LendIt is a financial inclusion platform, targeted at smallholder farmers in the agricultural value chain. Its vision is to enable financial freedom for farmers, and project them from subsistence agriculture into full blown agribusiness. LendIt enables farmers to access digital financial services such as mobile money payments for commodities sold, micro-lending/input financing, crop insurance and pension scheme procurement in the informal sector.
The project I was presented with was to revamp the LendIt website which although separate from the app was created to advertise it to parties interested in incorporating it into their business activities. Within the brief to redesign presented to me, I was also requested to incorporate new updates and enhance the overall experience of the site.
Early wireframe sketches (Left), Brainstorm and initial IA draft (Right)
As the sole UI/UX designer, I led the end-to end research and design process - conducting research, brainstorms, designing the information Architecture and crafting all marketing features of the product website. Doubling as a front-end designer as well, I rolled up my sleeve and coded the user interface of the website.
I looked over a variety of websites for inspiration and identified the pros and cons of each website. I brainstormed on how I could incorporate the good attributes (good call to action, simple and concise content, etc. ) into our website. After all the competitive analysis and internet research I came up with our own mood board.
I created various mocks for responsive design in sketch as well as Figma and discussed with the co-founders. After many updates, discussions and iterations we arrived at our final product. I immediately begun developing the project.
After launching v.1, I continued to research and iterate on new features using constructive user feedback from the v.1 testing to create a better user suited model.
I had no experience with the existing website. Therefore, I started with identifying key problems in the current website with fresh eyes and carried out a UX audit to understand the pain points and areas of improvement needed, through the live experience of the site. As I figured out the pain points the next step in the process was to decide the mood and expectations for the website.
I followed an agile project management framework for this task which helped me in iterating and testing the ideas faster. While doing this I had rounds of discussions with the co-founders, who provided me the design brief, and came up with the Information Architecture.
After development, the first iteration was tested with users who had interacted with the previous model, for qualitative feedback to inform the development of version 2 (v.2).
High fidelity wireframe draft (Left), Information Architecture Diagram (Right)
To enable farmers access digital services across the country and Africa at large,I redesigned the LendIt website to prompt users to explore more and drive better engagement with the LendIt app. In my effort to improve outdated features of the website;
1. I included an easy-access contact section to promptly engage users with the LendIt team
2. I highlighted and updated the information on the partners of the app to improve the confidence of users in the security of the app
3. I highlighted the purpose and benefits of LendIt to the user to improve their understanding of the product.
4. I updated the casestudy page with the most recent information and images of impacted individuals to further show the user, the great potential of the product.
5. I also ensured that website aligned with the existing LendIt app’s brand identity
Taking up the LendIt redesign project was a great opportunity for me. It served as a major learning platform to hone many UI/UX design skills including; research, ideation, prototyping, testing and people skills like communication. While developing the front-end of the project as well, I learnt to use new frameworks and hone my prowess in the basic web development languages; HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP. Working with the LendIt team also, gave me the opportunity to enlighten many about the growing potential of Agribusiness in Ghana, and further impact the lives of many smallholders in the field. Moving forward it is my hope that potential of the LendIt app will grow and positively affect the live of many more African smallholder farmers and Agricultural businesses.
