Making people feel confident with their finances
Leafy is a financial app concept that connects multiple bank accounts, so the customer can have an overview of all his finances, where goes the expenses and how much can be invested. To invest, the customer just has to transfer money to the savings account, and the money is growing already. The bank handles the investment.
The IxD.ma program at the Estonian Academy of Arts worked in collaboration with Swedbank Eestis who invited the students to explore how the new PSD2 directive could open new possibilities to create meaningful experiences for people.
Discover
Together with my colleagues, we started by talked with people with different experiences, for instance, entrepreneurs, consumers, people at the beginning of their careers, people with long careers, students, etc. This helped to start the design process with an overview of how people deal with their finances in unique ways, ones that I alone, would not even imagine. Each conversation brought new insights and helped to understand how people manage their finances and why they do in such a way.
We gathered all the research data, grouped people values and identified opportunities to design solutions that bring values to people lives. With pain points and opportunities mapped, we have split and worked solo in individual solutions.
Define
Among all opportunities identified, one big pain point was the difficulty to control routine expenses, such as with groceries, restaurants and small delights.
And one of the people's value was to feel rewarded after a long month of work. This implied in giving themselves small gifts. However, it often is done without minimal knowledge of the impact it has on their long term finances.
During the research, it was also found that many people don’t invest, first because they don’t have, or perceive that they don’t have resources to start investing. Thus, there is not even the need to learn it.
Focus pain points
Guiding question:
How might we make people feel that they can have more money by the end of the month?
One important aspect of this question, it is not just about enabling people to have more money by the end of the month but, to make them feel that they are capable of doing this.
Develop
Principles
Keep the user in control of his finances.
Keep the user aware of his expenses and investment opportunities.
Solution
With Leafy, the user will be aware of his expenses in the app, and how to save more money. The app will highlight how much the user’s money will grow if invested and nudge a healthier financial behavior, for a positive snowball effect. The feeling of reward can be kept, connected with the sense of achievement.
During this collaboration project with Swedbank Eestis, I got to see real-life challenges in product design for the financial sector and received invaluable feedback from mentors and professionals from the bank.
