An ATM for Children
What is this product?
ATM helps you save money to your checking and saving account, deposit checks and cash, withdraw money from your accounts… all without seeing a teller! You just need your debit card and a pin number to access your account at the ATM. It helps make your life easier because you can withdraw and regulate your bank account without waiting in line, numerous locations, and most importantly there’s no need to go during the bank’s operating hours.
For this project, I was prompted to designing an ATM for children. In my opinion, an ATM for kids would mainly be for educational purpose. It should act as their piggy bank, but a more advanced version with various features for them to keep track of their allowance. Parents can teach kids about the value of money, and start encouraging saving and discouraging overspending. As an adult now, I really wish my parents had taught me about money at a younger age. I feel like I would have better financial management instead of learning on my own during my college years.
I think this ATM would also allow kids to have a place to store their allowance. I remember just putting my weekly $2 allowance in a box when I was a kid. I would take out money when I need to buy a snack at school, but I never remember how much money I have in my little box unless I count it all at once at the end of the year.
My Process
I targeted my design toward kids who are 7 to 9 years old. I think the kid’s ATM would need similar basic features as a normal ATM: take out money and save money. The wording of the ATM would be easier to understand since it is for kids. The app would also help the kids set saving goals. Parents would be allowed to input the amount of how much their weekly/monthly allowance is, and the ATM app would project how much the kids are supposed to save by a certain time.
I think of this ATM as a toy — an advanced piggy bank. It would have a pyramid-like iPad stand. The interface of the toy would be an iPad, and parents can insert the iPad into the stand when they let their kids play with it. There should have a hole at the top for the kids to put in their money, similar to a piggy bank so it’s something they are familiar with. And it would dispense money at the bottom of the stand, which is also similar to a piggy bank since you can retrieve your money at the bottom of the piggy bank. The iPad stand would serve as a storage space for their money as well.
Sample sketches of interface
Above are the interfaces and flow of how an user would save money with the app. They are first greeted with the log in interface. Since the users would be kids around 7 to 9 years old, I don’t think they would want to remember their pin number to access their account. So I made their passcode to be images and have them type in their names. They would then go to the page suggesting the main two options of adding money taking out money. This page would also have the option of checking balance and cancel all.
After inserting the money through the hole at the top of the container, they would confirm the amount on the next screen. Once they confirmed, the screen would show how much money they have already saved, and how far are they to their saving goal. I used the star rate as an encouragement since I think kids are familiar with this system.
Parents can have access to their account by tapping on to the setting icon on the top left corner of the welcome screen.
Here are the interfaces and flow of how an user would take out money. It would follow the same procedure as saving money, except users would choose to the take out option instead. They would then enter the amount they want to withdraw. After they confirmed the amount, they would be greeted by a page of how far they are away from their goal now that they have taken out money instead of saving. I think having the pig to be crying it would discourage the kids to continue taking out more money.
Summary
This project is still at the very beginning stage with just rough ideas and sketches. Since the project was limited to only 2 hours of time, I think I’m still missing a few key frames of the app. For example, the check balance page, and the page of balance summary before users see the goal and goodbye screen. There are still a lot of work to be done and any suggestion would be greatly appreciated!
Till next time.
