WINTRUST FAMILY
Wintrust family is a financial app that encourages families to educate children on financial responsibility through chores and completing educational courses on financial literacy. The app also integrates the habits of budgeting and saving for specific goals.
Role: UX Researcher and UI Developer
Duration: Three weeks
Tools: Figma, Trello, Canva, Google Docs
DISCOVER
User interviews (5 parents, 2 kids ages 12-18)
C+C Analysis
Review Current App
DEFINE
Extract Insights
Two User Personas
Problem Statement
User Journey Maps
DESIGN
DELIVER
Sketching
Ideating
Wireframes
Storyboard
Usability Testing
High-fidelity Prototype
Site Map
Next Steps
CONTEXT
Parents want to teach their children financial literacy and responsibility in a lively and interactive way.
PROBLEM
Parents need to educate their children on financial responsibility, however Win Trust financial company currently does not offer the tools to facilitate this.
HOW MIGHT WE?
How might we automate the process of parents giving their kids money?
How might we making saving and other good financial habits exciting and intuitive for children?
HERE'S HOW..
By creating a simple eco-system for parents to transfer money to their children for allowances, set shared savings goals, and reward good financial habits like studying and investing.
RESEARCH
1. We interviewed relevant individuals such as parents, and children from the ages 12-18 . Specifically 5 parents + 2 children.
Our research objectives were: to learn how parents would be willing to encourage good financial habits in their children through apps and to understand what children think of learning about money.
Our questions helped us understand what parents currently do for tracking/saving, what does financial habit implementation currently looks like in their lives, and the importance of financial literacy for their children. For the children, our questions helped us understand their relationship with money, what their experience is like learning, and how they perceive receiving + saving money.
2. We also conducted a C&C analysis with other financial banking apps to begin to understand vital features and how these apps approach this issue. Then, we mapped the available solutions for Wintrust family.
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Mint is a budget app. It is all about saving and budgeting towards set goals. You are to consistently track what you are spending your money on,A weakness is, it does not offer any financial educational tools.
INTERVIEW FINDINGS
This a a savings app, that provides incentives for saving money. A strength was the visual ability to see how far along a user has completed a goal and it automatically takes a percentage of money that the user sets daily or weekly. A weakness was there aren't any engaging social elements.
This app helped us understand what are ideal ways to provide children with chores and through chores children earn credit scores. The UI of this app was also used as inspiration.
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Both parents and children found the idea of shared saving goals appealing
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We learned that allowance was the prime means that parents used to give children money
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Parents were open to incentivizing their children to increase their financial education
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parents hope their children can learn more about investing
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children prefer to keep track of their money online.
PERSONAS
From our findings we came up with two personas. One for our parent user and one for our child user. Our goal was to display the two different perspectives while using this same app.
“I want my children to learn the value of money, but there has to be an easier way than lecturing or writing things down on a piece of paper.”
JOHN JOHNSON
John is a father, husband and business owner. As a business owner and the father of three kids under 18, John lives a fulfilling but busy life. He wants to help teach his kids about the value of money, budgeting, and saving - things he has had to learn on his own.
John’s 15 year old son, Kyle, makes some money teaching music, but he immediately spends it all on Anime figurines. This drives John nuts! “I wish he would learn the value of saving money”.
Needs & Goals
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I want my child to learn how to save money.
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I am looking for ways to teach my child about financial responsibility.
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I want my children to understand the value of money
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I want an easy way to keep track of my children’s allowance.
Frustrations
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Financial apps used don’t provide financial education for kids.
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My children don’t know the value of money, budgeting or saving.
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Having to go to multiple screens to view my financial accounts is inconvenient.
“If I saved, I could buy things my parents wouldn’t buy for me.”
KYLE JOHNSON
Kyle is a 15 year old, 10th grade student. Kyle earns allowance from his parents by doing chores. He also makes a little bit of money by teaching guitar to some neighborhood kids. He tends to spend all of the money he has on Anime figurines and has amassed quite a collection. He would really like to buy a car in a year or so, but saving that amount of money seems out of reach.
Needs & Goals
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Kyle needs a way to save money so he can buy a used car
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He wants to earn extra money from an allowance
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Now that he is making more money by teaching guitar, Kyle needs a way to track it
Frustrations
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His guitar students pay him in cash which is hard to keep track of
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Having cash makes him feel like a little kid with a piggy bank
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Wants his parents to stop nagging him about how he spends his money
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Sometimes his parents forget to give him his allowance which is annoying
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IDEATION
With our findings, we brainstormed possible solutions, tools and features users would like our app to have in order to implement a way for the financial company to integrate financial literacy within families, and to create an interface that could cater to both parents and teenagers. We started doing quick sketches, corrections, additions and wireframes/hi fidelity mock ups and tested them along the way. We also created a site map, user flows and user journey maps to put the mid fidelity prototypes together.
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LOW FIDELITY WIREFRAMES
SITE MAP (IA) FOR PARENT
LOGIN PAGE
LOGIN
MAIN PAGE
MAIN ACC
FAMILY ACC
SUB PAGE
BALANCE
ALLOWANCE
ALLOWANCE
HISTORY
ALLOWANCE
SETTINGS
CHORES LIST
TRANSFER
TRANSFER
SETTINGS
FAMILY
GOALS
FAMILY
GOALS
SETTINGS
BOTTOM NAVIGATION MENU/ HAMBURGER MENU
HOME
TRANSFER
NOTIFICATIONS
ALERTS
STATEMENTS
ALLOWANCE
SIGN OUT
VISUAL LANGUAGE
Our UI decisions were created with the user in mind. After interviewing users and understanding their cognitive perspectives, we gave the app an appealing yet minimalistic look that would make the user feel comfortable and safe navigating through the app as they managed their money.
CONCLUSION
We finalized the structure and design of our WinTrust prototype and concentrated them into the most relevant and useful features:
for parents: manage personal account, transfer to other accounts, set family goals/ assign chores and set allowances for children.
for children: track their money, set saving goals, earn money by doing chores or doing financial educational activity and being able to invest.
A total of 11 users were satisfied with the app and its capabilities. This leaves us satisfied with the results we achieved given the time limitation. This is surely the beginning of WinTrust Family and we believe it has true potential to go far in serving our families. We look forward to designing this further to function at its fullest capacity.
Some next steps are:
1. Designing the investment tab for users to experience.
2. Gamify the child user's experience while navigating through the app.
SITE MAP (IA) FOR CHILD
LOGIN PAGE
LOGIN
MAIN PAGE
SEE $$$
EARN $$$
SAVE $$$
SUB PAGE
MY MONEY
CHORES
LIST OF CHORES
MY SAVINGS
MONEY 101
SAVINGS GOALS
INVEST
BOTTOM NAVIGATION MENU/ HAMBURGER MENU
HOME
EARN
NOTIFICATIONS
ALERTS
HELP
ALLOWANCE
SIGN OUT