MoneyLingo — Doris Amouzou

About MoneyLingo

MoneyLingo is a mobile finance app that allows young adults manage and create financial goals, invest, and improve their financial literacy.

Financial apps can be considered as technical and social choice architectures that influence our spending behavior. The design of a platform can determine which actions and behaviors are easily available to users and which are constrained. This is a group project that explores what needs young adults have with their finances, and how financial apps can be innovated.
August 2021 - December 2021
Cross Tabulation Analysis
Qualitative Coding
Paper Prototyping
Wireframing
Task-Based Testing
Heuristic Evaluations
UX Researcher
UX Designer
Aayahna Herbert
Akash Talyan
Rishivanth Thulasiraman

Overview

Background

Our industry partner background

Fiserv is a global fintech company that provides payments and financial services technology solutions. They provide account processing and digital banking solutions; card issuer processing and network services; payments; e-commerce; and more.

Objective

Our main objective was to identify and understand the financial practices, behaviors, and heuristics people have for managing their money digitally.

We focused on wanting to explore what’s missing from current digital banking offerings and how people might expect to interact with their current banking activities as well as to adapt to new ones.

We also hoped to gather insights on what needs exist in the financial landscape for young adults between the age of 18-25-year-olds, in order to create innovative solutions to online banking.

Findings

My team and I conducted user interviews and obtained data from Fiserv, in order to identify design implications.

We learned that financial mobility is a crucial factor in determining the trajectory of a person’s life, with our findings we designed and successfully tested a financial app that effectively supports the goals and habits of our users.

Discover & User Research

User Research

My team and I began our user research by creating a screening survey in order to gather a diverse set of users between the ages of 18-25 who came from different educational backgrounds and experiences and were willing to be interviewed. Our goal was to be able to get a basic understanding of their banking experiences and habits.

We also collaborated with Fiserv and created a survey for their users, who we considered to be our “blind-spot” user group in order to gain insights from users outside our target group.

After gathering users from the survey, we conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with participants in our target user group about their experiences with banking and managing their finances. Because we found our participants through our screening survey, our group knew that we wanted to interview a variety of participants based on their usage of online banking apps and the various ways they go about managing their finances - budgeting, traditional investments, or cryptocurrency.

Analysis

My team and I were very interested in detecting patterns and connections that our users have, therefore we decided to use qualitative coding to conceptualize and get closer to the data we extracted from the interviews. Being able to add codes (or tags) to our qualitative data gave us the chance to view it in a quantitative manner.

User Characteristics

From our screening survey, we were able to acquire data from cross-tabulation on investing and cryptocurrency that showed that even though older users who invest are more likely to be familiar with cryptocurrency than younger users they are less likely to use it. Showing that a 100% familiarity rate led to a 33.3% use rate.
When we spoke with older users during our semi-structured interview we found that the reason behind them not using cryptocurrency is because they believe it is high risk and volatile and even though they are experienced with investing they do not feel comfortable taking that risk.
The main reason the users mentioned that they don’t invest is due to lack of money which was the reason supported by our semi-structured interview as well the finding from the survey. But some of the users who have the resources but don’t invest were due to a lack of financial knowledge. These users showed interest in investing but felt a little insecure.
During our interviews, we found that participants who had been investing for more than 2 years have investments in multiple asset classes split between different financial tools (1 app for equity investments, 1 for 401k investments, etc.). It is hard for users to get a global view of all their assets and know what their net worth is, at any given time.
From our interviews and surveys, we could find that participants wanted to track their expenses and budget effectively and sometimes try out budgeting apps. However, they give up due to the extensive setup involved, having to enter data manually at times (as the automatic compilation makes errors ), and lack of flexibility in defining the budget.
During our interviews, users mentioned that they sometimes have specific goals they want to save towards, but current online banking apps don’t provide an easy-to-use solution to do this. So, users have to resort to mental accounting or other external solutions to put aside funds for different purposes.

Ideation & Design Process

Design Requirements

After going through our findings and user characteristics, my team and I created and grouped design requirements and implications that were important for our design solutions to include.

Budget & Expense Management: The solution should allow users to define, manage, and keep track of their budget to ensure users stay within their budget, avoid large out-of-budget expenses, and pay their bills on time.
Custom Savings Accounts: The solution should allow users to save money for specific life goals and put money aside for "rainy days."
Investment Management: The solution should allow users to move their money freely and seamlessly between their different accounts, keep track of all their investments in one single place, and give them the opportunity to learn more about investing.

Creating design requirements helped my team with our design decisions and goals for our design solution. Our overall goal was to design a product with features that would satisfy our users’ needs and provide solutions to all of their pain points while being seamless with easy and familiar functionality.

Sketch Concepts

My team and I kept our design requirements in mind as we began the design process. We were able to brainstorm many ideas and decided to paper prototype three design concepts to be able to get concise user feedback to create one solution.

Concept 1: Piggy

Piggy is a mobile application that allows its user to create multiple savings accounts in the form of a piggy bank - a nostalgic money-saving method that involves collecting and storing one’s loose change and money in a pig-shaped jar until it’s full and can then be opened to spend on a specific item. Users can create solo piggy banks for their own goals (for example, saving up to buy a new game console) or group piggy banks for a goal that involves multiple people (for example, saving for a group cruise trip to the Bahamas)

Concept 2: Budget-Baby

BudgetBaby is a smart budgeting mobile application that allows users to view their monthly spending on average and create an overall and categorical budget to help them become more cognizant of their spending habits.

Concept 3: MoneyLingo

MoneyLingo is a mobile application that allows users to learn about investments in a simple, straightforward manner while having the opportunity to trade in real-time as they learn.

User Feedback

My team and I conducted user feedback sessions with our paper prototype concepts, in order to see if our users’ needs were met and to determine which concept would satisfy most of the users’ needs.

We found that our participants believed Piggy and Moneylingo best satisfied our users’ needs. They enjoyed being able to personalize their banking experience through customizable savings accounts connected to specific goals and learn more about investments in a creative and interactive manner. Because we felt these two concepts had similar concepts while meeting unique user needs, we decided to move forward with a design concept that was a combination of these two sketched concepts as we moved onto the next phase of our design process.

Low-Fidelity Designs

As we transitioned into wireframing this new hybrid concept, we kept in mind the recommendations and constructive feedback we received from our participants and Fiserv to improve the clarity, functionality, and flow of all features to be highlighted in the wireframes. We decided to merge the two concepts with the main features that were received very well by our participants with modifications based on their recommendations but still complement each other and make sense.

Feature 1: View and Create Savings Goals

The users will begin by linking their bank accounts to the app in order to set up a savings goal. They can personalize their goals based on their preferences by adding a cover image, description, goal amount, and target date. Next, the users can allocate money for their goals through different categories like a piggy bank, high yield saving account, and theme-based investing. The users can tap on the goals cards to get a breakdown of how and where the money is allocated

Feature 2: View Total Savings

Users will be able to view the combined total monetary value of all of their current savings goals; this specific feature page is currently titled “Pockets.” The pie chart-like graphic gives the users a visual representation of the breakdown of their total savings values by the type of savings account they set up for each goal - a classic piggy bank account, high-yield savings account, and an investments account by way of thematic investments.

Feature 3: Investment Lessons

We designed a learning feature within our application with an intended goal to educate our users with financial-related terms and concepts. The users can see their current progress and any new lessons that are added or might be of interest for the users. The topics are added to different modules where users can overview all the modules available and it’s content.

User-Feedbacks on Wireframes

For our wireframe feedback sessions, my team and I had two overarching goals:

Determine if the wireframe and its features were easy to follow and understand for our users, are valuable, and still satisfy the users’ needs and subsequent design implications
Discover any accessibility and usability issues that may have been overlooked or gone unnoticed by our team and previous sketched concept feedback sessions

Prototype

Onboarding

Our onboarding screens introduce the user to the three primary functions supported by the app with an image of the card relevant to the section to aid remembrance.

Home & Savings Goals

Home

The home screen lists all the savings goals users have created. Each of the savings goals is presented as a card with the cover image chosen by the user, the title of the goal, a brief description of the goal, and the target amount set by the user. The goals are ordered based on urgency - how much time is left for the goal to be reached. In the later iterations, the ordering can be chosen by the user.

The home screen also shows the total amount saved by the user and how much their investments (if any) have increased or decreased in the last week. Within each goal, the users can see the list of transactions made

Savings Goal

The “create a savings goal” screen includes all the parameters shown in the savings goal cards. The users can name their savings goal, add a short description, upload a cover image from Pinterest, set a target amount and target date.

The add money flow starts by having the user choose from one of the three options supported by the app - piggy bank, high yield savings account, theme-based funds. Once the user chooses one of the options, the user just inputs the amount they wish to add. If the user chooses the theme-based fund option, they have to make an additional choice of the specific fund they want to invest in. In future iterations, more detailed financial information about each of the funds will be provided.

Pockets Page

The pockets screen is an overview of all the savings users have made in the app. A pie chart of the savings with a split of different kinds of savings is shown. The colors in the pie chart are chosen to be perceptually different. The theme-based funds are further categorized into the individual funds the user has invested in.

Lessons Page

The lessons page is organized into modules with each module containing a set of lessons. The user can resume progress from their last completed lesson directly from the home page without having to scroll through all the lessons.

Evaluations & Iterations

Once our prototype was finished, my team and I performed rounds of moderated, in-person task-based testing for the participants in our target user group, as well as heuristic evaluations with experts using Nielsen’s 10 Design Principles.

Based on those feedbacks we were able to refine our designs through iterations, based on the design recommendations we received.

The Design Recommendations

Home: Add a confirmation screen before completing the transaction and a success screen after completing the transaction.

Pockets: Explain what the total amount is on the Pockets page with a descriptive label, provide a legend for the pie chart, and make each of the different funds clickable so they go to a new screen showing a list of goals that the fund is split into.

Lessons: Needs more engagement. Introduce a new tab for saved lessons and allow users to bookmark lessons to revisit later.

My Role in Iterations

I focused mostly on the Lessons section of our design iterations. In our previous iterations, the participants did not find that our lessons page was engaging enough. Having a learning section on a financial app was important because we didn’t find any financial apps that provided that to their users. My main goal for iterating this section was to make sure that the users could track their learning experience, and that the content was relevant to the financial activities they could perform on the app.

Lesson’s Page & Dashboard

The lesson’s page is designed to allow users to resume their progress and view any modules they have completed as well as get updates on new content that may be available to them. The dashboard is designed so that the users are able to keep track of their progress and activities while they learn. They have the ability to bookmark lessons as they complete them, as well as earn points at the end of each module.

Lessons & Content

Each module is organized into a roadmap, allowing the uses to see how many lessons in each module are completed and how much they have left. In order to make the lessons more engaging, I designed the lessons to have have checkpoints and “Create your own story” element, that helps the users choose how they would like to learn each content. Learning in a story format also allows the users to conceptualize the lessons more using real-world scenarios.

Quizzes & Games

Including quizzes and games in the lessons allows the users to recap the concepts they have learned, and reward them with points and incentives. This gamified way of learning keeps the users engaged, as they progress in developing their financial literacy.