Banking for Millennials
Project Brief
Figo was a conceptual banking app aimed at millenials. It was goal based banking that helped users save money.
This project was a team design exercise for Royal Bank of Canada completed over 2 days. Our team completed secondary and primary research (user interviews), conceptualization, brainstorming, product design, and prototyping.
On top of the primary and secondary research that we did as a group, my specific role was UX writing, task flows, storyboard outlines, and InVision prototype stitching.
Client
Royal Bank of Canada
Date
May 2020
Role
Product Design / UX
System
iOS
Tools
Sketch, Invision, Marvel, Affinity Designer
Team
Daniel Guerra, Izzy Lourdes, Richard Szeto
The Request
“Our customers have been asking for a native mobile app for a long time. However because customers can already manage their personal finances through the responsive website, we want our mobile app offering to provide value that uniquely speak to each of our target customers types.”
The name of the app will be called Figo.
Target Users:
Young professionals / millennials with incomes.
Secondary Research
Learning more about the financial landscape of the target user type.
Brand loyalty is low – will change bank based on the best deals and rates.
Low financial literacy; jargons are confusing.
Transitioning from young user accounts to adult accounts are the biggest break points.
70% of millennials have moved to mobile banking.
A significant amount of millennials worry about having enough money to last the month.
Saving money is a major issue; most know about compound interest but don’t act on it.
“Neo Banks” (versus traditional banks) have no physical locations and can offer lower fees.
Neo Banks have lower barriers to transfer money between banks.
Neo Banks use more natural language and try to influence banking habits, such as encouraging auto saving.
Project Assumptions
The users:
- have primary sources of income
- have disposable income
- have financial liabilities
- have low financial literacy and want to learn
- want financial stability
- feel uncomfortable or stressed when dealing with finances
- want to be advised on financial decisions
For business:
- helping users take control of their finances will generate loyalty
- gaining users trust will increase loyalty
- Figo can make revenue from financial products offered to users
Project Goal
Trust and Literacy
Help young professionals to make good financial choices so that they can achieve financial stability and become lifelong Figo users.
Primary Research:
User Interviews
Learning target users current financial practices and experiences.
Format:
- 5 interviews of young professionals between 20-30 years of age, living in and around the city of Toronto.
- Over video call (i.e. Zoom).
- Approximately 30 minutes each.
- General and specific questions, and open ended discussion.
Insights
Financial Literacy
Users either learn about finance from other people (family, friends) or research online on specific websites or online videos (ex. YouTube).
No interviewees mentioned “experts”, financial advisors, or their banks as sources for their financial knowledge.
Less than half of interviewees considered themselves to be knowledgeable about finance.
Challenges
Be disciplined enough to save money is the most common challenge.
Understanding industry jargons, how numbers are calculated, and how to read charts.
Saving for long term goals in life (ex. housing, retirement).
Relationship with Banks
Half of interviewees will welcomed advice from their banks; the other half have some reservation on banks’ motive.
Mobile banking experiences have been good to great.
HMW…
Brainstorming and heat map.
Narrowing it down…
How Might We
create a simple and tailored banking experience, so that young professionals can set and achieve saving goals.
User Journey Map & Target
User Type:
Casual Saver
Product Strategy
- Setting up a saving goal during on-boarding
- Automatic contribution periodically from a chosen account
- “Roundup” contribution – differences to the next dollar in any purchases are automatically contributed to a goal
- Using self-affirmative and natural language
Prototype
Learning Outcome
This project was completed in a “hackathon” style; with the limited time there were a lot of reprioritization of the usual UX workflow. For example, prototyping stages like sketches and low fidelity were skipped, and there were no user testings.
There were areas that could be worked on, such as accessibility – contrast for captions on certain screens were likely too low. Task flow could also be more flushed out with additional features like gamification.
This project was a good exercise on teamwork with a lot of design hand-offs and coordinations under a time constraint.