Harvard Federal Credit Union has long been the exclusive Credit Union of Harvard Students, Employees, and other Harvard partners. Recently they have been given Federal Accreditation, amongst other things they are now responsible for offering membership to people outside of their exclusive Harvard club. Intended to be offered to those who live in communities in the Greater Boston area that are considered Underbanked or Underserved by the federal government. Any resident can qualify for membership if they live, work, study, or worship in those areas.
With this new opportunity however comes some drawbacks. Harvard FCU has struggled with figuring out the best way to present these areas to potential new members. Their current strategy involves displaying and relying on a new member understanding the often confusing and obscure Census Tracts. With all this Harvard FCU approached Code for Boston in order to have a feature for the website that would allow any potential members visiting their site to determine their eligiblity based of off their own addresses.
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Credit Unions are fairly popular institutions across the country, with many being almost household names such as Navy Federal Credit Union or Golden 1 Credit Union. Even some local to Massachusetts like DCU. Before moving forward with planning out the functionality and design of the new Census Tract tab, It was important to analyze how these well established credit unions tackled the complicated issue of Census Tracts, and how the findings might provide a springboard of inspiration into building a unique solution for Harvard FCU.
Looking locally, out of ten selected Credit Unions in Massachusetts roughly three quarters of them used area as an option for enrollment. However every single one of these credit unions chose to omit mentions of census tracts and instead chose to utilize more common boundaries like towns and neighborhoods.
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Credit Unions across the nation paint a similar story, but cast some new strokes that were worth looking into. While a similar three quarters of Credit Unions using area as an option for enrollment this time around about one fifth of those credit unions actually did mention Tracts. But more interestingly two credit unions stood out, through a interactive widget and a map with highlights of eligible areas.
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What was determined by looking at other Credit Unions is that focusing directly on census tracts is less important the making the list readable and understandable to the average new member. But more importantly is that the easier it to access eligibility information the more likely a potential member will try to apply for membership. The most helpful of these sites not only had clear information presentation but also offered interactive or visual elements to guide new members to knowing they are eligible.
A new member to Harvard FCU can use up to and potentially more than four addresses to determine if they are eligible (Homes, Workplaces, Schools, Places of Worship). With that many options it was important to determine where the member might need a pathway to get back to the start to try again with another address. Or move on to the next stage and apply for membership at Harvard FCU.
With the initial research findings and feedback from Harvard FCU, the most important goal going forward was provide a simple and interactive way for new members to quickly discover their eligibility. While a map that could be interacted with was considered briefly the easiest solution was to provide a way for new members to search up the address of a place they Live, Work, Worship, or Study and reference that with Census and GIS data to see if they are eligible. However with these goals came some restraints, as this was a third party feature being built for an external site all parts of this feature were required to be able to slot in to the existing website without the need for integration or third party plug-ins. This translated into size constraints on the designs as well, with any elements in the design needing to stay inside the plug in. Which led to some issues further along as the google autocomplete for the address search started to extend outside the design.
Along with implementing the interactive element of being able to search up eligibility by address, it was also important to focus on improving the readability and visual style of the static information displayed. The way census tracts had been displayed up until the redesign was completely unreadable. With census tracts being displayed as 11 digit strings sorted by county. With Suffolk County alone having over 100 different tracts to display!
By going through each census tract and sorting them into smaller geographical areas and introducing more familiar place names such as; cities, neighborhoods, or districts. It allows for an extra level of reassurance and redundancy to potential members visiting the site. As they can now see their city or neighborhood mentioned, leading potential members to be more proactive in searching up their address. Improving how this census tracts are displayed the site also gains a level of redundancy in case the search functionality isn't working through internet or device issues, or in the case of some of the dev team having a VPN that disrupts the search API.
As initial design work finished up the first round of feedback from Harvard FCU landed. While the designs were met with overall positive reactions. There was a need to include more information regarding the application process for membership, alongside a better breakdown of other options for potential members if they aren't eligible. Such as joining the Financial Fitness Association. Most of this was legal requirements but it was important to add things such as a list of items needed for the application process to allow for the potential member to gather the items before starting the application. Much of the feedback in the end was geared mostly toward making the process from searching for eligibility to applying for membership as seamless as possible.
Wrapping up in March of 2025 the search feature and its documentation were handed off to Harvard FCU for final testing and integrating the branch sandbox with their main site. With an expected launch two months after handoff. Organizationally Harvard FCU is looking into a website redesign and moving to a new CMS in the near future as well, so all work down was built around this expectation. Meaning the search bar and census tract redesign should be transferable to any new website formats.
At the start of the the design process work was split between two solutions. The first was the address search feature that eventually became the final design, the other was a larger module inspired by a feature on the website of "Suncoast FCU" found during the research phase. This module would have covered all avenues of eligibility, from Students or Faculty at Harvard to members of Harvard's Partner Organizations all alongside those looking for membership eligibility through their addresses. And through a deeper use of Harvard FCU's Brand colors and marketing materials, have a deeper integration into the Harvard FCU website. However as a team it was decided to go with the more straightforward search feature integration to keep the tech debt low as the project progressed.
