Our users thought they were borrowing money

How one onboarding change fixed two problems nobody had connected

Hi folks. This one is about the most useful five minutes I spent on a project last year. I didn’t open Figma or run a workshop. I just downloaded the app like a stranger would.

The two problems on my desk

I was the only designer on the lender app of a P2P lending platform. The brief came with two problems that everyone treated separately.

The first was onboarding drop-off. A lot of people installed the app and never got far.

The second was a support ticket that kept showing up again and again. “How do I take a loan from this app?” Sometimes it was even more direct. “I don’t want to lend. I need to borrow money.”

This was a lending app. Our users were supposed to be the ones giving loans, not taking them.

So I became a new user

I installed the app fresh and went through it the way a curious first-timer would.

Phone number.
OTP.
Set a passcode.
Confirm the passcode.
A loading screen.

Five steps in, I still hadn’t seen a single loan or a single word about what the app actually did. Then I landed on a list of loans with no explanation at all.

Honestly, if I didn’t already know the product, I would have guessed it was for borrowing too. A list of loans looks like something you apply for.

One cause, not two

That was the moment the two problems joined up. People dropped off because we asked for effort before giving them any reason to stay. And the people who did stay were confused because nobody told them what they were looking at.

We asked for everything before showing anything.

What we changed

1. A short carousel before login. Three screens that explain lending, why spreading money across many loans matters, and what it can earn.
2. A shorter login. Phone number, OTP and one passcode. The separate “confirm passcode” step went away.
3. Skippable account setup. People still get asked for their details, but a cross in the corner lets them look at the product first.
4. A kind exit screen. If someone tries to leave setup, we remind them what finishing gets them. We don’t trap them.

The longer flow I pushed back on

A longer, more “complete” stepper flow was also on the table. On paper it looked thorough. Every field, every explanation, one neat progress bar.

I pushed back. Every extra screen before someone sees value is one more reason to close the app. A progress bar doesn’t make a long wait feel shorter. It just makes the wait official.

Where people land now

New users reach the loans screen already knowing they’re lenders, with a small prompt to spread their money across a few loans. The question changed from “wait, do I lend or borrow here?” to “oh, I lend here, got it.”

What I took away

When two complaints show up in the same five minutes of a user’s life, look for one cause before you design two fixes.

And sometimes the best research tool is just your own phone and a fresh install.

What’s the longest an app has made you wait before showing you why you downloaded it? Tell me in the comments.

The full case study with screens is on my portfolio, designs.ofvishal.com.

Our users thought they were borrowing money was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.