This project encompasses all of the processes surrounding the HOA payment system currently in use at Mutual of Omaha Bank, so there were many end users and rolls involved. The first step was to identify these end users. After discovering the 5 main end users, we created a user matrix, trying to interview multiple people at every user level and type. This summary deals with the Homeowner as the end user. Goals, likes, dislikes, impediments, must haves, and wants in future digital solutions and processes for HOA management and homeowners’ HOA payments were pulled from the interviews. They were put together to create profiles for each interviewee. This helped to start and see the patterns and commonalities that soon started to emerge. A few edge cases with issues that were very rare, were documented, but removed to keep from skewing the results. The profiles are great for the discovery phase as they help to create a log of items to consider for future releases, but for the next design / implementation phase we needed to document who would be using our software. The goal is to see it from the users eyes to make sure all pertinent information is taken into consideration when designing the UI and overall user experience, including environment, location, restrictions, and common workplace situations. For this, personas were created. Personas are fictitious characters created from the discovery through the cumulative interview process, with results coming from not only the homeowners, but also the customer service representatives who serve them. They are fictitious only in the fact that they are given names and faces of unknown people, but factual in the sense they are based on the information from the people we interviewed. Giving them a name and face helps give a visual for the designer to understand who he is designing for without a bias toward one actual person in particular. Instead he will shoot for a design that the majority of people will be able to use. If a group has 4 personas and 3 make up 80% of them, then those are the people for which to aim their designs, assuming this group is also the future of the end user. Being that almost anyone could be a homeowner, we chose to create 3 main personas to sum up our findings as accurately as we could. Discovery reveals that most people are more than satisfied with Mutual of Omaha Bank’s customer service team. They love the personal attention that is easily available through a simple phone call. The problem with this is that this service is there in times of dire need, where as the client just can’t continue without help from the service representative. If they are on the phone or email this much, that means there are possibly a lot issues that need addressed with their customer online services. Findings from this discovery phase pointed to a lot of manual processes, confusing user interfaces, and limited communication between PMC software/website and the bank’s payment portal/website. A lot of time is being spent hand holding the customer because of major confusion on the customer/client’s end with regards to the misleading payment page, cluttered navigation and strong disconnect in Business Online Banking, and also lack of integration with property management company’s software. From step one they confused as to which dropdown menu to use as well as the selection within. Then the payment option selection is out of order and strange. Then the separate pages for making a CC or Debit Card payment causes issues as they say the similar things, but visually different. The fact that they are separate is odd enough. Also the fact that a one-time payment has 27 individual fields to possibly fill out is absolutely astonishing. And the system doesn’t even know who they are even though they came from their PMC’s website where they were already logged in. The customers should be applauded just for getting through the entire process successfully. A cleaner and more mobile friendly UI on the payments page would make it easier for the homeowners to easily understand how to make a payment successfully and decrease customer service calls. Some of the current obstacles for quicker processing of homeowner’s HOA payments are the slowness of the US post office, a lack of a digital solution for instantly processing payments from the top banks in the US like Wells Fargo and Chase, and the missing option of taking a payment from a mobile device. The post office isn’t getting any faster, but the smart phones are readily available for a majority of users and targeting large banks for digital payments would enlarge the target group of current homeowners.