FUTURE FINANCE
How might we get young Canadians to plan for and invest in their financial future?
As a team of 5, we decided to focus on post-secondary students in their late teens to early twenties. We really wanted to design something that post-secondary students would genuinely use, and would help guide them through the concept of investing.
With this in mind, we were able to come up with our long-term goal:
Educate our target users enough to make the whole platform/solution a call to action.
Competitive Analysis
These 3 companies have rather similar designs to what we envisioned when designing this product. The piece that we wanted to include was the learning aspect. As useful as these apps may be, we wanted something that would actually teach the users about what is happening when they invest their money, and why it's important, especially while still in your late teens and early twenties.
Determining Our Users
Primary Users:
Users between the ages of 17-20 are categorized in the bracket of GEN-Z and also have many things to start saving and paying for. Due to the influx of financial decisions, and with little to no help from previous educational institutions or in some cases, family, we decided to target this user group and ease their worries by creating a tool to help them.
Secondary Users:
Parents, Spouses, Immigrants, and Millennials. Although not marketed directly to these users, our solution would have a similar benefit.
What Are Users Saving For?
Through conversations with potential users, we determined what types of things they need to save for.
Pay for post-secondary school
Pay for rent/on-campus residence
Use OSAP money & learn how it works
Save for a car
Pay for car insurance
Pay for groceries and living necessities
Our user interviews focused on learning what “investing” means to them, who their main financial influences have been, if they currently have a savings plan, and if so, do they know how it works.
Below are some of the insights we gained from these interviews:
Many don’t invest because they don’t understand it
Some don’t invest because they don’t currently deem it a priority
There is value in convenience
Many allow outside sources to guide their financial decisions (i.e., parents, peers, social media)
From these insights, we created groups of similarities to help us determine what exactly we need to include in our design, and what pain points the users may have.
Interview Findings
Overall Insights
Young Canadians have a series of competing priorities, causing steps to financially plan ahead to slip onto the back burner.
Some social pressures exist in that people know that they should be making steps towards capitalizing on their financial futures.
There is value in true human interaction when learning.
Given the personal nature of the problem at hand (money), tailoring the experience to the users will make them more likely to use and continue using the application.
In order for young Canadians to spend time learning, there must be a nudge to do so. This is best accomplished by showing immediate, tangible value.
Young Canadians have difficulty imagining the future
Young Canadians have difficulty understanding that even a small amount of money being saved can make a difference.
After our interviews, we were able to see that:
Following our sketches, we decided to create an application that would allow users to see their goals in a more interactive way while teaching them about certain financial terms that first and second-year university students might not understand. These terms include RESP, RRSP, and TFSA.
Below are some images from the whiteboard as we were working through some design ideas, before we began designing in Figma.
Ideation
All the ideas we implemented into our high-fidelity designs are as follows:
Questionnaire: A simple user questionnaire that collects data about where they’re at and where they’d want to get to; and matches users to accounts which would be most beneficial for them based on their lifestyle.
Customization: The customization option is a fast-growing feature in every sector of the online world. Everyone from media to banking are adopting the idea of making the users’ experience unique under their platform, and it’s proven to work. A simple user questionnaire that collects data about where they’re at and where they’d want to get to; and matching users to accounts which would be most beneficial for them based on their lifestyle. Not just acting as a ‘matching tool’ this feature broadens the horizons of what a user thinks they might need, and introduce them to options that they didn’t know existed. It also provides them to browse through all the services the company offers. This customization process flows right into our next feature of a rewarded learning experience.
Learn and Get Rewards: Users are tested and then matched with videos while executing the strategies and plans for the low-fidelity users revealing that the video shouldn’t be too long or they won’t care even with the rewards.
The learn and get rewards is one of the key features of the application as it acts as a catalyst for user engagement. Two of the biggest insights of the interviews were that individuals are not educated enough to know how to start saving and that even if they had any idea, resources were limited to start the process. This feature aims to address both of them. After a user completes a questionnaire they’re matched with one of many videos, where they get rewarded to learn about a service that they can pursue. The rewards would then be awarded to the account of choice which would be redeemed after their goals are completed.
Guest Portal: A guest portal designed specifically for users who want to learn about saving or about the application, without the commitment of signing up for the service. The guest portal would include the full learning experience of the application as well as some level of\ customizability, in order for the user to get a feel for the application. It would also have an overview of how the tools provided can help the users’ financial scene of the user. This helps in identifying people who are looking to invest or save money and introduces them to a service that would benefit them. It also supports individuals who’d just want to learn more about money and how to save. During the primary and follow-up interviews, the idea of commitment was a big barrier for users to signup, and with the introduction of this feature, we eliminate that need while still providing a branded learning experience.
Micro-Saving: Benefits individuals who have limited budgets, it’s a way to construct the user’s mindset about saving and help them save a large amount of money over time in small quantities. Below is a list of features we tested to help users with micro-saving:
Add money little by little to change the mindset that you don’t have to save large amounts at a time, you can just save $10 - $20 a week, or bi-weekly, or monthly, etc
Video page: When users look at this page, would you watch the videos based on their personalization or their reward? Or both? Or none?
Dashboard page: What are users thoughts about showing their goals on their dashboard? Is it important to you?
Implementation
Through all of our interviews and research, we were able to design a product that is intuitive to users and allows them to see the progress they are making as they save for their future.
Below is a walkthrough video of our final product.