Nurturing Financial Intelligence
Our project focuses on a mobile app designed for Millennials and Gen Z, offering easy access to affordable financial products and serving as an educational resource. It simplifies budgeting, providing personalized guidance for financial stability.
Background
Covid-19 Impact: Shifts in Financial Behavior and Mental Health Concerns
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to changes in people's lifestyle, spending, and saving habits. Many Americans saw the pandemic as a significant threat to their personal finances, with 49% experiencing job loss, pay cuts, or both. As a result, people had more time to reflect on their finances, leading to increased financial concerns and poorer mental health.
👥 Users
- Millennials
- Gen Z
- Younger generations
😣 The Problem
Financial Challenges Facing Millennials and Gen Z: Impact, Stress, and the Importance of Financial Knowledge
- Millennials and Gen Zs face financial challenges (student debt, housing costs, savings).
- These challenges have intensified due to the pandemic, causing stress and potential debt.
- Adequate financial education and resources are vital to prevent long-term insecurity.
- Addressing these issues is critical for their overall stability and well-being.
🏆 The Solution
Creating a Mobile App for Financial Empowerment: Accessible Services, Personalized Guidance, and Educational Resources
Develop a mobile app that provides users with easy access to affordable financial products and services, while also offering personalized guidance and educational resources to help users improve their financial well-being.
Create a user-friendly mobile app that simplifies the budgeting process, tracks expenses, and helps users achieve their financial goals by offering personalized recommendations and support from financial advisors.
The Path to Financial Bliss and Mental Clarity
Support the mental well-being of the younger generation facing financial challenges exacerbated by the pandemic. Our solution provides targeted resources, focusing on financial education to address stressors like student debt and housing costs. By empowering Millennials and Gen Zs with the tools to navigate these challenges, we aim to foster long-term stability and well-being.
Our Design Strategy
Our design process follows a storytelling approach and includes four main stages: research, ideation, prototyping, and testing. We gather information about the user's needs and pain points during research, then generate and refine ideas during ideation. Prototypes are created to test our concepts, followed by user testing to validate our ideas.
Conducting Surveys
💡 We discovered that
Our User demographics ranges from 18 to 34 year olds
- The demographic mainly consisted of 18-25 years old and 25-34 years old who will be interested in product that can help them with finances.
- The groups are split between the employed and unemployed
- The ethnicities are made up of: Asian/Pacific Islanders, Hispanic/Latinos and Caucasian
Mapping Out User Characteristics & Data
✍️ We learned that
The main source of getting financial information is reading through online text and listening to podcasts
Financial education was not taught in school
- 4/6 use tools to help/track personal finance – Breaking it down of all 6 users:
3 people use digital tools, 2 people use pen/pencil, and 1 person is not satisfied with the current tool - All 6 users learn personal finance through podcasts/online videos/books/blogs
- Only 1/6 people learned about personal finances in school
✍️ We learned that
The consensus from our users suggest that there's a negative emotional response when it comes to financial management
- 4/6 users have negative feelings/responses when dealing with their finances (anxious, stress, sad..)
- 1/6 users feel neutral about their mental well-being
- 1/6 users feel fulfilled or satisfied with their mental well-being
✍️ We learned that
The topic on budgeting and spending is a concern among the users.
The pandemic's financial impact has worsened users' mental well-being
- 2 out of 6 users are concerned about their budgeting
- 4 out of 6 users are concerned about their spending
✍️ We learned that
The main interests for our users are:
- Learning about investment
- Learning about budgeting
- Learn about retirement planning
Non interests for our users are:
- Learning about tax planning
- Learning about how to manage student loans
- Following up to date about the economy news
- Learning or Following the stock market
🧐 Reflecting
Underlining the need for user-centric financial solutions that consider both emotional aspects and effective planning tools
Through our research, we found that the pandemic had mixed effects on users' finances. Many users experienced negative emotions related to financial matters and showed interest in financial planning. The majority rely on financial tools for tracking. This underlines the need for user-centric financial solutions that consider both emotional aspects and effective planning tools.
📝 Takeaways
We went from defining the user characteristics to generating HMW questions to further understand the scope of what we're trying to solve.
- Align the financial tool with user needs, frustrations, motivations, and goals.
- Ask critical questions to guide solution brainstorming.
- Prioritizing features that support user well-being.
Forming Persona Profiles
Meet Joe, a 28-year-old small business owner from NY impacted by the pandemic. He seeks accessible tools to manage his finances, make smart decisions, and achieve his financial goals. He's realistic about his financial limitations and seeks guidance to manage his finances effectively.
Meet Anna Andez, our second persona. She is a 21-year-old Latina who recently graduated and started her first full-time job. Although employed, Anna feels anxious and stressed about managing her finances due to her lack of experience. Anna is motivated to learn about budgeting and investing to secure her financial future.
Features Ranking
We prioritize feature requests based on importance to focus on what matters most to users
The feature ranking prioritization mapping is a strategic tool that organizes and ranks app features based on their importance and impact. This process ensures that the most critical functionalities are addressed first, optimizing the app's development timeline and aligning it with user needs and project goals.
Proposed Features
- Clear financial visuals
- Personalized advice
- Interactive dashboard
- Simplified budgeting
- Educational resources
- Timely notification
- Goal Visualization
- Virtual financial coaching.
App Flow Map
The blueprint to our app. Where do the users flows go in order to reach their goals?
The app map visually presents the structured flow and hierarchy of features within the financial tool, highlighting the user journey and interaction paths. It serves as a blueprint for the app's design and functionality, ensuring a user-centric and intuitive experience.
📱 Key Screens
🎨 Figuring App Layout
Exploring wireframe options. Generating ideas for content layout
We delve into the early stages of crafting our financial management app. Through wireframe sketches, we explore the foundational structure and organization of key screens and features. These sketches lay the groundwork for an intuitive and user-friendly app interface, setting the stage for further development and design refinements."
Low-Fidelity Digital Wireframes
Transitioning from paper to digital. We experiment what it would look like on a mobile digital device. Keeping in mind the sizing and spacing.
Low-fidelity wireframes are crucial for quick iteration and exploration of design ideas without being too detailed. They helped us focus on the website's overall structure and layout, ensuring that it was user-friendly and easy to navigate. Lo-fi wireframes saved time and resources by allowing us to make informed design decisions early on. Collaboration and feedback from stakeholders were facilitated by lo-fi wireframes, which helped to align everyone on the project goals and design direction.
🤔 Coming Up With Design Ideas
Returning to our essential features and app map, we identified the three key screens. We then aligned these screens with our feature ranking, ensuring that the most crucial features and content are given priority. In our design layout, we strategically organized these features, placing higher-priority items at the forefront. This approach optimizes screen real estate, delivering vital information to users in a hierarchical manner.
- Money Guide Screen Finance Knowledge Resources Library
- Financial Advisor Screen = Advisors to contact via video calls or messaging
- Budget Report screen
- Spending Report Screen
High-Fidelity Mockups
After internal feedback and critique. We then added more detail into a high-fidelity mockup
‼️ Feedbacks
- Display all the categories in one view
- Split Budget into separate folders
- Specific short goal sections as cards
- Have the cards be vertical longer to fit more detail information
- In budget include a pie chart that includes details that state how much goes into their short term and long term goals
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, I found the entire process to be highly streamlined and productive. Moving forward, our focus will be on conducting thorough testing of the mockups to drive further refinements and iterations. Consider this phase as a significant stepping stone in our journey towards creating an impactful solution.