Constellation
Growing a Fintech Through User-Centered Design Practice
Constellation Digital Partners (Constellation) has revolutionized the digital banking landscape for Credit Unions and their members since 2017. By teaming up with Crafted in 2023, they've elevated the member experience to new heights on their cutting-edge, cloud-native platform. Designed for fintech innovation, this open and customizable platform is at the forefront of digital services delivery for Credit Unions, setting a new standard in the industry.
Engagement Overview
Founded in 2017, Constellation raised a Credit Union Service Organization (CUSO) record $32.5M in funding to “disrupt former barriers and give Credit Unions the power to not only survive, but thrive.”
In 2023, Constellation engaged Crafted to strengthen their empathy with their customers and create a sustainable research, design and validation program within their product team.
Crafted partnered with the team to engage Credit Union members and general banking users to gather insights and translate those into actionable, implementable designs. Further, Crafted worked closely with the team—both one-on-one and as a group—to enable the team and help them grow their own research skills.
In 2024, the Constellation team began shipping the first pieces of the application, designed with a research-powered methodology. Taking the tools and techniques honed during the engagement, Constellation began leading their own research initiatives for the next round of work.
Goals
SVP of Product Aaron Oplinger described three specific goals and objectives that Constellation had in mind when they chose to partner with Crafted:
Inject research-based design and development methodologies into their company DNA
Level up the expertise of existing UI Design and Product Management team members
Redesign digital banking UI/UX
Each big-picture goal encompassed several business and user opportunities that Constellation was striving to meet.
1: “Inject research-based design and development methodologies into our company DNA”
Constellation’s digital banking product launched in 2017. The initial release was designed specifically for their earliest Credit Union partners. These releases were initially successful, and by 2023 they had hundreds of thousands of active users on their platform across a handful of Credit Unions. However, Constellation also had ambitious growth plans. Over the next couple of years, they were planning to scale their digital banking product to add more Credit Unions and have greater than one million active users.
To meet this opportunity head-on and prepare for an influx of new users, Constellation strategically saw an opportunity to scale their research operations through building empathy with their customers.
There were multiple associated goals to achieve this:
Constellation’s digital banking platform would have to continue meeting the needs of existing Credit Union members, but also prepare for the next generation of younger, “Gen Z” Credit Union members.
Constellation’s platform was designed in close collaboration with some of their first Credit Union partners. To scale, Constellation saw an opportunity, ensuring their core digital banking product was designed to a high standard out-of-the-box for general uses cases, while retaining deep levels of customization for individual partners
By testing designs with users before they were built by engineering teams, Constellation would build confidence that what they were building was going to be successful when deployed to CUs and their members.
2: “Level up the expertise of existing UI Design and Product Management team members”
Constellation’s product and design teams had a lot of subject matter expertise. Some members of the team had almost twenty years of experience in the banking and banking software space. However, the team had only limited experience in conducting direct customer and user research. As Aaron had said, Constellation wanted to build research into their company DNA.
3: “Redesign digital banking UI/UX”
Aaron Oplinger succinctly described their company’s goal as “to provide flexible digital banking services and solutions to Credit Unions across the United States.” That flexibility is a key differentiator for their product: they enable Credit Unions to leverage their core digital banking product as a platform. They then are able to bring their brand, identity and unique solutions to Constellation’s platform.
However, even before the platform is in the hands of a Credit Union for customization, an unbranded version is part of their sales flow. As the sales team presented their digital banking platform to potential partner Credit Unions, they identified some key feelings and impressions they wanted their platform to elicit. It needed to feel and read as “modern” out of the box to close more sales, but needed to remain sufficiently customizable once in the hands of the Credit Union.
Approach
Primary focus: engage with users from start to finish, to inspire confidence in designs and decisions.
Constellation, alongside Crafted, was able to engage nearly 400 users. We conducted generative, discovery type research, as well as solution validation and usability type research, and we did it all within budget. Whether you’re a growth stage, startup or an enterprise, there’s a way to get users involved, no matter what your budget is.
Because the focus was also on leveling up the team’s research ability, we experimented with a diverse range of research methodologies during the Problem Discovery phase. As with many projects, interviews—both stakeholder and user—were one of our primary user research tools; however, we also used impression testing, five second testing, card sorting, and surveys.
During Solution Validation, we utilized both moderated and unmoderated usability tests, as well as tools like AI-based predictive heatmapping to support those studies. We executed about 1-2 usability tests per sprint, nearly always at the clickable prototype level.
Key to both phases, though, was the need to be lean and cost effective. Research tasks were shared across product managers, product owners and designers. However, the team was still small. Some weeks, we were able to execute moderated tests or perform our own recruiting. But other weeks? We needed to focus our attention on the highest value work we could be doing. For one study, we were looking to better understand the banking habits of non-Credit Union members. We leveraged UserInterviews.com to help with recruiting and scheduling. While recruiting and incentive costs can add up, the time savings for the team was worth the investment
For usability studies especially, we leveraged UserBob.com to handle recruiting and executing our unmoderated tests. Its one major advantage is that it’s quite inexpensive. You can specify a study length (as short as one minute) and choose the number of users you want to recruit. Our studies were usually done with five users. For a five minute test with five users, the team could set up a test at the end of Wednesday and come back to usability data on Thursday morning for only $25.
Before the redesigns of the digital banking UI/UX ever made it into the backlog for engineers to run with, they had been through at least one round of usability testing. The team was able to say with increased confidence that both business goals and user needs were going to be met by the work the team was doing.
Secondary focus: Durable systems and repeatable processes
One of the first steps in making a research process sustainable is planning for storage and sharing. For our approach to ResearchOps, we chose Dovetail. Firstly, it enables a collaborative environment where the team can listen to, tag, and synthesize the research. It helps that it has some AI assistance like interview transcribing and affinity mapping for identifying themes across a study. However, perhaps its best feature is licensing that allows the team to invite unlimited readers. This means that the team’s research and analysis can be shared across an organization, with all stakeholders and interested parties.
Constellation’s Dovetail instance became its source of truth. You could log in and watch interviews, usability tests or see the results of our impression testing.
Secondly, Constellation and Crafted explored tools to facilitate collaboration between engineering and design.
One of the first decisions was selecting a design system. Engineering had wanted a rich library of components as their foundation. Because of its high-quality component library and well-considered design patterns for both mobile and desktop, we aligned on using MUI— which was built on the principles of Google’s Material.
Next, we looked for tools that enabled us to clearly communicate pattern re-use. When design used a MUI component, we wanted to help the engineering team see where we were reusing out-of-the-box items. The three teams came together and aligned on piloting Zeplin. It facilitated annotation and behavioral requirements directly on the designs, highlighting component reuse for engineers. Zeplin also allowed the design team to rapidly iterate in Figma without creating ambiguity.
Through the process of collaboratively delivering designs—while setting up the ResearchOps and DesignOps necessary to support the team—Crafted and Constellation created the structures to support the team’s leveled-up user engagement skillset.
Outcomes
What the Constellation Team Had to Say
“They were not just consultants and staff augmentation like so many firms in the market, but truly melded themselves into our company to be a part of our team, both in work execution and in cultural fit.”
“Crafted is a true partner. Assisting our initiative by introducing a research-driven approach to user design and user experience. Not only partnering with us for research and design during our engagement, but also providing us with the knowledge, methodologies, and tools to continue on our own. Through our partnership with Crafted, we are armed to continuously improve our product through iterative research-backed activities.”
“Teaming up with Crafted was an awesome experience! Their insights sparked creativity and pushed limits. Together, we crafted a product we’re proud of, fueled by creativity, trust, and our shared love for great design.”
Conclusion
In conclusion, the partnership between Constellation and Crafted has helped modernize the banking experience for Credit Unions by focusing on customer empathy and research-driven design, and it enabled the Constellation team to lead their own research initiatives. This collaboration has set the stage for Constellation to expand and improve its digital banking platform, ultimately benefiting Credit Unions and their members.
Does your team need help enhancing existing (or building new) technology with a focus on user-centered design, research, and other product design best practices? Reach out to Crafted and we’ll collaborate closely with you to ensure your product is delivering the best possible user experience.
