p e n n i n g t o n
"Enabling Financial Literacy in a Digital World"
Final Year Project | UX Case study | 2019
CLIENT: Degree Project
SECTOR: FinTech
DURATION: 6 Months
ROLE: Lead Product Designer
WHAT I DID: End-to-end Product Design:
Full Research
Ideation methodologies
Product Development
UX & UI Design
CAD & DFM
Product Launch & Marketing
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Project Foreword:
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Money has never been so easy to spend. We are exposed to over 4,000 adverts a day – a constant barrage of temptation everywhere we turn. Advertising algorithms, concocted in Silicon Valley, are embedded in our social media and are fundamentally designed to increase over-consumption. What barriers are there to protect the most vulnerable against a life of debt?
There are 125 'tap and go' contactless payments thoughtlessly being made every second here in the UK and it is found that these contactless payments are anaesthetising consumers from the pain of paying and they are becoming disconnected from their digital financial lives. Challenger banks such as Monzo and Starling Bank are great solutions for better transparency in finances, but is this just too little too late? Is mobile online banking really the best solution?
There has also never been a more important time to save and invest as much money as we can from a young age. UK household debt is at a 50 year high and the rise of "generation rent" is trapping young adults. How can we seek to change the youth perspective with regards to their finances? How can we seamlessly embed financial management into the daily habitual routines of those who need it most?
Traditional methods of budgeting and keeping on track of our finances are outdated, time-consuming and are not instantly rewarding.
As a result, young adults today are deterred from saving and making long term investments that will benefit their future selves. We are soon becoming a cashless society losing sight of our financial lives and pushing us further from our goals.
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"This project set out to investigate how through the development of a new innovative product or service we can foster greater national financial literacy and give the control of the financial lives of young adults in the UK back to the individual, incentivising them to take accountability for their future lives NOW".
For an individual to have Financial literacy it has been defined by Noctor et al. (1992) as “The ability to make informed judgments and to make effective decisions regarding the use and management of money”
Summit, is a iOS and Android native Financial Platform that utilises Open Banking API's to integrate all of the user's bank accounts into one system.
The service provides an aluminum smart-wallet with an embedded touch screen display. It aims to connect the users closer to their financial lives by integrating and gamifying budgeting. The platform and integrated smart wallet provides real-time updates on daily spending, account balances and goals they may be working towards.
Project Contents
(Click to navigate)
Research
Literature Review
Complex Problem Space
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The literature review revealed the problem space was complex and involved a number of contributing factors to poor national financial literacy. It was revealed the age group 18-24 was the prime market for the greatest opportunity of innovation. It was found although the academic community has some understanding of the spending patterns of young adults, further research needed to be conducted to fully-understand the problem space.
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Online Survey
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Quantitative and Qualitative
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In order to test the open opinions of the young adults in the UK an Online Survey was conducted as Part-1 to the three-part research strategy. The questions were a mixture of quantitative and qualitative questions using a mixed-range of multiple choice question and opinion-based statements. The results were useful in gauging the public opinions on spending, investing and budgeting and gave good insight into what techniques young adults currently use to manage their finances on a day-to-day basis.
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Diary Study
Getting People to talk about the "M" Word
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Following the findings of the Online Survey it was discovered there was demonstrable evidence that UK young adults felt there was a taboo around speaking about money. Young adults were frustrated with their financial situations and felt their efforts in saving were meaningless and had little transparency in how they were able to improve their financial wellbeing.
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A Diary study was selected as an appropriate tool for getting an inside into the financial lives of participants. The study was conducted across a period of 5-days with ten participants from different backgrounds and genders within the age group. The study presented empirical evidence on where participants were spending their money, their thought process behind purchases and how they reflected on their behaviours.
Interviews
The diary study provided some really valuable insights into the daily lives of the average UK young adult and how patterns of spending varried from person to person. Although insights were reliable, there was some inkling of doubt that not everyone had been as honest as possible. In order to validate findings from the diary study and dive deeper into some of the insights given by some of the participants.
Research
Deliverables
Persona
Image Board
Video
The purpose of this image board video is to convey the design problem at hand as well as to display the design intent for ideation that has been decided through this research report. The ambition was to display the complexity of the problem space with the constant barrage of temptations and fast-paced influences facing Millennials in today's world combined with the conventional confusing world of budgeting and banking.
Ideation
Independent and Collaborative Co-Creation
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The Ideation phase to the project allowed myself and a team of other co-designers to explore our problem spaces through a mixture of independent and collaborative co-creation. We explored the use of different creative techniques, energisers, exercises and games in order to best-explore the potential of our pain-points, user requirements and problems to generate a range of different ideas and concepts. These ideas were synergised, evaluated and decided upon after creating hundreds of unique and novel solutions. The final three concepts would be developed further and pitched in a "dragons-den" type scenario to a panel of users, investors and engineers for the concepts potential viability.
Conceptual Product
Introducing Summit. This section will briefly display the final development project of Summit, a smartphone application and connected smart-wallet that utilises Open Banking to provide greater transparency to users finances while they're on the go.
Summit, is a mobile-only Financial Platform that utilises Open Banking API's to integrate all of the users bank accounts into one system.
The service features an optional aluminum smart-wallet with an embedded touch screen display which is sold directly in the smartphone application. It aims to connect the users closer to their financial lives by integrating and gamifying budgeting. The platform and integrated smart wallet provides real-time updates on daily spending, account balances and goals they may be working towards.
"The user experience has been optimised through a rigorous development program working seamlessly and empathetically with users to satisfy requirements and eliminate the pains of the current model of banking"
"The end result is a solution that not only is elegant but disrupts how we think about our money on-the-go. Using my knowledge of software development gained through placement, the design feels instantly habitual and rewarding to the user".
Process of Refinement
"The user experience was tested, iterated and validated using a four-stage methodology inspired by the principles from Lean, Agile and MVP software development using a range of tools".
Empathy Mapping
Empathy mapping as well as generating user-stories from personas was used as a valuable tool to clearly brainstorm issues users were having with the UI design and the wallet during workshops. These were mapped next to the users pragmatic and experience goals in using the product.
Heirarchical Task Analysis
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Through evaluating the steps involved in operating the product and software we can outline unnecessary steps involved in getting the user to their end goal. The HTA allows the designer to create a hierarchy of tasks the user must conduct in order to achieve their desired outcome. This was a really useful tool in the design process in highlighting some problems that hadn't yet been considered.
User-Validation Workshops
Validation through MVP Design
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"The development consisted of four sprints that each ended in user-testing workshops with a user-sample of five participants to comment and give input into the design of both the software and the co-design of the smart-wallet to fail fast".
Fogg Behaviour Model
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Think-Aloud Mapping
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"Test-users behaviour was analysed and mapped against the Fogg Behaviour model for each interaction made by the participant. Testing was conducted using the Think-Aloud Protocol".
Branding
"A Brand is a set of qualities, ideas and attributes delivered through experiences and interactions a person may have with a company. A Brand is not objective, it is made up through feelings, philosophies, values, and defines how a company presents itself to its audience."
It is therefore paramount to take a User-Centred and value-based approach to branding Summit.
Atomic Design
Design Systems
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"Once wireframes, clickthroughs and branding were all validated through user testing a design system of design assets were created to ensure consistency in the UI Design. The value in using these is that if the project scaled, expanded or went into production it would be easier to onboard new designers or engineers.
The methodology pioneered by Brad Frost, (2009) named "Atomic Design" was utilised in this project and involves firstly creating "Elements" such as icons and buttons, from this "molecules" are created using the assets from the element palette. Molecules are then merged to create "organisms" which were a collection of design molecules which can be used to build up "pages" in the UI from Wireframes.
API System Architecture
Open Banking is the Future of Banking
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The platform backend is built to facilitate the collaboration of multiple bank accounts under one user profile. This occurs through Summit acting as a Third-party AISP and collecting transaction data from the consumer's bank and transferring it to the users profile which shows up on the users smart-phone application. This can then be wirelessly transmitted using a secure 256-bit Bluetooth connection to the smart wallet showing real-time (2-5 seconds) of transaction and account information. Open Banking was authorised by major banks in the UK in January 2017 in order to increase innovation in the banking sector providing consumers the tools to better manage their money,
Wallet Development
The Future of Wallets
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The Summit Smart-Wallet is to accompany the smartphone application and provides greater financial integration of budgeting into the life of the user. The device is CNC machined from 6000-grade aluminum, fingerprint protected and wirelessly charged. The device features a built-in 3.5-inch touchscreen IPS display and securely streams the users banking transactions and balances from the Summit app using Bluetooth 5.0. The display features 3M privacy filters and the wallet cardholder can hold up to 8 bank cards, any photos or banknotes. It aims to be a direct replacement of the traditional leather wallet or purse. The Summit wallet aims to change the pattern of thinking when going to make a contactless payment, disrupting the, "tap and go" mentality that has become the norm. Summit aims to nurture, foster and instruct new sensible behaviours with spending.
User-centric Development
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A user-centric process of development utilising principles from Agile has been used throughout. Varying fidelity of prototype in both UI and the product design of the wallet have been used to make quick iterations and were tested frequently with user groups at all stages.
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Thirty-six paper and card iterations were made before designing and 3D Printing eight iterations in shape and form for the smart wallet. The final prototype took the form of a CNC milled Aluminium body machined using a 6-axis CNC. The final functioning prototype in addition to the aluminum aesthetic model was 3D printed and housed a fully functioning touch-screen, 2000 MaH battery and a wireless charger. The project was also developed for DFM where materials, manufacturing techniques and processes were evaluated and decided upon. I hope to continue to develop the concept further over the summer..
Prototypes
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Lo-fi to Hi-Fi Prototyping
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I worked through varying fidelities in the design process firstly working with paper and card, testing and validating shape and form. The use of 3D printing was also used to test structures and hinge mechanisms. The design went through eight iterations of hinge mechanism which were all 3D Printed.
Functioning Prototype
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The final 3D printed form was converted to be used as the functioning prototype which featured a programmed 3.5 inch capacitive touch screen display. This display was coded using the Nextion Prototyping platform IDE using basic assisted Python. The display was programmed to show the full interactive XD design.
Electronics
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The functioning prototype featured a 2000 mAh li-po battery, an inductive wireless charger, a switch and a transformer unit. This enabled the device to be as similar to the real product as possible. This prototype was used to test with stakeholders and to demonstrate the concept at New Designers 2019.
"Looks-like" Model
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On-top of the functioning prototype, I also produced an aesthetic model. This was produced by having the two halves to the clamshell CNC machined by a 6-axis mill from 6000-grade aluminum.
Aluminum Aesthetic
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The looks-like model also featured 3D printed hinges, the correct leather paneling, a card clip, and a mock-up acrylic display as well as magnetic catches to give the users a real tangible experience of what the product could be.
TFL London Underground Campaign
