Scope: 8-week long human-centered design project focused on problem definition and and designing a solution
My Role: UX Researcher & UX Designer
Project: University of Washington HCDE (HCI/UX) Master’s Course
Our team aimed to create a solution to help teach young adults about personal finance fundamentals in order to set themselves up for long-term financial stability. This is especially important for those who lack friend or family support to learn financial literacy.
+ Understand current pain points young adults face when trying to make key financial choices
+ Create a solution that helps young adults take financial actions to set themselves up for long-term financial stability
+ Use user-centered design methodologies to scope and design a solution to confront the problem of financial literacy in young adults
Secondary Research, Surveys, User Interviews, Persona Development, Storyboarding, Design Principles, Usability Testing, Information Architecture, User Flows, Prototyping, UI Design
Simplified seamless integration flow in onboarding. Updated language of notifications that new users can opt-in to sharing their systems data if they want.
Complete a Learning Topic by stepping through each of the detailed tasks related to the topic. This will ensure users learn all core knowledge needed for a topic.
In addition to the static resources provided, learning topics have easy to follow interactive tools to make learning simple.
Have additional questions? Feel supported using the mentor pods where they can feel safe and comfortable starting threads and speaking with mentors and peers.
Generative Research
Discover
Ideate
Prototype
Test
Deliver
Development N/A
1:1 Semi-structure interviews, Online Survey and Competitive Analysis to help define
Used insights from generative research to create design requirements and start ideating
Based on the user flows, we created a medium fidelity prototype to showcase our ideas
We conducted 1:1 usability studies to validate our overall solution was clear and understandable
Refined the design based on usability test, and created a UI kit to apply final visuals
Persona Creation
& User Flows
Medium Fidelity Prototype
Qualitative Usability Testing
UX Design
Lead starts
Final Solution Design
No development occurred for this theoretical project
Our team decided to focus on financial literacy for our problem space. In order to gain insights into gaps that young adults face to help scope and drive our solution definition we conducted the following generative research:
Competitive Analysis on Products & Curriculum
Review existing financial tools and resources found online, establish insights to create a more useful and differentiated solution
1. Understand what are the most popular personal finance products on the market today.
2. What gaps exist within these products that are currently available?
1:1 Semi-Structured Interviews
Capture quantitative data and answers to closed-ended questions used to supplement and triangulate our qualitative user interviews.
Included:
+ Screener Questionnaire
+ Main Questions
1. In general, what are young adult’s comfort level with personal finances?
2. What are the popular tools and methods young adults use today to learn and manage their personal finances?
3. What are young adults’ most important financial priorities?
Online Survey Responses
Understand barriers to learning, current learning techniques, motivations (or lack thereof), and feelings around personal finance and managing their money
1. What are the barriers for young adults to accessing personal finance education and information? Why are these barriers?
2. How do young adults currently decide how to spend their first paychecks?
3. How do individuals learn about financial literacy today?
4. What are individuals’ financial goals and priorities, and why?
5. What are individuals currently doing to budget (or not budget), and why?
Triangulated insights from our 1:1 Semi-Structured Interviews, Online Survey Responses and Competitive Analysis.
Interviewees reported not knowing where to start and being overwhelmed with information, and they wanted more structured assistance to learn about finance. 70% of survey respondents currently rely on internet searches for financial advice.
Current tools available don't solve for our target user who is looking for guidance around where to start with broader financial literacy topics such as 401ks and investments.
There is no universal tool or method to learning financial literacy; everyone has their own unique approach or path that works for their learning style and what they deem as relevant and important based on personal priorities. financial knowledge, priorities, and practices to what they’ve learned from their parents.
83% of survey respondents said they learned to manage their finances from family.
Those who view their parents as trusted, financially literate resources credited their financial knowledge, priorities, and practices
to what they’ve learned from their parents.
There are barriers preventing people from making financial decisions or employing practices because they are sensitive to how they spend their money and want reassurance and guidance.
People are motivated and interested in seeking out resources to improve their financial literacy as it pertains and becomes relevant to their life events, priorities and goals.
We created 3 key personas based on our research to help guide our design choices and key design principles.
About
Is a recent graduate living on her own. She started her first full-time job and is finally making a consistent income.
Painpoints
+ Not sure what financial terms mean, what things are, which options are best for her
+ Feels like current knowledge isn’t enough; still needs to seek out information
+ Doesn’t have the guidance on what to do, preventing her from making financial decisions
We created 3 key personas based on our research to help guide our design choices and key design principles.
Created based on research & persona development
Used to help us guide out scope and ground our thinking
+ Visualize a clear financial literacy plan that align to values, life phase and preferences.
+ Flexible game plan that users can adjust as their life and financial needs change.
+ Connect users with community support to ask questions, get relevant advice and resources.
+ Educate users on common financial terms and clarify how they interrelated.
+ Build confidence in users’ ability to make financially-sound decisions.
1. Creating and editing your Game Plan
2. Completing a Game Plan Topic
3. Finding and joining a Mentor Pod
1. Are there any barriers or pain points that prevents user from completing the core tasks and functionality within the app?
2. Does the onboarding questionnaire capture the right information about users’ financial knowledge and preferences?
3. Is the overall “Game Plan” structure and format understandable and helpful for users?
4.Does the mentor pod feature match user expectations and provide value to users trying to learn about financial literacy?
3 participants | 2 male, 1 female | ages 22-24
Due to the short recruiting timeframe used convenience sampling within our personal social networks to recruit young adults (between age 18-30) with some work experience.
1. Generate a personalized Learning Plan
2. Complete a Learning Plan topic
3. Find and join a new Mentor Pod
The lack of hierarchy in the “Learning Plan” made participants unsure about what order they should be completing the topics
Overall Learning Plan design and hierarchy was updated, including adding filters.
Before
After
The “to-do” list within a topic was unclear and didn’t let the user know what they needed to complete for a topic
Navigation was updated, tasks were numbered and tabs were implemented to provide better structure.
Before
After
Participants were confused about how the “Mentor Pods” connected to the overall “Game Plan” topics
Clearer CTA and description were added to bring the users’ attention to the related learning communities for the topic.
Before
After
The name and iconography of the “Mentor Pods”didn’t match participants mental model of the feature
Renamed “Mentor Pods” to “Learning Communities” and updated the iconography.
Before
After
Participants didn’t have enough information to understand the role of the Mentor within a “Mentor Pod”
Descriptions were improved and details were added to provide users a clear “About” section for the mentor.
Before
After
During the ideation phase, we were still unsure about the scope of our solution. This With only one week to ideate, we struggled to make decisions.
We used sketching, crazy 8’s and a group card sorting activity to quickly ideate and narrow down the scope of our solution. This allowed us to quickly ideate and think through ideas.
Limited time: Prototyping and user testing were completed in one week. All 4 members of our team (with varying UX/UI skills) wanted to design the prototype, which made keeping consistency difficult.
+ If there had been more time, I would have done the following to get feedback on insights before proceeding with one solution: co-design session and concept testing with lo-fi prototypes.
+ Have one lead designing overseeing the work and ensuring consistency across the prototype.
The overall tight timeline limited our ability to recruit a diverse group of target users. This also limited our ability to re-visit the overall design on larger issues.
+ Would have recruited participants from low-income, and low-resourced areas in order to get input and feedback from minority groups that could better understand how the app can best support these young adults from these populations.
+ Run the study with at least 2 other participants.
+ Taken additional time to ideate the prototype and overall design ideas before continuing onto final visuals.
Disadvantaged young adults who don't have a support network of family and friends to teach them about financial literacy will be able to gain a strong understanding of personal finance in order to set themselves up for long-term financial stability.
Our solution removes the guesswork and rabbit hole of Google searches and provides a clear, customized learning path to help young adults succeed.
+ I would have allowed for more time and concept testing in the ideation phase. Due to time constraints we were rushed to think of a solution and stick with it.
+ Scoped down our problem space. Our team spent a lot of time swirling because of our large scope. I would have picked a more narrow problem space within financial literacy.
+ Interview SMEs and more young adults. I would have taken more time to interview SMEs on financial literacy, such as community leaders and youth program leads that focus on this topic, to get their expert opinion on where young adults in disadvantaged communities fall short. I also would have found more young adults who don't have family support to interview, in order to understand gaps and pain points with their experience.
+ Working with a team of designers, all with different ideas and perspectives can be a challenge to get alignment on the direction of the solution. It’s important to find activities, like sketching and card sorting, to help the team align.
+ When working in a fast-paced team environment, divide and conquer tasks by using team member’s strengths to complete quality work.
