The problem

Paying down student loans is one of the greatest challenges Americans face today, with 45 million people in the United States owing about $1.7 trillion in loans. Yet millions of people feel ashamed of having it or even talking about it. The survey showed that 60% of respondents reported they never talk to their friends and family about their student loans.

Knowing that this social deviance is one of the reasons that hinders people's ability to manage their student loans, we wanted to help people to bring the student loan conversation to the forefront.

The real challenge was how might we encourage people to open up conversations about their student debt and pay down their loans faster?

After rounds and rounds of brainstorming, the team decided to launch an MVP feature called Boost by Pillar. Boost would encourage people to share their stories with their friends and family and it allows for friends and family to gift payments to help them pay off their loans. The payments will be automatically applied toward a user’s balance.

Users could create a Boost campaign in Pillar app, detailing their goals and stories and sharing with their friends and family. A third-party API would create personalized webpages for participating users, collecting payments via Stripe and routing them to users' student loans at the end of the campaign period.

Design