Putting a dent in the student debt crisis

Highland’s Customer Experience team used human-centered design and lean startup methods to deepen our understanding of their target audiences and clarify business goals.

We used journey mapping and the Jobs to be Done research methods to understand the push and pull forces driving potential members of the Gen Z and Millenial generations to action. By examining journeys and jobs, we identified several opportunities to better serve the financial needs of teens, young adults, and parents of young children.

As we tested prototypes and analyzed research, it was clear that Gen Zs and Millennials needed a better way to prepare for and pay for college.

In crowded market of college loan providers dominated by institutions looking to make as much from students as they possibly could, Thrivent decided to take a counter-market position. They created a digital platform called Thrivent Student Resources, designed to help students better understand their financial options so that they could take out as few loans as possible.

We developed the platform using Agile and Kanban methods, allowing designers and developers to rapidly adapt to new learnings about user needs. Our practice of collecting ongoing user feedback and testing site features before fully building them out saved Thrivent tens of thousands of dollars in development costs.

Another critical component to cost and time savings was Thrivent’s use of the OutSystems low-code development platform, which served as the backbone of many of the digital products we built for Thrivent. The simplicity of a low-code development platform made it easier for marketers, developers, and designers to collaborate on content in order to meet their shared goal of delivering a robust, consumer-facing products despite short development cycles.