When assumptions are wrong

This example of a personal finance site teaches us that assumptions are sometimes wrong. Not that they are plain wrong …but rather they are oversimplifications of reality. A little UX research can elaborate assumptions and get them right.

Bankmonitor.hu helps us, regular people to choose the best mortgage loans. It compares all offers from all major banks of Hungary and gives you a toplist. Our task was to make the process of choosing the right mortgage even easier.

The assumption was that the process of choosing the best mortgage offer was:

1) look for the ideal house

2) realize that you don’t have enough money to buy it

3) you go to Bankmonitor.hu to find out which bank gives you the missing amount on the best conditions.

Therefore Bankmonitor.hu asked for the amount of money you needed, and the duration of the loan – then calculated the best offers.

How people really choose mortgage?

To get started, we did a couple of user interviews with people who have recently borrowed a loan. As it turned out the actual process of buying a house lookes like this:

Exploration phase

• You don’t have a dream house, but you want as big&nice as you can afford.
• How big&nice you can afford? Depends on how much banks are willing to lend you, which is dependent on a number of things, but most importantly on the size of the installments you can pay.
• So, you go to Bankmonitor.hu to calculate mortgages based on how large installments you can repay safely.

Comparison phase

• Now, that you know how large mortgage you can get, you go out and find the best house in that price range.
• You find the real estate, agree on the purchase price.
• Go to Bankmonitor.hu to compare mortgage offers for exactly the loan amount you need.

Here is the simple calculator design that serves both use cases well.

To wrap up: assumptions are great to start with. Most of the times assumptions are correct. But they are correct in a way that they are only part of the story. UX research can reveal the rest of the story – and this makes you the first among your competitors.

Would you like to hear of similar UX research case studies?

Our UX course starting in September is a perfect chance! Besides completing an own project, the professionals of UX studio teach you how to research user experience. This year Amid Moradganjeh – ex-UX designer of Google and IDEO – is among our instructors as well!

Check the details!  >>