project 01 | Design

Kapow

Personal finance know-how

OVERVIEW

With the idea of helping people of this age gain financial literacy, solve personal financial problems and therefore achieve financial wellness, my team and I start from the very basics of understanding why it is hard for people to solve financial issues, then we come up with solutions to create an issue-based app Kapow to educate people solve financial issues step by step and use MAP theory to form good financial behaviour.

MY ROLE

Performed research on American's financial situation via user interviews, literature reviews, and competitive analysis.
Created sketches, wireframes, lead visual design and made interactive prototype to present the outcome.
Conducted 4 rounds of in person and remote usability testing to refine product design.

TOOLS / DURATION / TEAM

Pen + Paper, Adobe XD, Miro, AI
Sep. 2019 - Dec. 2019， 3 months
Ningyue Shang, Jing Zhu, Garrett Spencer

Desgin Process

PROMPT & OUTCOME

Design Prompt

Last year my friend Zach at Texas A&M University, complained to me that he underestimated the weight of college loan ($90,000 in total). And he had planned to join the army, which means he had to pay a lot more than the minimal amount.

Another friend Eve, her house caught a fire last year. Unfortunately she didn't pay house insurance and she didn't have enough savings to pay for maintenance.

I also remember the time my brother Lee lost his job. He never had a rainy day fund and he couldn't maintain his living at that time, so he had to turn to my parents for help.

Severeness

These made me think is it a common problem nowadays that people cannot manage their personal finance?

I did some searching.

Result

Don't know how

Don't know why

And the problem with financial literacy is It Doesn’t Work.

In high school they never taught us about our credit score, budgeting or finances.

Personal Finance : A serious crisis in America

only 24%

Millennials demonstrate basic
financial knowledge

50% of student loan holders express worries about pay off their debt

54% of Americans don’t have emergency fund

33% of Americans pay the minimum due on their credit card

Faced with these problems, my teammates and I present Kapow, a mobile application that provides features about financial know-how(management) and know-why(education) to help people solve personal financial issues.

The problem seems quite serious. So what's wrong with the personal finance of people nowadays,

and what we can do to help them?

Outcome Preview

Have financial issues ?

See your knowledge gap and learn literacy!

From knowledge map, users can know their weakness in financial literacy. Then they can search for target literay or view courses (short tutorials) of different financial categories.

Still not sure how to handle financial issues?

Create a plan !

Based on their progress in a financial issue, users can create plans from courses, which means you can set plans and do finance within the courses.

What is a plan?

Follow me step by step !

In phases of tutorials, user will do finance and learn related literacy step by step. With the goal of solving financial issues, we will focus on tasks the just-in-time literacy.

Hard to carry on ?

Keep track of your plans !

Each plan ends with setting budget and bills.

Then the app will keep track of the plans and

manage bills and budget for users, ensuring

good financial behavior and lead to success

in their plans.

Achieved your goal and solved your issue ?

Share with people in similar situation !

In order to help people with similar background and same issue to make financial decisions, we encourage you to share your experience and plan of each completed plan.

Also you can turn to our community for reference when you have trouble making dicisions in your plans.

RESEARCH

Behind the final outcome of our product, we made much effort refining our prompt and translate key findings of user research into our design principles/challenges. I will explain how we got there.

firstly, after learning about the financial iteracy and financial situation of today's americans, I realized how important is was to help average people (not financial experts), to solve financial issues. So we got the promt:

Prompt

How might we provide avarage people with financial know-how and know-why to help them achieve financial wellness ?

WHO

HOW

WHAT

Literature Review

To answer the question, we reviewed essays and reports to investigate, trying to find out what factors influence their personal financial situation, and got deeper understanding of ‘know-how’ and 'know-why'.

Takeaway #1 Many people don’t have good financial behaviour, often lead to financial pitfall

Takeaway #2 Financial literacy attitude plays an important role in financial behavior

Takeaway #3 Average people master financial literacy only when they're faced with specific issues

Takeaway #4 People at different life stages have different typical issues

Based on these findings, we consolidated my project focus, determining the direction of our solution for helping people achieve financial wellness.

Reframing the Problem

How might we help avarage people to gain financial literacy and improve financial behaviour to manage their financial issues and finally achieve financial wellness ?

WHO

HOW

WHAT

Product Positioning

Competitive Analysis

Before we getting in touch with users, we conducted competitive analysis to see how existing products help people solve financial issues. We sort the most famous tools for financial issues with two dimensions based on their audience and financial philosophy. Then we find most existing tools only focus on one of the concerns of literacy, decision making or management. So we decided to design our product to bridge the gap between education and management.

Refining User Group

Before we can serve everyone, we have to serve someone. After we decided our product position, we narrowed our initial user group to be young people who are new grad or still in college. These two groups of users are at the turning point of school and society, and might feel more confused about financial issues they have never come into. Therefore they are most likely to use and pay for our product. As mentioned in literature review, people come into new issues at different life stages, so our product will probably accompany users throughout their lives.

Semi-structured interview

From the literature review, we got some general truth about the financial literacy, financial bahaviour and attitude of people. We want to dig into these problems. Because to answer 'how might we...', we need to figure out the answer to 'why they can't...' first.

So to quickly gather qualitative and quantitative data about their general characteristics and pain points, we conducted semi-structured interview on 9 participants from different age groups, learning how they solve a financial issue, and during the process what might stop them from succeed. After that we coded their responses and made the affinity diagram. Check out our complete interview guide and findings .

Pain Points

Let's look into why they can't perform well in financial things and what are the obstacles

in solving financial issues?

Interview Focus

1. Personal background

2. Motivation to learn finance

3. Resource of financial literacy

4. Financial issues they had

5. Ways of solving the issues

45 - 60 min

Participants

College student

Employed

Research Output

Persona & User Journey

With the evidence we got from user interview, I developed personas and a user journey map. I defined my target users as two groups based on their situation: people with current issues and people without current issue. Then I concluded pain points from their user journeys and emotion flows.

Meanwhile, I found that unreliable literacy, unreasonable decision/plan, lack of persistence and unawareness of potential risk are four main obstacles that prevent people from succeeding in finance issues. They will be discussed in the design challenges and design principles.

In order to better translate users pain points into our design opportunities, I'll introduce a psychological model named “Fogg Behaviour Model”. The equation "B=MAP" is quite common in behaviour design and I think is useful in improving people's financial behaviour and performance in managing financial staff. Therefore, I applied this theory to solve our problems. The matrix below shows that three elements must converge at the same moment for a behavior to occur: Motivation, Ability, and a Prompt (trigger). We can clearly divide the journey based on the model.

B = MAP

People with financial issues have inner motivation (sense of need), while for people without issues, we have to provide motivation to encourage them learn and do finance to prevent risks.

We have to think about how to remove the barriers of aquiring target financial literacy, and how to guide them to make proper financial plan (which they have the ability to complete).

we should give user enough trigger to remind them do finance and carry on with their financial plan

Wrap-up

Key Takeaways

Shown below is a summary of the important insights from former research and analysis. Remaining them in my mind all the way down, I put every effort to solve the design challenges and associate my design decisions to these implications and principles.

User Characteristics

General comprehension, more willing to get advice from people they know

Not good at finance, lazy and reluctant to learn theory.

People of different life stages/ personal situation have different issues

Design Principles

Provide plain and understandable knowledge, with an approachable and reliable solution

Provide intuitive, efficient solutions.

Customize content for them to learn and do.

Provide reference from people of their own age.

User Problems

Hard to obtain reliable, understandable and target financial knowledge quickly.

Hard to make proper financial decision/ plan with the literacy they get

Hard to carry on with their financial plan until they solve the issue.

Don't know what literacy they need to complement to prevent upcoming risks.

Design Challenges

How might we provide reliable, understandable target literacy?

How might we make it easier for users to make financial plans which fit their own situation and ability?

Ability

How might we enhance trigger to help users carry on with their plans?

Trigger

How to make users aware of their knowledge gap and motivate them to learn literacy to prevent risks？

Motivation

IDEATION

Divergent & Convergent

Brainstorming

After defining the design goals and design principles, we conducted brainstorming and generate 30+ possible ideas. Based on these, we discussed together and synthesized our ideas in a chart with 2 dimensions: Easy To Understand and Efficient solution based on our two design principles. We picked up several ideas which provide understandable literacy and efficient solution, as our design directions.

Evaluation & Consolidation

We created paper sketches first and invited three participants to evaluate these design directions with us. We created 3 evaluation dimensions and discuss about the pros and cons of each option.

Evaluation dimensions:

User Pain Points
Design Principles
Business Positioning

Function Map

Based on our evaluation, we decided our design direction is to apply issue-oriented management. We intended to create a 'plan' for each financial issue of our user, and use step-by-step instruction to guide users make suitable financial decisions and financial plans. Then we use budget & bills to help users carry on with their plans until they solve their issue.

We then went on supplementing the whole system and figured out our key features.

Trigger

Ability

Motivation

DESIGN

Start with our function map, I tried to find out solutions for the design challenges and each pain point behind the challenges we mentioned in the research part. Among all the problems faced, I found that making proper financial plans and carrying on with their plans are quite challenging. However, the Fogg Theory gave me a lot of inspiration.

Challenge #1

How to motivate people learn and do finance?

In the Fogg behavior model, motivation serves as the primary driver to persuade and prompt a desired reaction. There are three type of underlying drives: sensation, anticipation and belonging. Most of our target users have a strong anticipation of solving some financial issue, but for those without current issues, we need to enhance their motivation.

Solution

The motivation problem for people without current issue is that they don't know why they need to learn and do finance, and they don't know what to learn. So we can make them aware of their current situation and make them anticipate a better result.

" Everything seems went on so well but someday I found I was in debt and had no savings and I even don't know how to budget. "

--From one of the participants

❓Don't know what to learn

Let user know which topic of financial literacy he is weak in, and actively supplement this knowledge.

💡

Pain point

Solution

❓

Unwilling to learn and do finance unless they have an issue

💡

Let user know what issues people of his life stage and life situation will meet.

HOW ?

Provide knowledge map of the user, and provide report whitch includes advice on which part of knowledge the user should supplement

Design

Make recommendations of courses about financial issues he might have currently or in the near future, based on all user data and user's profile.

Oh, I didn't know I was so weak in loan, maybe I should make up for it in case I need to manage a house loan in the near future.

Yes, people around me are talking about paying off student loan. I just graduated from college and I need to consider this issue, too!

Challenge #2

How to provide reliable, understandable target literacy?

There are two ways to enhance their 'Ability' to do finance - make users learn more literacy, and simplify financial tasks. In solving real financial issues, it is essential to learn literacy, so what we need to do is provide them with reliable, understandable target source.

Solution

❓Overwhelming and abstract source

Provide brief and clear source

💡

We decided the form of courses to be vivid short video tutorial, with notes

(takeaways) to help users understand

Pain point

Solution

HOW ?

Design

❓

Prefer asking people they know, but sometimes unreliable.

💡

Provide an approachable but reliable source of aquiring literacy

We created a virtual figure as a chatbot, which is like a friend good at finance and can guide users to reliable literacy.

micro-learning might be more vivid and can grab my attention (Learners are much more likely to complete a ten-minute unit than a one-hour training.)

Notes and discussion

of each video will help

me understand and

remember the points

The chatbot is like an old friend good at finance. He will give proper material or advice based on the information he got through chatting

Challenge #3

How to make it easier for users to set proper financial plans?

According to our research, it is hard to make financial decisions and set proper plans. So we need to simplify the tasks and bridge the gap between literacy and solution. Fogg outlines six ways a task can be made simpler to encourage behaviour - time, money, physical effort, thought, social reference, non-routine.

Prefer asking people they know, but sometimes unreliable.

Cannot

Literacy

Financial Plan

Time, thought...

insuffucient literacy

not practical

not appliable to personal situation

Solution

Save their time and thought

When users lack ability to complete a task, changing it into baby steps will make it easier

We split the task(of setting a financial plan) into several phases and provide just-in-time literacy in each phase.

Solution

HOW ?

Design

Reliable social reference

See how other people solve the same issue will help them make proper decisions

Provide reference from cases shared by people with similar situation to help user make decision more easily.

micro-learning might be more vivid and can grab my attention (Learners are much more likely to complete a ten-minute unit than a one-hour training.)

DESIGN

Challenge #1

How to motivate people learn and do finance?

Solution

" Everything seems went on so well but someday I found I was in debt and had no savings and I even don't know how to budget. "

--From one of the participants

❓Don't know what to learn

Let user know which topic of financial literacy he is weak in, and actively supplement this knowledge.

Pain point

Solution

❓

Unwilling to learn and do finance unless they have an issue

Let user know what issues people of his life stage and life situation will meet.

HOW ?

Provide knowledge map of the user, and provide report whitch includes advice on which part of knowledge the user should supplement

Design

Make recommendations of courses about financial issues he might have currently or in the near future, based on all user data and user's profile.

Oh, I didn't know I was so weak in loan, maybe I should make up for it in case I need to take a house loan in the near future.

Yes, people around me are talking about paying off student loan. I just graduated from college and I need to consider this issue, too!

Challenge #2

How to provide reliable, understandable target literacy?

Solution

❓Overwhelming and abstract source

Provide brief and clear source

I decided the form of courses to be vivid short video tutorial, with notes

(takeaways) to help users understand

Pain point

Solution

HOW ?

Design

❓

Prefer asking people they know, but sometimes unreliable.

Provide an approachable but reliable source of aquiring literacy

I created a virtual figure as a chatbot, which is like a friend good at finance and can guide users to reliable literacy.

micro-learning might be more vivid and can grab my attention (Learners are much more likely to complete a ten-minute unit than a one-hour training.)

Notes and discussion

of each video will help

me understand and

remember the points

The chatbot is like an old friend good at finance. He will give proper material or advice based on the information he got through chatting

Prefer asking people they know, but sometimes unreliable.

Cannot

Challenge #3

How to make it easier for users to set proper financial plans?

Why people stop solving financial issues at the point of setting up plans? According to our research, many of them think it quite complex and hard to make a proper plan.

So we need to simplify the tasks and bridge the gap between literacy and solution. Fogg outlines six ways a task can be made simpler - time, money, physical effort, thought, social reference, non-routine.

Literacy

Financial Plan

Time, thought...

insuffucient literacy

not practical

not appliable to personal situation

Solution

When users lack ability to complete a task, changing it into baby steps will make it easier

Save their time and thought

I split the task(of setting a financial plan) into several phases and provide just-in-time literacy in each phase.

Solution

HOW ?

Design

Reliable social reference

See how other people solve the same issue will help them make proper decisions

Provide reference from cases shared by people with similar situation to help user make decision more easily.

It makes things easier to divide a tough task into different phases.

It is clear what I should do in each phase, it is a practical guidance. And it provide essential literacy instead of long, dull theories.

I am happy to have these real cases to refer on. Otherwise I would have to spend more time and effort to consider.

Challenge #4

How to help users carry on with their plans?

If a user is fully able to do something but he actually rarely do it. How might we help?

Fogg tells us that he must lack some trigger. There are three kind of triggers for users in different situations.

In normal situation, our users have high ability and high motivation to do finance, so they just need signals to remind them in time.

However, if our users are experiencing a change in financial situation(loss of money, unexpected cost,etc), which is often the case, they will be incapable to carry on with previous plan. At that moment they are at high motivation but low ability. So we can provide facilitator to help them adjust their plan and teach them to recover from a loss.

Sometimes users will feel tired of keeping track of plan and lose motivation. Then we need to provide extra spark.

Solution

Normal situation

Provide signals

Financial frustration

Provide facilitator

Lose motivation

Provide spark

HOW ?

I designed the budget alarm to inform users about their spending, and designed the feature of up-

coming bills to remind users pay off monthly bills to carry on with their plans

The plan is flexible and our app will facilitate in adjusting the plans if it sensed changes in users' financial situation.

On the plan list, I visualized the progress tracking to make users aware of where they are in the plan and encourage users to carry on.

It's convenient for me to manage all my cards and bills... I won't worry about missing any due date anymore.

These advice make me calm down and adjust my plans. Otherwise I might lose heart and give up.