Designing Systems
Managing Money with Lily Kim and Jessie Headrick
A three part system that encourage individuals experiencing the transition between dependent and independant finances to manage their money.
Brainstorming
The first day after the introduction of the new project, we engaged in a class activity of speed dating to collect some initial data on our topics from our classmates. My role as to ask the questions and note take. It was a perfect way to kick start the way to frame this issue. We asked four questions: Below is a image of our post it clustering based on that research.
New System
Our project has undergone a lot of change from the very beginning. The short time frame of this project has definitely lit the fire to resolve our system more quickly, however we are not interested in settling on a sub-par idea either. We quickly developed a digital system that is designed for our specific audience and providing new and engaging features. The other elements in our system, however, are not resolved yet.
It feels like we have been going around and around with different systems to lead to our budgeting app; from a physical paper wallet, to a wallet making workshop, to a one-on-one RA discussion. Each step along the way we found issues with motivators, buy-in, and effectiveness of our environment aspect.
We considered two different aspects of working with the RA, presenting a workshop (more formal discussion/ activity) and a more conversational one on one. Both aspects are under the assumption that the message we provide the RA will be passed along without fault to the student.
In the end, we admitted that the RA aspect of the system would not be as effective as we hoped for a couple of reasons.
- taking for granted the trust between the student and RA
- depending on the RA to act on behalf of our message ( RA training/ are they the most reliable when it comes to sharing our message?
- assuming the student will reach out to the RA personally
- students may not want to partake in formal activities with the RA in the dorm
Ultimately, we were not married to the idea of using the RA, or a lesson system, to begin with and we want to let a natural progression of the project dictate what the final deliverable will be. So instead of limiting this to the freshman, or a dorm setting, we would like to create engaging print elements that live in the environment where students are already primed to spend money. We have been throwing around the idea of using an interactive print piece to prompt the internal motivation. Examples of this would be an infographic, bingo type game, or short survey. We have also been brainstorming how these pieces would exist in the environment. Some ideas we had for this part would be a trail of floor stickers, situated on the ground in locations where one would spend money on campus, that begin the conversation about money management and lead to our print piece. They could be on the floor as you wait in line and the print piece could be a set of business size cards that provide more information. Or they could be leading to a poster with rip off cards that serve as the motivation and next steps toward the app.
At this point I think we are struggling most with how the print piece can meaningfully, and wittily, lead to the digital interface. There are a lot of questions that we are still not able to answer such as: will this only exist on campus? What platforms can we utilize that will seem the least solicitory? How can we incorporate a lighter tone that can be used in a public setting?
Guidance and feedback is most appreciated! At this point we are definitely on the same page about our visual language, and we are confident that we will be able to tackle designing the product. We don’t want to jump into that before we have a solid system, however; yet, not having the system worked out is getting stressful.
Clarifying the Big Stuff
Thank you for your feedback — it was definitely helpful to re-evaluate the overarching goals that we have for this project. We would love to share with you some of the progress we made and our idea for the system.
First off we understand that a simple approach may be best and we want to structure our deliverables based on the goals we have for the learning of the students.
From interaction with our deliverable(s) we want participants to gain inspiration of possibilities to change for the better. By this we mean, we are not focusing on how/what they are spending their money on — rather we want to inspire them to see the budgeting as a tool for better financial thinking.
To communicate this goal we have three main approaches:
- Identify that there is a problem (or an undesirable situation that could be improved) (print)
- Inspire and offer a possibility for change (print/environment)
- Provide one such tool to bring about that change (digital)
While our digital component (the app) isn’t an all-encompassing tool to fix the problem of money management — we do feel that it will help students begin the practice of financial management. Our app provides is the resource, introduced through the print and environment pieces. In order to make this concept something that students can grasp, we plan to use scenarios, language, and a voice that is relatable; and create communication that is digestible to an audience with mixed financial understanding.
So those were a few of the overarching goals and approaches. For our print piece we would like to pursue an interactive infographic system. We imagined a flow chart of questions probing at financial habits that could be improved through budgeting. For example: Sweating over checking your account? Have a savings account? Turned down dinner with the friends this month?
We see this print piece initiating some internal conversation about financial habits and become an internal motivator. These easily relatable questions invites our audience to try out the app for awhile. Overall the voice is casual but poking at some issues that our audience is most likely experiencing.
The environment aspect of our project is where our print pieces live. The stack of handheld infographics would be strategically placed where students are already spending money. For example: at the register when they order food, so that they can grab one and look at it while they wait for food.
Below is an example of the flow chart infographic we are imaging at the moment. Both the visual style and casual language is very similar to what we are going for (but a little more polished to retain credibility).
Presentation (4/19)
The presentation really helped bring our concept together. We were having a a difficult time tying all of the elements in our project together, but once we started moving with the concept of the infographic, pieces fell into place. The infographic was the piece that would tie our digital component and environment together.
Follow the presentation to get an idea of where we are at.
Refining the Idea
As we moved forward we began refining our visual communication. We first found that changing our color scheme would benefit our goals better. The color scheme needs to communicate the theme of “genie” and keep the light and friendly tone, while still holding a trustable and mature voice.
As part of our visual communication the element of handwritten and sketched illustrations are important. This voice is more friendly and less “corporate” — which is exactly what we want to pursue, especially for the print piece.
The difficulty in this sketched style will be incorporating it into the digital piece. We want our digital piece, the app, to come off as a trustworthy budgeting help. We would like to be able to tie in the visual communication of the handwritten style into the app — so there is a clear transition between the two. We plan to use the handwritten style as the introducing tutorial to the functionality of the app.
The app has four main features: first is the budget-making which involves assigning costs and income to categories. Second is the discretionary daily budget, which is calculated from the budget that is inputed and is also the home-screen of the app. The third, is the calendar that displays of costs and income on the particular day of their scheduling. The calendar feature also includes an option to share with parents, which hopefully will help open financial communication between student and parent. The last feature is goal setting which allows for the user to make savings goals for themselves and visualize the different buckets to save within.
Developing the Brand
The brand of Genie was an inspiration of our goals — for example the tool Genie should be easy and effortless in budgeting as checking your wallet. Knowing your budget for the day should be as easy as rubbing a lamp! Determining how the Genie brand would be visually manifested was more difficult, because it couldn’t feel too childish as to not be taken seriously. It also needed a better visual connection to money or budgeting.
Our very first sketch of Genie was an illustration of the more commonly known Genie.
Disney-ified version of Genie was not believable in the context of managing money, however.
Another idea we considered was putting the typical Genie turban on a piggy bank. So it would seem that the piggy bank is your genie. The issue we were concerned about for this idea was whether or not that stereotype (of the turban which is most likely perpetuated by Disney) would be appropriate culturally to put on a pig.
Thats when we came upon the idea of making the piggy bank the genie in form. That is using the typical wispiness of a genie and basic form of a piggy bank together.
Though a lot of our visual communication takes on a sketching hand drawn quality, we thought vectorizing the illustration of the Genie pig was best in order to bridge the print and digital piece.
The next problem for us to work out is what the word mark would look like. Our print pieces are primarily hand written, so would the word mark also be hand written? How would that look on the app? There are a couple of questions
Moving Along — Carriers
The carriers of our infographic message were chosen based on areas on campus where students make purchases. School store, cafes, and eateries were all targeted for frequent student purchases. Then we chose the items that were most commonly carriers of the commodity purchased — i.e. coffee cup cozy, napkin, bag, food packages, etc.
Originally, in our presentation we chose three of these areas: a cafe, the school store, and an eatery to distribute three different carriers: a coffee cozy, a bag, and a food container. After some consideration we decided not to use the food container, however, for a couple reasons:
- once the food is bought no one interacts with the top of the lid
- the carriers themselves are not very environmentally friendly, and we don’t exactly agree with their production in the first place
- printing on that material, whether for a one off or mass production would be difficult
- not everyone gets their food in a to-go container
So instead of a food container, we chose a napkin. A napkin would be much easier to print on, easier to distribute, more engaging, and provide more opportunity for interaction.
We did a couple of different sketches out on the napkin to experiment how a user would interact with opening the napkin and reading more. Our final napkin included a couple of the question bubbles from the full infographic, but they are more targeted to eating and going out. For example the first question is “Wish you could be eating out instead?”, which is admittedly a bit of a poke at campus eateries, but would definitely resonate with the students.
Printing the a color napkin of the show was a bit more difficult than we expected. In the end we had to show the black and white one because of printer limitations. Ideally the napkin would be printed in these colors.
The next carrier, the cozy, was a much more simple message because of the limited space. We prompted with a question that was pointed toward the purchase: “is your latte bill out of this world?”. At first we printed our cozy on an actual coffee cozy that we deconstructed. This gave a really good tactile idea of how the cozy would be to interact with.
The feedback we received for this cozy was that it was too far away from the rest of the visual communication because it was brown and lacked the colors of the other pieces of the system. So for the next iteration we Tried adding color and making it more similar to the aesthetic of the bag and napkin.
The bag is the last carrier and probably the most important because it is the most overarching element that carries the voice and message through the full infographic. We had a couple of different iterations on bag dimensions depending on how we wanted the infographic to be represented. First we had a bag that was more bottom heave because we felt that the infographic fit better.
After our our critique, we decided that the infographic displayed in this orientation made it more difficult to find the start of the infographic. additionally, the orientation of the bag looked too much like a clothes shopping bag, rather than one given in a school store.
On the side of the bag the validation is printed. The bag was the best carrier to add validation because of the form and size. We felt that the side of the bag had great real estate to add some statistics to encourage users to be more confident in the message of Genie.
Bringing the Mobile to Life
The voice of our app, should come off as trustworthy and professional as well as friendly. However, including the hand- written style was important to aid the transition between the print piece and the app. To over- come these dissonant voices we utilized the handwritten style as the introducing tutorial to the functionality of the app. This way the tactile handwritten tone is the first interaction with the digital component after interact- ing with the print piece.
