LendMe Finance App

A complete UX redesign of a school-to-parent communication platform that was on the verge of losing its biggest client. The redesigned product is now live, trusted by schools and districts to reach thousands of families every day with 100% client retention, 28% growth in new school onboarding, and 90% of users completing core tasks on their first try.

Date

2021

Role

Led design and research. Colloborated with a designer, product manager and engineers.

Company

LendMe

  • The Story

The Challenge

The Nigerian financial services market is vibrant but still has it's stuggles. Many individuals and businesses had to deal with multiple complex and unreliable platforms to manage loans, bill payments, and investments, leading to inefficiencies and dissatisfaction.

This environment presented an opportunity to design an all-in-one solution that simplifies financial management and resonates with the unique needs of a lot of Nigerians, offering a solution that addresses their financial needs effectively.

The product was not broken in one dramatic way. It was broken in dozens of small, exhausting ways and the people who suffered most were busy teachers, overwhelmed parents, and administrators responsible for keeping entire communities informed.

The product was not broken in one dramatic way. It was broken in dozens of small, exhausting ways and the people who suffered most were busy teachers, overwhelmed parents, and administrators responsible for keeping entire communities informed.

The product was not broken in one dramatic way. It was broken in dozens of small, exhausting ways and the people who suffered most were busy teachers, overwhelmed parents, and administrators responsible for keeping entire communities informed.

The stakes sharpened when SchoolMessenger's largest enterprise client flagged their concerns. A contract renewal was on the line. The business needed a solution, but more importantly, the users needed one. My job was to lead the redesign that would deliver both.

  • The Problem

Teachers couldn't onboard. Parents missed updates. And the biggest client was about to walk.

Before touching a single pixel, I conducted a thorough heuristic evaluation. Going through every flow as both a teacher and a parent, mapping every point of friction. I also gathered and analysed app store reviews across both platforms. The low ratings told us users were unhappy; the reviews told us exactly why. Confusing navigation, a painful setup process, features users could not find or figure out how to use.

Beyond the reviews, the heuristic audit confirmed and expanded the picture across every major flow.

The core insight: the app was designed around its features, not around the people using it. Teachers and parents do not think in "messaging portals", they think in tasks. The architecture did not reflect how people actually worked.

  • The Users

Three different people. Three different frustrations. One product letting all of them down.

SchoolMessenger served three distinct user types, each with different goals and very different pain points. Understanding all three was essential.

  • The Approach

The Objective

The redesign followed four phases, but the real work happened in the choices between them.

  1. Research and evaluation

    I needed to know exactly where the product was failing and why. That meant auditing every flow, reading what users were saying in app store reviews, and mapping the gap between the current architecture and how people actually used the app.

  1. Research and evaluation

    I needed to know exactly where the product was failing and why. That meant auditing every flow, reading what users were saying in app store reviews, and mapping the gap between the current architecture and how people actually used the app.

  1. Prioritisation and wireframing

    Findings organised into a problem and solution matrix. The highest-impact pain points: Messaging and onboarding were addressed first. Wireframes tested layout and structure before any visual work began.

  1. High-fidelity design and system

    Hi-fi screens produced across all three interfaces: parent, teacher, admin. For mobile and desktop. A design system and component library built in parallel to ensure consistency and a clean engineering handoff.

  1. Testing and iteration

    Multiple rounds of usability testing with active SchoolMessenger users, not proxies, not internal team members. Each key flow tested and iterated on until task completion met our threshold.

Key Design Decision

Onboarding was the single biggest drop-off point so we stopped making users complete it before they could do anything.

The existing wizard required full account setup before accessing any feature. Familiar to existing users but testing confirmed it was where most people gave up. We switched to progressive disclosure: let users complete their first task after basic setup.

  • The Design

The goal was simple: every user should be able to complete any task on their own, first time, without help.

The redesign covered onboarding, two-way and group messaging, admin broadcasts, contact management, attendance tracking, and a refreshed visual identity across mobile and desktop, for all three user roles.

Mapped the full information architecture across all three user roles. Surfacing where navigation was unnecessarily deep and where features were duplicated or hidden.

Flows mapped for every critical task per persona. This revealed where the old app added unnecessary steps and defined the shortest path to task completion for each user type.

Lo-fi first to keep feedback focused on structure rather than aesthetics. Onboarding, messaging, and other major flows went through multiple iterations before advancing to hi-fi.

Cleaner navigation, refreshed brand identity, and consistent interaction patterns across all three roles on both mobile and desktop. Every screen prototyped and validated through usability testing before handoff to engineering.

Built alongside the screens, not after. Every component grounded in real usage, giving engineering a single source of truth and making future updates significantly faster to ship.

  • The Impact

100% of at-risk clients renewed. Within six months, 28% more schools and districts had signed on.

For this project, we had clearly defined goals and expected outcomes.

  1. Create an easy-to-use and beautiful mobile app that enables users to:

    Access loans quickly and easily.

    Pay everyday bills, including TV subscriptions and electricity.

    Invest in smart financial opportunities.


  2. 6k new customers 6 months post-launch:
    To be sure that we are providing value with this service, we had a success metric of 6000

    new customers 6 months post-launch.

  3. Increased CSAT (Customer satisfaction score):
    We wanted a positive increase in the performance indicator for customer service and product quality of the app.

  4. To continuously innovate and roll out new features to retain and grow the user base.

More schools. More districts. More families reached.

That 28% was not just a business metric. It meant new school districts onboarding onto the platform, more administrators reliably reaching parents, and thousands more families getting the updates that keep children informed and safe. A product that had been quietly losing trust became one that other schools actively chose to adopt.

Next Project
Let's hit the next milestone together 🎨

giftobidokachi@gmail.com

giftobidokachi@gmail.com

Let's hit the next milestone together 🎨

Create a free website with Framer, the website builder loved by startups, designers and agencies.