Problem / Context
Juno, a student loan company formerly known as LeverEdge, wanted to know three things before pushing more traffic to their site: did first time visitors trust what they saw, could they get through a loan campaign signup without friction, and would they tell a friend about it.
I ran a solo research sprint to find out.
Process
I recruited 10 people who matched Juno's two core audiences: parents helping their kids finance school, and students financing it themselves. Each person walked me through three parts of the site on a Zoom call: their first impression of the landing page, the campaign signup flow, and the dashboard they'd land on afterward. I took notes on where they hesitated, what confused them, and whether they said anything about sharing the site.
The site itself tested well overall. People used words like clean, calming, and trustworthy without being prompted. The imagery and iconography did their job. But three friction points kept showing up.
Friction Point
The signup flow had no sense of progress.
People didn't know how many steps were left or how long it would take, so a few assumed it was longer than it actually was and hesitated to start.
Friction Point
One input was actively hostile.
The graduation year field had a counter that moved one year at a time. To reach a plausible answer, someone would have had to click it over 2,000 times. Every single person tried the counter before giving up and typing the year manually.
Friction Point
Old branding had leaked through.
A few images still carried Juno's previous name, LeverEdge. It didn't break anyone's trust outright, but it made a couple of people pause and double check they were in the right place.
Additional Learning
Sharing behavior was more nuanced than a simple yes or no.
People wanted proof the product worked before they'd put their name behind it to a friend, and they wanted a real reason to share beyond a plain link. A bare URL, more than one person said, is invisible.
Outcome
I handed off four recommendations. When I checked back on the live site afterward, Juno had shipped the first three.
Shipped
Add a progress indicator to the signup flow.
Shipped
Replace the year counter with a drop-down.
Shipped
Audit the site for outdated branding
Build a clearer incentive into the sharing moment
Final Thoughts
That's the part of this project I'm proudest of: a two week solo sprint, with no dev resources of my own, that changed what shipped on a real product used by real students.