clients and internal partners.
RESEARCH TECHNIQUES:
Focus Groups
Interviews
Usability Testing
Moderated Testing
Contextual Inquiry
Surveys
Concept Testing
Customer Feedback
TOOLS:
Slack for communication
Mural for Research Planning, Note Taking, Analysis
Figma for Wireframes, Prototypes
UserTesting for testing platform
WebEx for video calling
ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES:
Qualitative Data Analysis
Coding
Thematic Analysis
Affinity Diagrams
Narrative Analysis
Content Analysis
Qualitative Data Reduction
Data Organization & Synthesis
Research Synthesis/Data Reduction
Prioritization Grid
Periodic Analysis
Cohort Analysis
User Insights Visualization
User Journey Maps
Data Visualization
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
To align the HomeX platform with user needs and business objectives, we implemented a structured, multi-phase research approach, combining exploratory and evaluative research techniques.
In the exploratory phase, I led 10 focus groups, 22 user interviews, and distributed 700 feedback surveys to uncover existing pain points and reveal opportunities for innovative solutions. Contextual inquiry during these sessions helped to provide additional insight into the real-world experiences of our users, allowing us to capture nuanced challenges and motivations, which established a strong foundation for our design direction.
In the evaluative phase, I conducted 9 semi-moderated usability testing sessions and task analyses to examine specific features and overall user flows, ensuring the effectiveness and intuitiveness of our design iterations. We also conducted 1 concept testing for Document Upload Features, which allowed us to gauge how well potential design solutions aligned with user needs. The Document Upload Features have now been fully designed and are being tested during the pilot release.
Finally, insights were synthesized through qualitative methods like thematic analysis and narrative analysis, along with quantitative methods such as survey analytics. This synthesis enabled us to identify clear trends and actionable recommendations, which were shared across design and stakeholder teams. These findings informed iterative design improvements, ensuring the HomeX platform consistently delivered a seamless, user-centered experience.
ANALYSIS METHODOLOGY
The analysis phase for HomeX research involved a comprehensive approach using both qualitative and quantitative methods to generate actionable insights and guide design improvements. For qualitative data, derived from focus groups, user interviews, concept testing, and usability testing, I employed thematic analysis and narrative analysis to categorize feedback and identify recurring patterns in user challenges and preferences. This approach enabled me to highlight key pain points and essential themes, forming the foundation for targeted design recommendations tailored to user needs.
Quantitative data, collected through surveys and task analyses, was examined using survey analytics and statistical tools to track usability metrics, such as SUS scores. These objective measures provided a data-backed understanding of user performance, helping to prioritize high-impact improvements. Some of our findings from cohort analysis enabled us to monitor usability trends across different user segments across the country and assess how well the design met expectations over time.
Synthesizing these insights, I created detailed reports and simpler data visualizations that I presented with the greater HomeX team. These visualizations I created of the insights we found were shared during shareback sessions with the design and stakeholder teams, ensuring that everyone would easily be able to understand the results and HomeX design iterations remained data-driven, user-centered, and strategically; aligning with both user needs and business objectives.
CHALLENGES & SOLUTION
Working on HomeX was a different experience compared to the MRTx project. As we were primarily designing for RBC internal partners, we had more access to users and were actually able to speak to them one-on-one to understand their pain points rather then use an unmoderated platform like UserTesting to assess usability. Since these projects were occuring during the same time within my internship, it was interesting having to switch research methodologies to align with the goals of each platform. As HomeX is already established and in current use, I was able to fully involve myself in the iterative design process, which is my first time doing so. Navigating my participation by getting up to speed with the resources and references was a little stressful at first but I felt very well prepared to jump right in to our research sessions and get down to finding out how we could improve HomeX.
While working on HomeX, I was also able to plan, conduct, and facilitate my first research sessions and study. With the mentorship I received from Mikael Ragbar (my supervising UX Researcher & the none pizza to my left beef - see meme below), I was cautious but excited to go through the entire research process. As we planned the research guide with the script and conducted mock sessions, I felt ready but I quickly learned that anything can happen during research. During that research study, we found a recurring issue with half of our participants related to visual cueing and after discussing with the team quickly before the second half of our research sessions would begin, we decided to change the designs for the other half and continued. I learned from this experience how fluid we as researchers need to be since expectations are never fully reality.
NEXT STEPS
HomeX is now successfully piloting and through all the feedback we received, we were able to grow user satisfaction based on from 67 to 77. Future aspirations with the HomeX platform will review the external client-facing experience as we focused primarily on the internal-facing interface to improve the overall mortgage process for all parties involved.
WHAT I LEARNED
This is a three part series continued on the two other case studies from my RBC internship.
After focusing mainly developing my research skills in my first 4 months, I decided it would be good to continue getting outside my comfort zone. One thing I severely regretted during my first term was not networking more. I’d heard from other interns about how many networking calls they were planning to do or had. The thought of reaching out to plan a coffee chat to me was so daunting and seemed so formal that I was worried about how to handle the call. Turns out networking calls can be whatever you want them to be, whether that’s a casual chat about your favourite caffeine sources or super formal speaking about professional development in your field.
Goal setting really helped me to keep track of my networking metrics in a tangible manner. Mikael and I initially set my goal to be one coffee chat every two weeks but I found as I had more coffee chats, I actually enjoyed them more than I thought I would. I ended up sometimes having multiple coffee chats in a week. Other than hearing about everyone’s journey to getting into their current role in RBC and receiving resources for improving my designing skills, I really enjoyed hearing more about how everyone dealt with their own form of imposter syndrome. I personally talk about imposter syndrome a lot because it’s something I’m so familiar with and know how debilitating it can be to feel so alone but hearing of everyone’s inspiring stories really gave me so much hope. As I move on from my internships, I try to remember all those teachings whenever I have rough times to keep myself motivated.
As this project is under an NDA, please contact me if you have any further questions!
Feel free to reach out through my email address, thanks for reading!
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