Federal Student Aid:
Annual Student Loan Acknowledgement (ASLA)
Formally called the Informed Borrowing Tool (IBT)
FJORD Accenture Federal Services
This product was created to address the major issue of student debt in our country. It informs borrowers and parents in every loan lifecycle position to make informed decisions based upon personalized data. You can view the desktop and mobile web prototypes below with using the password nextg3n or visit studentaid.gov/asla with a valid FSA ID account to access the tool live.
The Problem
Federal Student Aid loans have taken millions of American into debt due to the lack of practical knowledge to inform their decision to borrow money. Interest was not understood, people did not understand the difference between FSA and collection agencies, along with the confusion of 20+ despondent websites to obtain information on their personal finances and smartest practices when dealing with federal loans. This tool, ASLA or formally IBT, was created so users of all different stages in the federal student loan experience could understand the impact, longevity and logistics of taking out loans. IBT was forged from Obama’s mandate to make Federal Student Aid clearer, and followed up by Trump’s mandate, Improving Free Inquiry, Transparency, and Accountability at Colleges and Universities.
My partner and I conducted our own research and used existing information/data to create questions to determine the best information to solve this problem.
Solutions & Wireframes
Several sessions were held with the client (FSA workers from several departments involved in the loan process) to insure the main purpose of this new tool came to fruition. We maintained user experience cohesion and consistency by using patterns and data visualization I had created before for the My Aid Account Summary Branch of the website to build trust and familiarity among users, while also maximizing engineering time on an extremely tight schedule. We also used new sources of content to best educate future and existing borrowers, including a new API introduced which showed a theoretical “college scorecard” to better inform all types of users.
Final Solutions
password: nextg3n
Borrowers that have existing loans sign off with an annual reminder of their financial status.
First time borrowers review this page to help them understand the loan system. I created a short animation explaining the concept of interest to new borrowers. This helps users know that the money they receive is less than the money they need to pay back.
Many parents manage and or co-sign with their children on student loans. This page is catered to those users.