Future Investments
Future Investments is an application (app) created for young adults to teach them about finances. Growing up I was never was given a practical idea of what finances should be, or how to build a budget, or even how to save for the future. I was never taught how to do my taxes, tax deductions, the stock market, or even what a 401K was. I taught myself everything throughout my 20’s, and it seems like without guidance of a parent, or mentor these are things you have to achieve by yourself. I figured that this could be a great opportunity to fill this gap for some young adults.
Role:
Product Designer
User Research, Interaction, Visual design, Prototyping & Testing
2021 - Present
Ideation
There is a gap between general education, and finances. I would like to bring an educational approach about living expenses, and budgets to build a realistic viewpoint on finances to help young adults build wealth from a young age. Also giving them an understanding of the logistics of how much living on their own costs, and everything they need to prepare to take the next steps in life. I also want to help young adults understand what they will need to accomplish their financial goals whether they are big like moving out of your parent’s house, buying your first car, saving for college, or smaller goals like buying a video game system, computer etc.
I first wanted to start this process of really understanding the emotional impact a cell phone can have on your decision making. After that I created a persona, and story board. My persona is an archetypical user whose goals, and characteristics represent the needs of a larger group of users.
Persona
PERSONA 17-year-old female name Joey. She is a junior in high school and has decided to do her first 2 years at a community college, and then transfer to a University of California school. She is straight A student that is interested in clothing, music, and her friends. She particularly likes the idea of live music, and concerts. Joey also has a minimum wage job at an ice-cream shop, and works up to 30 hours a week. Since she will be living with her parents while she is in her first two years of college, she wants to save up all her money for a down payment on a condo or have enough money to rent an apartment. She also wants to save to buy her first car and insurance.
Storyboard
For my story board I wanted to create a specific task for the persona, making sure that the scenario was realist, and clear. I tried my best to leave out any assumptions. I have decided to do hand sketching since I love to draw.
Defining the Problem
After gathering the findings from the research, I worked with the team to define the problem statement.
Problem statement:
Young adults are trying to teach themselves discipline while they have the opportunity to save money living at home. They are frustrated with not having a system to save for their future goals, whatever those goals may be.
Product Vision
As a product, we wanted to position ourselves in leading young adults into making better financial decisions with 2 key focus areas.
Goal management. We want to help individuals achieve their potential financial goals in a more efficient way.
Budget advice. We want to provide individuals with advice on what they need to do in order to achieve their goal in the form of saving, and how long it will take an individual.
Wire Framing
From the initial wireframe I ran into multiple difficulties with the process of how this program will actually work. I came to the conclusion that the best way to start this app would be to link the users bank account, and then the app updates with the status of the usage of their money, meaning adding or subtracting. You wouldn't be able to add money into your account from this app from the first iteration, but maybe that could be a function down the line. Wire framing was done on Adobe XD.
Prototype
For my prototype I used a high fidelity wire frame on Adobe XD and tried to keep the design simple and clean.
Moving Forward
As with any project, there were some things that worked well, and others that didn't. There is still a lot more to explore with Future Investments. What are the different iterations that can come after the first initial look? What if routes were generated by users, and crowdsourcing? Can we use other ways to share and review routes? These are just some of the questions I'd like to expand on as I continue to work on this project.
Being able to explore without getting attached to a particular design was very helpful for our objective thinking process.
I also learned that having a genuine interest in the work you’re doing can be one of the biggest motivations.
