Gains


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Beyond Green
Content Strategy, Positioning & Education Game Design


Aaron Stern05.01.2024


Introduction & Overview

I am pleased to present my case study for University of Washington’s Professional Certificate in User Experience and Visual Interface Design, completed in Spring 2024.

Problem Statement 


How can we improve financial literacy for young professionals, specifically those who come from historically marginalized communities?


Goals


I wanted to develop a prototype that transforms financial education. It is saturated with dry, jargon-ladened and inaccessible material. There is a great opportunity  to redesign for future generations who are increasingly financially insecure.


I sought a design that focused on content and interaction from research insight; that people need some tool to make boring, stressful and scary money issues into a fun and engaging learning environment.




My responsibilities included:

  • conducting interviews,
  • summarizing responses 
  • merging findings
  • with three other colleagues,
  • developing archetypes,
  • empathy and customer journey mapping,
  • competitive analysis
  • creating product concepts with wireframes,
  • concept testing,
  • prototype development & user flows,
  • final presentation of the 6 month course.

During the course, we used Otter, Balsamiq, Figma, GSuite & large language models as our primary tools for documentation, wire- framing, prototyping and collaborating.

Discovery


Our first task was to conduct 16 primary interviews for our initial qualitative and attitudinal data. We designed a study that measured:


1. The perceived seriousness of the problem statement, 

2. How “financial literacy” impacted their emotional and social “Job’s To Be Done”, 

3. Their awareness of existing products & services and 

4. What financial topics are of interest to them.


Financial Concerns Across Income Levels


After completing our interviews and compiling the responses, our group began to document the recurring themes among our participant’s answers. 

We developed two archetypes in different stages of their financial journey: The Optimal Allocator & The Savings Stewards.

Journey Map development heuristic
1. The Optimal Allocator is:

a. low or middle income,

b. feeling burdened by liabilities (student loans, payments, credit card debt, healthcare) and cost of living. 

An improvement in quality of life and financial pressure relief motivate their financial literacy.

illustration by Nicolo Scolieri, 
content by Leslie Orozco, Gehry Guest, Nicolo Scolieiri and Aaron Stern


2.The Savings Steward is:

a. high income,

b. manages their liabilities and has disposable income.

c. wants to find passive income streams, build their safety net or save for a big acquisition.

Long-term thinking and increasing saving efficiency stimulate their financial literacy.


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Among many insights from our primary research, two in particular stood out to me. 


  1. Some participants distrusted banking institutions, capitalist economic structure and blamed the education sector for failing to prioritize financial literacy.
  2. The existing educational material is dry, cloaked by financial jargon and/or intended to be consumed by a limited audience.


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Define

The Role of "Resource Scarcity":
A Catalyst for Financial Literacy


We developed a “triggering” financial event for each archetype based on anecdotes from interviews. This served as the context for a customer empathy/journey map that projected how our archetype’s attitude, perception and actions would change over a 6 month period.

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For example, the Savings Steward might discover that their saving rate isn’t high enough to meet their retirement goal. The Optimal Allocator’s triggering event may be that their credit card debt has gotten out of hand and they need to change their lifestyle. 


Our interview participants sought financial knowledge when influenced by the stress and anxiety of “resource scarcity”. 


Beyond Textbooks and Simulations: The Gap in Engaging Content


We surveyed the marketplace for the next phase of the process. Our competitive analysis primarily focused on mobile apps and web based tools from the public and private sector. 


The available tools ranges from: 

  1. text based learning modules, 
  2. stock market simulators, 
  3. budgeting apps, 
  4. Boutique investment firms, 
  5. Podcasts, youtube shows & social media influencers. 


Broadly speaking, there are education solutions and lifestyle solutions. The education solutions consist of the articles, blogs, podcasts, simulators and games seeking to inform and entertain the audience.


The lifestyle solutions are the budgeting apps, finance firms and government websites that directly insert themselves into the audience’s digital tool box to alter their behavior in some way.


We compared the value propositions of the tools and compared them with the key insights from our research to examine where the opportunities lay. Our group then developed wire frames for concept testing with other members of the cohort. We saw that the market lacked gamified concepts that drew inspiration from established popular games and a way to connect with people outside of commercial channels.



Wireframes presented during concept testing.


Design


From Text Overload to Engaging Design: Refining the Gains User Experience


My concept was called Gains, a play on the shared word between the gym crowd and retail investing. The main features I wanted to incorporate from our primary interviews and concept testing were:

  1. Gamification 
  2. Mentorship/community and
  3. IRL rewards.


I pursued a mobile platform and the information architecture  was simple. I started building out the primary user flow where tasks were to:

  1. Complete an example lesson,
  2. Choose to redeem rewards and
  3. Find a mentor.





Design II


Content, Not Code: Breaking Down Financial Jargon for A Better Experience


In many ways, the problem of financial literacy is not a technology issue, but rather a content/culture issue.

Financial education’s pain point is that it’s tone and vocabulary doesn’t index for a layperson’s familiarity. For many people, who have limited exposure to business jargon, trying to make sense of the language is an off-putting and isolating experience.


Instruction Design


I approached my redesign by focusing on how the text itself could lower the barrier of entry in the first lesson. I designed the first lesson by:

  1. Asking the user to define “value” means to them and thereby create a personal context.
  2. Explained how business has come to define value as in “value investing”
  3. Introduced the differences between market and intrinsic value.
  4. Provided a caricature for the Graham/Dodd concept of market volatility.
  5. Use an accessible and affirming tone that assumes no prior knowledge or experience. 




Based upon the concept testing wireframe, I quickly built a low-fidelity prototype for user flow  tests that  included members from the cohort as  well as some people in  my personal social network. The positive and negative responses to the low-fidelity prototype were equally instructive. 


a.The design’s over reliance on text overwhelmed the participants, as each didn’t fully read the question in a knowledge check and, as a result, failed the quiz.

b. The testers expressed ambivalence for the “rewards center”, specifically the example discount rate of 5% off groceries or gas. 

C. Users expressed delight in the Mentor discovery and message section. It appeared to confirm the insight from primary research that potential users desire human connection in financial education.


After presenting the user flows and another round of feedback, I needed to return to one of the most important insights from our research: make the boring stuff fun. 


My low-fidelity prototype was not designed with a grid layout, so the spacing between elements was disheveled. In my competitive analysis, I didn’t look at popular mobile games enough for inspiration, so my resulting design was dull, even for a lo-fi prototype! 


Low fidelity mentor section.
Low fidelity lesson excerpt.


From Scarcity to Confidence: The Emotional Journey of Completing Tasks


The next step was developing the mentor section, which was received more favorably in user flow. I drew inspiration from dating apps like Hinge for design patterns and messaging features. 

Color


I knew that the color scheme of the concept was critical for its positioning in the marketplace. The competitive analysis revealed interface design in this industry is broadly reliant on the color green. This results in a crowded and visually undifferentiated marketplace.


As money’s appearance is increasingly digitized, indexing a product towards a single hue reinforces narrow historical and geographic associations and leaves little room for design to create a competitive edge. 


I wanted to avoid the budget/money app design and instead, I wanted to position Gains as a wellness activity. I ultimately was drawn to the colors of the sauna as a color palette. The tan wood, the orange coals and the blue sky are an appealing and distinct triad, uncommon in the space.



The participants liked the “badges” features that communicated the mentors experience in the user flow testing. I moved those features to the top of the screen and limited the rest of the biographical features with the effort to facilitate messaging between a financial professional and user.



The success screens were another critical part of the feel of the app. Both in content and visual language, I chose to pivot from generic “Success” and green checkmark. 

I implemented the color system in a series of stars of unusual ratio stars. Arranged in a group, they were reminiscent of a fireworks display, which connotes celebration. For the copy, I deployed language that encourages self-reflection and acknowledgment. This is part of the strategy to help move the users attitude away from scarcity towards empowerment and confidence.



Deliver

Beyond the Prototype: Growth Strategies and Global Inspiration

The last phase of the design process was an 8 minute presentation of the breadth of our research, prototyping and  designing journey with a product walk through. On reflection, I wish that the course allowed for additional user testing as the cohort moved into high fidelity prototypes and the opportunity to retest my new design.

slide from final presentation.


When reflecting on the issue of financial literacy, it seems to me that it is more effective to approach it as a content issue, rather than a tech issue. Furthermore, “historically-marginalized communities” is a phrase that appears to address everyone outside of privileged white men and therefore addresses no one specifically. 



It would be a mistake to create a monolith out of such an ill-defined addressable market. However flawed, the problem statement did inspire the translating jargon laden financial theory into usable and understandable speech and that does warrant further testing & refinement.

Social media influencers would be a key strategic partner for the early growth of an app like this. Our participants desired a human connection/mentorship in their financial education and the right influencer functioning as consultant & spokesperson could fulfill critical product & marketing roles.


I have a clearer sense of how financial stress and anxiety affect how people seek information and improve their financial literacy and decision making. My next steps are to research how other countries and markets address financial literacy among their populations. I am curious what tests and benchmarks exist globally to measure a person’s financial literacy. A new design challenge will be:

  1. Finding a country with a highly financially literate population.
  2. Understanding the landscape of tools and services available to them.
  3. Adapting the content suitable for a U.S audience.


Thank you for taking the time to read this case study. I’d like to acknowledge the instructors and teaching assistants, Scott Scheff, Gary Anderson, David Kendall  & Remy Coronado and my fellow group members Nicolo Scolieri, Leslie Orozco & Gehry Guest for their insights & excellent team work.



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