Case study: A mobile saving habit maker for millennials
One day, I saw one Instagram post about the Millennials having struggles with saving money in one of the famous magazines in the UK. Going through those Instagram posts filled with money issues, I thought of a random idea about “How about designing an application that helps millennials save money easily?”
Just like that, my second UX case is underway.
The Challenge
As my design concept and idea is not focused on the financial management itself but more providing a platform that users can engrain consistent saving habits, I decided to get designing with the following goal in mind;
Building a mobile application for millennials who want to have consistent saving habits for their financial goals (Conceptual Design).
Tool: Adobe XD, Photoshop, Miro, Loom, Zoom, Google form, Notion, OBS, Pen and paper
Period: 8 weeks (Hand off on Feb 2021)
Role: UX design,Market & User Research, Branding, Prototying, Usability Testing
Process
Research
Before jumping into design, I wanted to explore more about the general saving money issues of Millennials.
Secondary Research and User Survey
According to the secondary online research and user survey that I conducted, I come to understand I that millennials are the leading age group when it comes to interest in and aggressively saving.
Market Research
From a user survey that I conducted, one glaring issue that caught my eye was that; more than 80% of participants preferred not to use the existing apps because of privacy insecurity. This allowed me to test these apps for myself and more deeply understand how they worked..
From my findings, the following two points are what stood out to me.;
- They are mostly forcing users to make an account on the first screen, moreover, they require access to the users bank transactions and SMS records. This onboarding process asks for quite a big amount of trust from users in the beginning, even before users enter in and get to know about the service.
- Most of the existing apps in the market are heavily focusing on the transactions of payment and tracking expenses of users, not saving behaviour itself.
Define & Ideation
Based on the results that I’ve collected previously, I started thinking of more detailed needs and pain points of my target audience, Millennials.
User persona
Better design always comes out of the well-designed user persona. I’ve created two different types of user personas based on the assumptions from previous research.
Based on these two types of personas, I brainstormed and produced multiple different design ideas and finally pulled out 3 different directions that I should focus on at the end;
1. Saving money with easy action
2. Getting consistent motivation
3. The ability to create a joint account, for users looking to save with someone else
HWM & Goal
I finalized my goal and solution using the HMW approach that can solve the problems of my audience efficiently.
Site Map
In order to structure the app features more efficiently, I created a sitemap for Pockett and prioritized three different features as below;
- Quick and easy Onboarding
- Join the challenge with account
- Ability to create joint accounts
Others; Track, Goal, Profile, Overview, CTA banners
User flow
After prioritizing features, I designed 3 different parts of user flow based on the user persona that I designed; Onboarding, Fill My Pockett (Main Action) and Activation of the Joint Account.
I designed 3 different main user flows; Onboarding, Fill My Pockett (Main Action) and Activate the joint account by inviting Pockett pal.
Hurdle & Tackle 1: Deducted features & why?
After several quick user testings and self-validation phase with the paper prototype and sketch designs, I’ve filtered some of the unnecessary features as below before getting ahead;
Design & Prototype
As soon as the sitemap has been set, I built the first mid-fidelity screens and interactions using Adobe XD based on the “Pockett” Design system.
As the main goal is helping users to save money easily whilst having some fun, I set Pockett’s tone profile with the keywords; friendly, casual and straightforward. These keywords and tone helped me to set up the design style guide and became the critical guidelines till I confirmed the final High fidelity design.
From Sketch, Mid-fi design
Hurdle & Tackle 2: Visual Hierarchy
During the initial building of style guide, I realized a very crucial issue with my initial design style; Accessibility.
The initial colour palette that I selected had bad contrast and both spacing and scale size were not consistent.
For better accessibility and visual hierarchy, I changed the colour palette immediately and modified other components to enhance the user experience.
Final Hurdle & Tackle: Feedback of Final Design
Usability Test
For a better process of usability testing, I gave users 3 different tasks as below;
- Task 1: Getting assistance from Pockett and setting your goal (Buy My House) before starting the challenge.
- Task 2: Start your Pockett Challenge by filling your first Pockett with £ 10.00
- Task 3: Create a joint account and add your partner in.
During the online usability testing, I tried to collect as much detailed feedback as possible. I gathered what I believed was the most crucial feedback from applicants who tested three different flows;
Pockett Welcome screens & Onboarding
“I wish there’s an option to skip the “annual salary” question only.”
“Why do I need to be validated by someone or Pockett to save my own money?”
“I don’t want to disclose my salary even though the data will be only shown to me.”
“What if I don’t have any goals yet?”
Fill My Pockett
“I don’t know where to click first on the Overview page to start.”
“Some stats data in the overview section looks duplicated.”
“What happens if I hit the 30days Pockett streak?”
Joint Account with Inviting Pockett Pal
“Quite interesting, it would be interesting how much we can save as a couple.”
“So… Is this my account or my partner’s account? Confused.”
Final(Real Final😆) Prototype
Learnings
Throughout this case study it’s safe to say that I have learnt a great deal about millenials and their saving habits. With all this said, I would like to go over a few final points to help future people not make the same mistakes as myself when starting off. I would like to pick out several brownie points that help you to avoid the same mistakes as me.
- Usability testing should (MUST) be done at a very early stage. When I say early, I mean REALLY EARLY. Don’t test your design after you made it pretty. Pretty doesn’t mean anything. If you want to avoid the situation of re-designing everything after you’ve done the Hi-fi design, then take this advice seriously.
- Train the filtering ability. Not all of the research or ideas are always valid for the project and users’ needs. Let me give an example of mine. While I was doing the research, I saw a lot of negative articles about gamification and its business model, and I didn’t think twice, immediately getting rid of the idea of rewarding and gamification in my app. I just threw away the potential business model for the project without valid data.
- Designs should not always be user-centred only, we also need to consider the business goal and its impacts.
- UX writing is not copywriting, totally different.
- Limit yourself, Your product will never be perfect, only getting close to perfection.
👏If you liked this, Don’t forget to clap for me! and For those who haven’t seen my first UX case study! here it is😆
✨Hiya! I’m a Self-Taught UX Designer, who has multicultural views towards things in life. Also a Yoga junkie and coffee brewer whose dream is having a coffee bean farm in south America in the future.
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