Moneylingo
Innovation to Online Banking: Explore the app that supports your financial goals and needs.
For our master's project, my fellow classmates and I had the pleasure of partnering with Discovery Education to
me
Tymirra Smith
Madeleine Paulsen
UX designer & researcher
UX researcher & AR designer
UX researcher
Sponsor
Available for hiring
My team and I partnered with Fiserv, a global fintech company to design a financial app that allows young adults manage and create financial goals, invest, and improve their financial literacy.
me
Akash Talyan
Rishivanth Thulasiraman
Aayahna Herbert
UX researcher & designer
UX researcher & designer
UX researcher
UX researcher & designer
Sponsor
August 2021
to
December 2021
Introduction
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.
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
MoneyLingo is a mobile finance app that allows young adults to manage and create financial goals, invest, and improve their financial literacy.
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 older-aged 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.
Findings & User Characteristics
How can we use AR to engage students and allow them to visually explore and practice higher-level math concepts?
Older users with experience in investing are less likely to use cryptocurrency compared to younger users
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.
Lack of financial knowledge is a big demotivating factor for the user to invest even though they have resources to invest.
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.
Managing all the investments split between different financial tools is difficult for users who have been investing for a while.
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.
People want to budget and track their expenses but find it cumbersome and time-consuming.
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.
People want to put money into different buckets for different purposes.
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.
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.
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 Design Role in Iterations
As a dynamic senior product designer, I thrive on crafting exhilarating experiences that ignite joy and bring value to people's lives, all while celebrating the perfect blend of function and fun. Let's toss aside any ego, embrace boundless creativity, and embark on an exciting journey to revolutionize the world and make it a better, more vibrant place to be.
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.
