UX case study: A digital financial service for children
“Do not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving.” –Warren Buffett
The overview
We learn to save as early as when we start receiving pocket money from our parents. Many parents give their children a weekly allowance to teach them about the concept of money. We all know that today cash is not used to any great extent, also not by children. Parents experience are that the weekly allowance is invisible, the child does not understand its value. The physical concept of money is slowly disappearing so it is really vital to teach children to manage money and to save.
This case study is a design challenge for a UX workshop. The idea is that this assignment should be relatively small and make assumptions to define limitations that allow the focus of the parts to highlight.
The challenge
Create a concept to create a digital system that is simple and fun so children can use banking applications continually to create awareness in saving money for their future needs.
Objectives & Goals
I want to find out the behavior of my target group about saving and also to find out patterns which intrigue the behavior to create awareness. Due to time constraints, I did only desk research through searching for financial meaning for children on the internet and also with my assumptions about this problem and possible solution to that.
Approach
Why I like the Design Thinking process:
Design thinking is great and simple to articulate to others.
The process itself feels very intuitive.
Drawback of the Design Thinking process:
The process may be a bit too vague at a glance, if you try to connect each step in the process to various UX methodologies and tools used.
The research
Research is a crucial part of the design process. We have to collect all the data and find the problem to make a solution. Due to time constraints, I have decided to go for desk research and the first step of that research is to explore the heroes of the story.
Understand: Pocket money
Children in Nordic countries receive a monthly average of DKK 183 in pocket money
Kids’ perception of money
Understand: Digital behavior
Daily mobile usage among children in Sweden 2018, by age and duration
Main differences in behaviour between kids and adults when they use online services
Understand: Design Recommendations
Around the age of 6 years, children begin to understand perception of money. At this time children may see that money is directly tied to items, parents work for money, money spent differently for bigger items it is bigger money spend and for smaller items smaller money. Many children receive a regular “income” in the form of ‘pocket money’ and thereby, there is already some form of exposure to the concept and value of money.
In fact, one study from the University of Cambridge found that money habits in children were formed by the age of 7
Source: “Habit Formation and Learning in Young Children” by Dr. David Whitebread and Dr. Sue Bingham University of Cambridge.
They need a simple and efficient flow that is devoted to saving and transferring their school needs that are easily understood by their age under parental supervision.
Second step was to explore competitor analysis for kids banking apps that already exist in the market.
Understand: Competition Analysis
Research observation: Core user needs
Project Objective
Ideation & Concept
After all these desk research and analyzing all information, here is my takeaway of important highlights before sketching the concept drafts.
Personas
User Flow
Lo-Fi Mockups
Once I developed my primary persona, identified my key task and stories, I started sketching out various solutions. Quick Figma mockups using library helped me to jot down my thoughts. I knew these were rough and I will keep iterating my concept.
Inspiration Board
I started looking at different inspiration apps on Dribbble and collected some of the UI pictures. I wanted my application to be easy to understand and follow yet playful as it’s a kids app. The use of card layout for books and clear simple iconography was selected to ease the usability as I envision my app being used not only by the parents and their kids but also by the kids’ grandparents.
My journey for this project
My journey so far, this project was a great learning experience in such a small time frame.
- Making a balance between solution space and problem space.
- Conduct more interviews on research to verify hypotheses and ideas and make it more customer centric.
- Interview a few kids to do my user testing and make sure the app is well understood not only by the adults but by the kids as well.
- Adding the dictionary along so that the kids can even see the words meaning if they are stuck.
- It is concept stage only and many aspects I missed, I needed more time to test hypotheses and more brainstorming around.
- Often times, during the course of this project you realize you are on the verge of following the wrong path. Test out what’s working and what’s not, do research and use data to help make decisions.
- Designing is a continuous Improvement: This function enables the fluidity of design, to move from one moment in a process to the next.
- All in all this project has helped me shape the design thinking approach which I will continue to apply in the future projects.
- Start and don’t be frightened to fail, you will be amazed that in that also you learned a lot.
