How might we encourage young adults to live a financially sustainable life? (Part 1)

The intention of searching for happiness is a common drive for most people, but the things that can fulfil are different for each person. Naturally this very much depends on many things, but we can observe patterns, especially on a generation scale. Finastra Labs started a Human-Centered Design project to research this problem.

This is a multi-part article. You can find the other parts here:
part1 (current), part 2, part3

First, let’s talk a little bit more about the title of this article.

How might we encourage young adults to live a financially sustainable life?

According to the human-centered design problem solving methodology, this question is the so called design challenge. It has to define the problem in a scale that gives you space to be creative but also gives focus to keep you on the track. Actually the title is just the shortened, “article title compatible” version of our challenge. (The complete sentence has more precise demographic scope than “young adults”.)

When the whole team was happy with the design challenge, we were ready to start the research of the problem. Let me present some numbers about the research phase:

• 10 interviews with members of the target audience (cca. 10 hours of video recording)
• 2 interviews with experts
• 110 memorable interview moments/quotes
• 37 insights (based on the memorable moments)
• 7 insight statements

With the key insights the first phase has concluded. The next part is the ideation when we diverge and come up with as many idea as we can. This went extremely well. Maybe a little too well. We got 233 ideas, each represented by a post-it note on the wall. (Sponsored by Office Depot :) )

The post-it notes have been placed in an impact/feasibility, 2-dimensional matrix. With this technique we were able to quickly exclude the bad or unrealistic ideas, and reconsider the best ones.

Even after this filtering it was too much, so we clustered them and slowly some kind of framework came into shape on the wall. The framework’s foundation was the 7-steps of financial literacy and awareness.

1. Triggers for considering a Sustainable Life
2. Spending < Income
3. Where Does My Money Go?
4. Stability & Self-control
5. Safety Net
6. Saving Plan
7. Financial Guru

This concept got the “Financial Duolingo” name and it’s been an education game integrated with the player’s bank account, so instead of playing with chips and coins, it is real money.

At this point of the story we arrived to our first (but not last) prototype that could be used to validate the whole concept. We wanted to give some personality to the app, so we came up with two characters, called Jen and Berry. These two kind fellas guide the player through the financial challenges. At first it’s a piece of cake, then the challenges get harder and harder.

You can actually play with the prototype if you want at http://axure.misys.com/EB144U.

So, we made this prototype of the concept and did some testing too and came into the conclusion that financial education is hard. Many people simply just don’t care or lack the ambition. But the most common case is that they think it doesn’t worth the effort. So it is a matter of motivation. It’s not enough to create cartoon characters with funny jokes we must be able to nudge the customers. Hell, we can create a fancy virtual reality with ponies and unicorns, but at the end of day users won’t stick around and consume the whole thing as a habit, because for them finances are just the necessary wrong in their daily routines and frankly they don’t even understand the quarter of it.

With all our previous insights, challenges, ideas and experiences in our mind, we turned our focus to the interesting field of personal motivators. The second part of this article will tell the story how we solved this problem in 5 days.

This is a multi-part article. You can find the other parts here:
part1 (current), part 2, part3

hello.labs@finastra.com