SaveIt Case study

Project Goal.

The goal of undertaking this project was to design an app where financial freedom is granted to as many people as possible through better money management such as strict savings, passive income and easily accessible investment opportunities.

Challenge

One of the crucial steps to financial freedom, is through a solid savings plan. It was left to me to find out :

• How I can encourage people start a savings culture
• How to ensure discipline whilst saving

The Process

I followed the Human Centered Design process to investigate how to ensure financial freedom through savings and invstements. Using the research synthesis as my guide, I brainedstormed possible solutions and usecases. I then tested via usability tests and developed high fidelity design screens from my findings.

User Research

The design process kicked off with the commmencement of user research. The primary mode of research was via interviews both physical and phone interviews.Through this, i was able to discover my target audiance, their painpoints, desires and wishes. I also conducted a competitive analysis audit to see how similar companies in FinTech were acheiving similar aims as mine.

Target Audience

My Target audience were young and middle-aged adults within the ages of 18 - 40 years. Through research, it was made known that these individuals often go online via their mobile phones to conduct day to day transactions. Since SaveIt is an online plaform, it only makes sense that these set of people make up 70% of my users.

Interview Questions and Answers

I made a list of targeted questions to know the savings situation wit different individuals and how to help them in maintaining a savings culture and ensuring discipline while at it. interviewed a total of 6 individuals. Below are some of the interviw questions and answers.

I put my savings in side kolo (Nigerian term for piggybank) but i am not consistent with it. I do it only when i remember.

Goodness Ezekiel

I just leave the money in my acount and hope i dont touch it which always dosent happen lol.

Chinaza Chukwu

Not really. I try to save towards occasions but most times, i dont end up reaching my goal because i cant stop myself from spending my savings when i want something

Anita Joseph

On my own, i cant so i give my sibling to hold for me. She is quite disciplined when it comes to savings but i am not, so she helps me reach my goals

Peter Eguda

I wish I could stay away from spending my savings. The temptation to spend is strong. I’d be happy if i could store it away and not have access to it for a while

Laura Denver

For me, If there was a financial incentive added to my savings, I think i’d be discouraged to immedietly spend my money because i would have something to look forward to.

Anita Joseph

Personas

I created two personas based off on the insights gotten from my research. Similar answers were grouped together to form each persona.

Solution

After careful consideration of the outcome of my research, i commenced a couple of brainstorming sessions on my quest for digging uo solutions.

I came up with three methods to ensure a better user experince in savings

PiggySave helps users build up their savings daily, weekly or monthly depending on their preference. The process involves money being deducted from a viable source of income the user provides. This way, users do not have to constantly remind themselves to save, the work is done for them automatically.

Asides from this, users have three days per annum to withdraw funds they have saved. These days are completely set by the users to give them control over their finances.

However, if a user tries to withdraw on a day he/she hasnt previously set, he/she risks loosing interests gathered on the savings. This is put in place to ensure discipline during savings which is one of the goals of this project.

From Research, it was gathered that most peolpe like to save towards particular occassions or needs. To help them acheive that, i set up TargetSave.

With automatic deductions, progress bars and upto 00 % interest rate, users are sure to be on track towards acheiving their targeted needs.The fun part is they can have as many target savings as they like.

This feature was added to help those users who have a particular sum of money they are not quite sure what to do with just yet or are planning on keeping it for an upcoming event.

The lockedFunds feature helps in locking up funds users dont want to have access to for a particular duration of time. Interest gathered on locked funds depend on the duration of time its being locked

These three features help in building and maintaining a savings culture with exciting financial incentives to back it up. They also ensure discipline as users are likely to loose interests gathered if they try to access their savings befoe the due date.

User Flow

This is a visual representation of how the user moves through the app. The focus was making is simple so it feels natural and intuitive to the user.

Usability Testing

After conducting usability testing with 30 users, 28 of them reported that they were not able to properly read the text highlited in orange. They complained that they had to strain their eyes to see it and this negativly impacted the user experience. .

To fix this, i changed the color to a soft shade of black so it contrasts very much with the light background nd ensures better visual accessibility

Summary

Thank you for reading this far!. Working on this project was both challenging and exciting.Getting feedback from potential users and implementing changes was a positive experience for me. I learnt alot aboit designing for financial technology on mobile Screens

Going forward, I would be conducting more usability tests to ascertain that the user experience is excellent and ensure that more user painpoints would be resolved.