RBC MORTGAGE ADJUDICATION USER INTERFACE (MAUI)
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 Mortgage Adjudication User Interface (MAUI) is a modernized upgrade to RBC's legacy adjudication portal, LINX, designed to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of mortgage application reviews. MAUI streamlines the adjudication process by consolidating document and financial account reviews into a single, user-friendly interface, reducing Adjudicators' frustration and workload. By optimizing workflows and improving usability, MAUI increases RBC's capacity to handle the anticipated surge in mortgage renewals, enabling the institution to better serve more clients with speed and accuracy.
Impact
Reigniting a Key Initiative: Revitalized a previously deprioritized project, providing foundational designs that will serve as a first-step resource for the design team as MAUI gains prioritization in early 2025.
Improved Adjudication Efficiency: Positioned MAUI to eventually replace LINX, aiming to reduce adjudication decision times and workload for RBC Adjudicators while accelerating decision-making for RBC clients, a major business objective for the organization
Multidisciplinary Contribution: Successfully led and completed the MAUI Specialty Home Equity Financing project while concurrently contributing to MRTx and HomeX, becoming one of the first interns to work across all three design specialties during a single internship term.
How might we improve the mortgage approval process for Adjudicators to better serve RBC clients?
PROBLEM SPACE
The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the Canadian housing market, with shifting client preferences and historically low borrowing costs driving record levels of new lending. RBC anticipates a surge in mortgage renewals in late 2024 and into 2025, as many clients face higher rates during renewal—a stressful addition to an already complex 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). The influx of applications places immense strain on RBC Mortgage Adjudicators, who rely on LINX, a fragmented platform that spreads critical information across multiple screens, resulting in inefficiencies and delays.
Nearly one-third of the home equity market in Canada consists of Specialty Home Equity financing, a substantial segment of the mortgage applications adjudicators must review. These applications require additional documentation to demonstrate financial eligibility under unique qualifications, differing from standard mortgage reviews. This adds to adjudicators' already heavy workload, extending the time needed for each review and delaying decisions for RBC clients.
To address these challenges, MAUI reimagines the adjudication process by redesigning LINX into a streamlined, centralized platform. By consolidating essential data into an efficient, user-friendly interface, MAUI reduces adjudicator workload and enhances decision-making. Features like the CAT financial calculator, specialized financing program views, and chronological case notes for re-approvals improve both the adjudication experience and client outcomes, enabling RBC to manage increased application volumes effectively.
MAUI will allows Adjudicators to:
Access Centralized Information: View all necessary client data in a single, streamlined interface, reducing the need to navigate across multiple screens.
Perform Efficient Calculations: Leverage the CAT financial calculator to quickly and accurately analyze clients’ financial positions, ensuring precise adjudication decisions.
Review Case Histories Seamlessly: Access chronological case notes for returned files, making it easier to track changes and review applications.
Streamline Special Financing Reviews: Utilize specialized program views to efficiently assess applications under unique financing scenarios.
Enhance Decision-Making: Focus more on financial analysis and client outcomes rather than grappling with platform inefficiencies.
(Government of Canada, Statistics Canada, 2021)
CHALLENGE
Reduce significant challenges with fragmented tools, manual processes, and scattered information in the review of mortgage applications with specialty home equity financing to streamline and and improving decision-making efficiency to better serve both Adjudicators and Clients.
ROLE & RESPONSIBILITIES
During the second half of my eight-month internship at RBC, I sought an opportunity to expand beyond UX research and take ownership of a project, allowing me to further explore interaction and visual design. With limited capacity, the HomeX team had deprioritized MAUI for the past year, making it the perfect opportunity for me use my designing skills to focus on designing the specialty financing view. This project took place on the side while I continued my responsibilities as a UX Researcher for MRTx and HomeX. I took on a multi-faceted role as UX Researcher, Interaction Designer, and Visual Designer, gathering user insights through discussions with internal partners, conducting ideation and sketching sessions, and translating ideas into wireframes and prototypes. My responsibilities were:
User Research: Conducted interviews and discussions with internal partners, including adjudicators and business stakeholders, to gather insights into pain points and requirements for the specialty financing view.
Ideation and Concept Development: Facilitated ideation sessions, including brainstorming and sketching, to explore solutions for the specialty financing view. Generated low-fidelity sketches and concepts, focusing on simplifying the adjudication process and addressing unique needs for specialty financing applications.
Interaction Design: Designed user flows and interaction patterns for the specialty financing view, ensuring an intuitive and efficient experience for adjudicators. Developed wireframes to visualize design solutions and iteratively refined them based on feedback.
Visual Design: Created high-fidelity prototypes, incorporating RBC’s design guidelines to maintain consistency and alignment with brand standards. Applied visual hierarchy and accessibility principles to ensure clarity and usability in the redesigned interface.
Collaboration and Prototyping: Worked closely with other Researchers, Interaction and Visual Designers to align design efforts with project goals and technical feasibility.
Design Validation: Conducted usability testing sessions to evaluate the redesigned view and gather feedback from internal users. Synthesized feedback to iterate and refine the design, ensuring it met user needs and addressed identified pain points effectively.
Stakeholder Sharebacks: Presented research findings, design concepts, and progress updates to stakeholders during regular shareback sessions. Ensured alignment across teams by incorporating feedback from stakeholders into iterative design improvements. Promoted a collaborative feedback culture, fostering transparency and shared ownership of the redesign project.
RESEARCH TECHNIQUES:
Focus Groups
Concept Testing
TOOLS:
Slack for communication
Mural for Research Planning, Note Taking, Analysis
Figma for Wireframes, Prototypes
WebEx for video calling
ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES:
Qualitative Data Analysis
Coding
Thematic Analysis
Affinity Diagrams
Qualitative Data Reduction
Data Organization & Synthesis
Research Synthesis/Data Reduction
Design Requirements
Prioritization of Design Requirements
Cohort Analysis
User Insights Visualization
Data Visualization
Prioritization Grid
DESIGN TECHNIQUES:
Ideation
Sketching (Crazy Eights)
Paper Storyboards
Paper Low-Fidelity Wireframes
Digital Low-Fidelity Wireframes
High-Fidelity Wireframes
Prototypes
Design Critiques
TOOLS:
Slack for communication
Mural for Research Planning, Ideation, Analysis, Documentation
Figma for Digital Wireframes, Prototypes
Paper & Pen for Paper Wireframes
WebEx for video calling
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
I conducted exploratory research with our Adjudicators to better understand their needs and pain points associated with reviewing Specialty Home Equity Financing files. In this exploratory phase, I led 2 focus groups and held user interviews with stakeholders to uncover existing pain points and reveal opportunities for innovative solutions surrounding the process of adjudication for mortgage application approval. During both the focus group and user interviews, I was able to probe deeper into the specificities of their issues like the navigation and segmented views, to provide additional insight into their real-world experiences. This initial exploratory research gave me an established strong foundation to begin ideation.
ANALYSIS METHODOLOGY
Using thematic analysis, I identified recurring themes and patterns from focus groups and user interviews, focusing on challenges such as segmented views and navigation inefficiencies in LINX from my exploratory research. I further organized the qualitative data through coding to categorize key pain points and unmet needs, creating a structured understanding of the adjudicators’ workflow. Affinity mapping these codes then helped me visualize relationships between user challenges and areas for improvement, enabling a holistic approach to addressing their needs.
From the affinity map, I developed prioritized design requirements and improvement opportunities aligned with user feedback and business objectives. These findings were shared in collaborative shareback sessions with stakeholders and my design team, fostering iterative feedback and alignment on the design process. All my work was documented in Mural for ease of collaboration and future review.
DESIGN METHODOLOGY
Early design concepts were presented and design critiques were conducted to review overlap in synthesized insights and user requirements for further refinements. This structured and collaborative approach ensured that the redesign of MAUI’s Specialty Home Equity Financing view effectively addressed adjudicators' pain points while meeting organizational goals.
My design process for MAUI leaned on collaboration, iterative improvement, and alignment with user needs and RBC objectives. Through supportive mentorship, I facilitated ideation sessions with other researchers, interaction designers, and visual designers within the HomeX design team, leveraging collective expertise to brainstorm potential solutions. Sketching sessions followed these ideation sessions to conceptualize ideas. We created paper storyboards and wireframes which were then translated to digitized low-fidelity wireframes. These low-fidelity designs were then refined into high-fidelity wireframes, using the RBC design system requirements on Figma, ensuring they were both detailed and functional and would meet the visual standards for RBC products. These designs were then connected for prototyping.
Throughout the design process, I presented early concepts to stakeholders and the design team to gather feedback and ensure alignment with synthesized insights and user requirements. Weekly design critiques provided an opportunity for iterative refinement, incorporating feedback from the design team. Regular shareback sessions with stakeholders ensured transparency and alignment at every stage. This collaborative and structured methodology ensured that the redesign addressed adjudicators' challenges with the overall adjudication process and specialty home equity financing-specific files while achieving organizational goals.
CHALLENGES & SOLUTION
When I first joined the MAUI project, I struggled a lot with understanding and responding to stakeholder questions about the broader "bluesky" solution of the platform, as my familiarity was limited to the specialty home equity financing files. To overcome this, I leaned heavily on my design team's expertise, seeking guidance on how to approach the problem space and structure my steps during this project. This collaborative support enabled me to effectively focus on actionable solutions while building confidence in my contributions.
I also got the chance to improve my visual design skills. Transitioning with my background experience in interaction design and low-fidelity wireframing to creating high-fidelity designs using a design system was not too familiar for me. Initially, I found it challenging to adapt to the complexity of high-fidelity design, but I took the opportunity to learn more about RBC's design system and it's guidelines. With these resources, I was able to leverage iterative feedback from my team during design critiques to create innovative designs. I even got to design a few components for the HomeX team that were sent in for approval from the Design System Team! Their encouragement and constructive input helped me develop polished, system-aligned designs while enhancing my skills in high-fidelity prototyping.
It's also been some time since I've led and received formal design critiques or presented solutions directly to end users. The final shareback with adjudicators was particularly daunting, as it was the ultimate test to see if my design effectively addressed their pain points. However, through preparation and iterative improvements based on my super supportive team and their feedback, I delivered a solution that resonated with the Adjudicators!
NEXT STEPS
As my designs are just for the Specialty Home Equity Financing, the next steps for MAUI involve addressing the rest of the user pain points, to develop a comprehensive platform for all mortgage application types. This will require building more features while conducting usability testing and evaluative research on these UI designs for validation and guide iterative refinements.
WHAT I LEARNED
This is a three part series continued on the two other case studies from my RBC internship.
My other goal during the second half of my internship was to maintain my design skills. I gained so much improvement with my UX research skills but as they say “if you don’t use it, you lose it”. Keeping up with designing while in a research role was harder than I expected since I didn’t have as much time to be able to explore design resources as I had thought. This was something that I was able to talk about with my mentor Mikael and he was super onboard with also helping me explore more of the design side of UX. I’m so thankful of how supportive my team was about me also delving into design work. They encouraged me to work on this project and always reached out to me to ask if I needed any help with where I was or what I wanted to do.
I found I also really enjoyed being able to take on more responsibilities and leadership aspects. I really liked being able to take ownership of projects and presenting so I’d love to explore more of this aspect in my future professional development. I also felt this way while working with the CBC for the Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics projects!
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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