When We Designed for Tech Constraints Instead of Users
Role: Content Designer
Tools: InVision, Figma
Overview
NAICS codes are codes created by the U.S. government to classify a company’s primary industry and business activities. As part of the application process for Remote Deposit, business applicants must provide their NAICS codes.
I worked with the UX designer, product managers and legal, risk and compliance partners to redesign the NAICS code field into 3 clarifying questions to help users narrow down their codes.
The Problem
The required NAICS Code field in the Remote Deposit application was causing high abandonment rates and calls to the customer care center. While this is a code users must provide when they open a business account at PNC, it’s not a code that all Remote Deposit users have access to.
The original Remote Deposit application included a link to the U.S. Census Bureau website where users could find their codes. The link took users out of PNC Online Banking to a website that assumed users already knew their codes or industry classification terminology. It also had a long list of sector codes for users to scroll though. Because the Census Bureau didn’t design their website for users without pre-requisite knowledge or organize lists to make them easy to reference, the website was unhelpful to PNC’s users.
The original NAICS code question and input field
U.S. Census Bureau website for looking up NAICS codes
Mico copy above the seach fields instructs users to enter a 2 to 6-digit code. Micro copy above the table fails to explain that users can select the blue numbers on the sector column to see codes for that sector.
NAICS code search results
This page displays codes for users who enter 11 in the search field or select 11 from the table on the previous page.
Users
Users:
Small business owners
Small business managers (referred to as “controlling parties” by PNC and other banks)
Business employees with relevant financial roles (referred to as “delegates” by PNC)
Process
Proposed a simplified application within the authenticated experience
Since users could only apply for Remote Deposit after they signed on to Online Banking, they were already customers. PNC already had most of the data the application asked for, including users’ NAICS codes.
I advocated for a simpler experience by eliminating questions we already knew the answer to. Unfortunately, the team informed me that we didn’t have the technical capabilities to retrieve the data we needed. Moreover, this was an MVP redesign intended to align Remote Deposit with PNC’s new Online Banking UX. Product managers and owners faced an aggressive deadline and had to decide which experience enhancements to prioritize.
Researched and tested user understanding
Now that we were required to ask users for their NAICS codes, I wanted to make sure that most users knew what these codes were and how to find and provide them.
I reached out to a retired small business owner to check whether he knew what the NAICS code for his business was. He didn’t know.
I also reached out to a business consultant who thought that CPAs might know what a business’s NAICS code is or how to accurately find it. Moreover, product managers weren’t concerned about the application abandonment rates and were confident that most users knew their codes. They stressed that it was a question required for underwriting.
Despite the confidence of product managers, the UX designer and I decided to work with our user testing partner to run a test to see whether users knew their NAICS codes. We presented users with a mock business and industry information and asked them to provide the right NAICS code for that business. As suspected, the majority of users weren’t able to accurately provide the right NAICS code for the mock business.
Collaborated with UX Designer to Redesign Question
To address this, the UX designer and I decided to redesign the question into 3 questions that helped users narrow down their NAICS Code by process of elimination.
Outcomes and Next Steps
Unfortunately, users still struggle to provide their correct NAICS codes. The good news, however, is that product managers and owners agreed to work with tech, underwriting and compliance partners so we can redesign the application with autofill capabilities, reducing the application to 2 steps: selecting accounts to enroll and confirming that their autofilled information, including their NAICS codes, are correct.
Reflection
Oftentimes the right experience doesn’t result from rewording or restructuring questions to accommodate the technology. Instead technical capabilities need to be improved or underwriting requirements need to be adapted to help users complete applications independently. This is one of those cases.