Product Design, UX Research, Prototyping, Copywriting
3 UX Designers
August 2021
Figma, Miro, Loop11
Navigating through the world of personal finance can be a tricky challenge, especially for those who are just getting started in their careers. In the Philippines, most Filipinos lack knowledge about the how-tos of taking control of their finances, making them clueless on how to properly save for a rainy day.
NextPay aims to solve this by providing digital services to the employees of their client businesses, empowering them to well manage their hard-earned money through financial literacy digitalization.
This project is a conceptual output presented to Aldrich Tan, CEO of NextPay, and his team in my UX+ University design bootcamp.
UX Research and Design, UX Writing
We began by examining how individuals feel about their financial health, and how it affects their work productivity
What's the first thing you do when you get your paycheck?
What motivates you to save money?
What do you think are factors that affect employee productivity?
What would encourage you to improve your knowledge on personal finance?
To explore the financial problems that MSMEs face, we conducted interviews with individuals who work with these companies. Our group of interviewees – 6 participants – included both employers and employees of MSMEs, as well as freelancers and solo entrepreneurs. A diverse group of participants allowed us to gather a wide range of perspectives on the problem.
Questions in the interview were aimed at finding out what users knew, believed, and preferred when it came to personal finance management.
Our research showed that just because people are financially literate doesn’t mean they’re financially healthy. In fact, financial literacy is not enough on its own to lead a successful financial life, because what people do with their money (spending habits and behavior) also affects their financial health.
Users recognize the importance of having an emergency fund.
People save in order to be able to handle emergencies, and this is a powerful motivator. However, most people find it hard to stash money away after payday because they prioritize paying bills over having savings.
Users find it confusing to learn the ropes of personal finance.
Because many users find personal finance concepts jarring, they tend to put off studying or improving their finances.
Users lack access to financial management tools.
People often use pen and paper to keep track of their daily expenses and transactions, which makes it easy to forget one day’s entries. This leads to mental and physical stress and the inability to accurately keep track of one’s day.
After conducting user interviews, all the participants responses were synthesized to identify what users were saying about their pain points, how can we help them, and where to focus development.
An affinity map was used to group similar insights about the application into high-level themes.
A persona was built based on the data collected to help drive decision making and keep the product focused on solving users pain points, frustrations, and goals.
Using the red routes analysis, we identified which features would have the most value for our users.
To prioritize which features will we include in the 2-week sprint, we broke down the requirements using the Moscow methodology.
This method helped us determine the minimum viable product (MVP) for our solution, which became our starting point in building the prototype.
I made some quick sketches to get ideas on paper, then created a mid-fidelity prototype with my team to test the idea with users.
The primary user flow is the process of learning financial topics, starting new saving habits, and tracking of daily finances.
A mid-fidelity prototype was created using feedback and insights gained from research to start user testing.
Rough sketches were done to get my initial thoughts on paper and brainstorm new ideas for specific UI elements.
A usability study was conducted to determine how users interacted with the app as well as to determine how to improve the app.
No presence of OTP verification for every transaction
Accumulation of points can be explained more in-depth during the onboarding process to provide more context
Low motivation to complete the quizzes consistently
Insights page provides an opportunity to create conversational recommendations based on the user’s financial behavior
Include a flow for OTP verification for all transaction-related screens
Add a moment of delight to motivate users to complete their daily challenges
In our final solution, we laid out the app's main features with the new copy, illustrations, and colors. Here’s a look at the final flows of some of the app’s core experiences I designed.
Financial health check
By answering a few simple questions about their spending and saving habits, users can receive personalized recommendations and tools to help them manage their money.
With the help of its friendly calculator tool, new users can learn how to build an emergency fund by setting aside part of each paycheck. If the user commits to the goal, they can use NextPay to set up an automatic deduction from their company's payroll system into their emergency fund.
This feature allows users to add and customize stashes based on their savings goals, which can be as easy as planning their next summer vacation with friends. This gives customers flexibility in their savings habits by allowing them to create separate savings stashes.
This UX case study has been a challenging and rewarding experience for me. When working with a team, I realized that adopting an agile mindset, constantly communicating, and iterating is really key to designing a better product. Although we had a short timeline, I was able to learn that even by making small changes, we are able to yield big impacts and create a great experience for users. It is also very important to validate our assumptions through testing.
On encouraging new habits and behaviors
Getting people to use new concepts can be difficult. People need to be reminded of the concepts they’re being encouraged to use. Providing tips and reminders makes this process simpler by helping users retain the information you’re trying to get across. Providing tips on how to apply a concept is a great way of teaching that makes sense for your audience.
Gamification as an incentive
Moreover, I realized gamification is a powerful incentive for users to dip their toes into complex concepts such as financial literacy. Embracing the opportunity to be creative and to think outside of the box led my team to conceptualize a better final product. Thank you for reading until the end! I appreciate you taking the time to read my stuff, it means a lot to me. If you have any comments or questions, feel free to send us a message. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this article as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.
Now let’s make something awesome!
