Cinch Financial
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The Cinch team on the tech side organized ourselves into different "tracks", which were cross-functional teams tackling a specific "vertical." We called the different parts of the product "verticals." I was part of three tracks: auto insurance, spending, and a track we called “Pyewacket.” Pyewacket worked on three projects, a new homepage, enhancing the Spending dashboard, and revamping the savings and Safety Net part of the app.
My work with the auto and spending tracks were much more focused on implementation and incremental changes sprint-by-sprint. My work with Pyewacket was focused on bigger, more conceptual work that spanned sprints.
The About Me section in Profile isn’t organized in any way. All the questions the user answers and can edit are listed on the same screen. At first, users could only add their auto insurance information if they were a single driver with a single car on their policy. We were in the process of making our system allow multi-car and multi-driver (MCMD) policies. With MCMD, this About Me setup was no longer possible. Having information for multiple drivers with multiple cars all under one screen without separation would’ve been messy and confusing, and difficult for the user to make sense of and access.
Separating auto and personal information out is the first step to a more organized About Me section. Eventually, this will have to be organized in a better way so that accordions are not used. We had multiple verticals that users provided information they would need to access from their profile, and accordions just wasn’t scalable. This was a temporary solution.
We ask the user if they are a revolver (carries credit card balance month over month) or transactor (pays credit card balance monthly) when we collect their account and credit information. After that, the user has no way to edit that credit card usage information after they answer for the first time. We ask them if they pay their credit card off every month—“yes” for transactor; “no” for revolver with an additional question on APR—but don’t have a way for them to update. If a user’s status changes, and they cannot tell Cinch, we will be giving them inappropriate or inaccurate advice.
I put the information under the account details. Clicking the cell will give the user the ability to edit their original answer by directing them to the question. If the user is a transactor, they only have one question—“do you pay this card off each month?” under the account. If they are a revolver, they will have two questions, the additional bit of information being their APR.
