How might we encourage young adults to live a financially sustainable life? (Part 3)
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 has started a Human-Centered Design project to research this problem.
This is a multi-part article. You can find the other parts here:
part1, part2, part3 (current)
The concept
After our very first 5-day Design Sprint, we had a slightly tested concept for an app that could help Millennials to be better in their finances. But what is the concept after all?
A smart phone application specifically designed for young adults. It helps to save money on short and mid term goals. And it also gives financial education to the users via hints and guidelines.
There are 3 main logical steps in the concept:
I. Set Goal
The user has to name 3 goals:
- Reach within 12 months (short term)
- Reach within 12–36 months (mid term)
- Select one from of our “smart goals”. This serves educational purposes.
II. Make a Plan
Calculate monthly saving amount for each goal.
III. Track & Nudge
Tracking and managing the ongoing goals, educating and building good financial habits and occasionally sales offers.
The end result of the 5-day design sprint was an Axure prototype that you can try here: Axure prototype
Design dilemmas
We had an approval to proceed with the project and got the necessary designer and developer talents. The plan was to separate the prototype development along the 3 phases, so we can stop to test and evaluate each milestone with potential users.
Quick reminder, the project’s main goal is to learn about the Millennial generation, so from the very first moment our design principal was if we have alternative options for a problem we always choose the more extreme one. Push the limits until it’s too much then pull back a little bit and you’re done. With this mindset we worked on the UX and UI for 3 weeks.
I’m sharing with you our most crucial dilemmas that we faced and our conclusions.
#1 Challenge: How might we stand out from the crowd and get attention?
Debate: If the general design is conservative it’s not a huge problem, but if we find the sweet spot it can be a differentiator.
Decision: We picked the Japanese lucky charm figure Maneki-neko as the app’s design theme, because it means good fortune and it’s loveable. Also the Internet-generation is very familiar with cat memes, so it offers us a possibility to make connection with our users. Besides the cat theme we also decided to create a very visual design and use lot of memorable, unique or even strange photos.
#2 Challenge: Every interaction and decision that the user has to make is a friction in the user experience. How might we push the number of frictions to the lowest possible value?
Debate: Typing is not comfortable on a mobile device but we need details.
Decision: At first the user has to choose from categories. No typing and detailed information is needed.
#3 Challenge: How might we create an effortless saving experience but give significant added value in the mean time?
Debate: No body wants to enter a lot of information, especially if she is not sure about the value she will get. APIs and integrations are great but to get permission we have to earn the user’s trust first.
Decision: Separate plans from goals. Planning is hard and boring but dreaming is easy and fun. So first we let the user dream without pressure, have a little bit of closure and get praise from the app, so as a result be emotionally involved. Then get into planning. Planing is crucial so we put extra effort into giving as much aid to the user as we can. One cornerstone of the concept is that the user has to establish a connection to his/her bank, so the app is aware of the financial status. Doing this is not a common thing in many countries, but in North America it’s not a big deal and soon in the EU it will be too, when it will be mandatory for all banks to provide an API endpoint for fintech companies (Payment System Directive 2).
#4 Challenge: How might we explain the concept (or basically anything) to the user?
Debate: There is this global epidemic called severe user manual allergy. No human ever read what the app has to say on the first start. But this app is juggling with the people’s money therefore we have to tell what’s the deal.
Decision: First implement A/B testing capability into the app’s very core. Google’s Firebase platform has great features for A/B testing so we built the whole app on that. Then we created a few different solutions for tutorials. The most radical version is when we explain everything in a video that the user cannot skip. People like videos, so what could go wrong?
#5 Challenge: How might we educate the user in a non-intrusive way?
Debate: It’s again a trust issue. Why would the user accept financial education from an app? The Millennial generation is quite independent and likes to control their life. Taking advices is not their favorite daily activity.
Decision: Give the app a playful character with charismatic personality and let him be the voice of common sense. We have to explain many thing so why not put the whole journey into a chat interface. Our target users are heavy chat users so this would be a familiar way of communication for them and also the wonderful personality of Maneko, the wise cat, can shine.
I hope you found useful our findings. The concept is constantly evolving and I will let you learn with us again when we hit another milestone.
Originally this post was about the final concept but in the mean time we found out that this is not that final, so now we are in the middle of a redesign for the production-ready, MVP version of the app. Stay tuned! Just a few months and I can show you what we came up with.
This is a multi-part article. You can find the other parts here:
part1, part2, part3 (current)
