SmartMoney is an app designed to teach financial skills as this is a topic that is not often taught to young people. The demographics for this app are teenagers (15-17 years old) and high school teachers who want start teaching personal finance in their classrooms.
Users found that the app was easy to use and if populated with the right information, can be an engaging hub to teach teens personal finance.
I learned that having different user groups can be challenging and sometimes the best answer if having two different user flows to address their different problems. I also learned that there are important differences in designing a mobile app vs a responsive website.
According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, less than 17% of high schoolers are required to take personal financial classes. This lack of education can severely impact individuals’ lives in adulthood through debt and bad financial decisions. The issue is that there is a lack of a place to go for help.
Oct 2022 to Nov 2022
Designing a platform that teaches financial skills. A place where the information is current, easy to follow and engaging.
UX researcher and ux designer
First I did secondary research to understand what problem I’m trying to solve. I looked into what are the parts of personal finance that are important for people to understand. I also looked into how financial literacy is usually taught. This is done by interviewing people and asking them a set of question concerning their view on their own financial skill level, where did they learn about personal finance and how ready they felt in their teenage years regarding this topic. For the second user base (teachers), I interviewed some people who worked in the field and asked about if personal finance was taught. If not, I asked more in dept on how teachers create teaching materials in the hope of helping me structure my learning platform design.
Joseph is a high school student who needs engaging personal finance tips because he wants to learn to budget for college.
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Julie is a high school teacher who needs a finance curriculum platform because she wants to teach her students personal finance.
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Ideation started with the mobile app. I used the method of progressive enhancement. My focus here was for the primary user base (high school learners) where their schools did not offer any financial course. I want to focus on creating wireframes for lessons and bookmark features.
User flow:
I conducted a moderated usability study. The study was performed on 5 participants (each study) for 2--30 minutes. The main goal of both studies was to test it ease of navigation and article layout.
Most users had a hard time finding where bookmarked items are.
Most users had trouble finding the student/ teacher toggle button.
Most users were annoyed that it took several clicks to navigate to individual lessons.
Some users were confusing why only teachers had a “my classes” section
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