Moolah U: Family Financial App Children's Dashboard Redesign Project Case Study
Client Background
Moolah U is a proven leader in youth financial education and is now digitizing its learning methodology in a Family Financial App that will allow parents to confidently offer their kids financial autonomy through real experiences with money.
Project Overview
Business Challenge
Moolah U’s MVP web app is losing user stickiness.
They want to find a better approach to enhance their user engagement so that their users can be more excited when using the product.
“The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create men who are capable of doing new things”
— Jean Piaget
Project Scope
MVP Iteration
Design Sprint
2 weeks
My Role
UX Researcher
Planning of Research Process
Recruiting of Participants
Execution
Synthesis
Testing
Research Presentation to stakeholders
Recommendation
Key Skills
Qualitative Research, Research Synthesis, Survey Design, Usability Test, Collaboration, Ideation, User Experience Design, Figma, Presentation
Research Methods
Market Research
User Interviews
Affinity Mapping
Persona Creation
Task Analysis
Feature Prioritization
Usability Tests
Curious Space
What sparked my curiosity in this project is:
How do we make learning fun for children users of this product and how can we translate that into a digital experience?
How do we keep them engaged?
What are the children’s concepts of money and its value?
What is their motivation for saving?
What systems of budgeting and saving do they have at home and what do they like and don't like about it?
Market Research
Competitive Analysis Goals:
I did a feature inventory on direct competitors of Moolah U, such as Greenlight, Kachinga, Rooster Money, and Allowance Chore Bot, focusing on:
UI Conventions
Engagement and Retention
How are they solving the problem
What is working and what is not working
Comparative Analysis Goals:
I did a feature inventory on educational websites such as Khan Academy, Brain Pop, Prodigy Math and Code.org to discover good practices on how to make learning more engaging for children.
Beta Test Analysis
I analyzed the previous prototype testing that was done on the current MVP, focusing on users’ pain points in engagement.
“ I want to spend money on Pokemon cards”
“Why would I use the app instead of just going to my Dad and say hey! give me money. ”
“I wash the neighbors’ cars and sell my old clothes online when I need more money”
*Every prompt:
Reads aloud then "Yeah that makes sense” - then clicks forward
Collective Insights:
I did an affinity mapping of the insights I gathered from the previous prototype test that was conducted, and here are some compelling trends that I discovered:
Collective Insight :
“I know how to save and earn money, but I don’t know how to invest and capitalize it."
Users know how to earn money and save up for something that they like
Users have a save and spend state of mind
Collective Insight :
“I do not pay too much attention and I don't like to read complicated texts"
Users did not notice instruction prompts, and had to be reminded to read them out loud by their parents
Users just clicked through instructions and prompts
Collective Insight :
“I spend my money on what I think is valuable, but I value things like toys not investing. "
Users’ parents think kid does not understand the value of money
Users use their money to buy things like toys because that is what has the most value to them.
Beta Test Takeaways
Saving & Spending
Children know how to earn and save money to buy the things they want.
Value Of Money
To children, the value of money lies in how it can buy them the things that are of value to them like toys.
Prompts & Instructions
We noticed that most of the children just clicked through the prompts and had to be reminded to read them.
User Interviews
My goal is to learn about what encourages engagement with children and what makes learning fun for them. By gathering data on these points, I can learn about their needs, goals, behaviors, and pain points.
Overview:
Participants: We gathered 4 interview participants, who are between the ages of 7 to 15 years old.
Questions :
What do they like and don't about school?
What do they do for fun and why?
What makes them stay in a game/app for a long time?
What makes learning interesting/fun for them?
How do they discover things?
Why do they like certain subjects
“I did a beautiful illustration for show and tell and my teacher gave me two birdie bugs.”
“Those things that relate to our lives, make Science feel more important, you don’t have to pretend to relate it to real life. ”
“Every time you build something and you built it yourself, you always get that sense of accomplishment”
Affinity Mapping
To synthesize the data gathered from the user interviews I did an affinity mapping to map out trends in thoughts and insights of the participants.
Key Takeaways:
Here are the most compelling insights that I discovered:
Collective Insight :
"I like rewards and commendations"
All participants expressed the insight that rewards and commendations keep them motivated and engaged
Collective Insight :
"I find value in learning if the subject is something I find relevant and interesting "
3 out of 4 participants expressed the insight that learning is easier and more interesting if emulates real life, and makes them understand the world around them thus making them feel more engaged and connected
Collective Insight :
"I enjoy accomplishing tasks and meet goals "
3 out 4 participants expressed the insight that they are more motivated and engaged when they have a goal that they are working towards
Persona
To help the team focus to ideate user-centric solutions, I created a persona that was developed from all the data collected from our user research.
Problem Statement
In order to create effective solutions and clarify what the team is trying to solve, I formulated these problem statements based on Moolah U’s business goals and the users’ insights.
Business Problem:
Moolah U needs a better approach to enhance its user engagement so that its users can be more excited when using the product.
User Problem:
Users need a system that will give them more autonomy in managing and growing their money that is engaging and stimulating so they can learn the value of money.
How Might We
To guide the team in the ideation of possible solutions I drafted these “How Might We” Statements.
To Address the Business Problem:
How might we redesign the app to create a need for the users to be interested in applying and learning financial concepts such as investing?
To address the User Problem:
How might we help the users reach their goals in an engaging way?
Solution
Keeping our findings in mind, here are the solutions we came up with:
Solution For The Business Problem:
Create more engagement for the users by introducing rewards and making the UI more visual and information more digestible.
Solution For The User Problem:
Teach the users how to grow their money through business to reach their goals so they can learn by application which makes learning relatable and engaging.
Feature Prioritization
To help us focus our scope, we conducted a brainstorming activity where we scored and then ranked the pain points we gathered from the previous prototype testing. With the data gathered from the problem ranking, I created this MoSCoW Chart that gives us a good springboard to ideate our possible features.
Ideation
I conducted a time-boxed brainstorming activity to ideate design solutions. Here are some of the sketches that we did:
Style Guide
Color Palette
We chose green and blue to promote productivity in a calm relaxing manner, yellow to heighten concentration, and the cream as the background to tie it all together.
Font
We decided on Avenir for its versatility, also it is exceptionally legible, and clear to read.
Components
Character Guide - to have the user involved and engaged in learning.
Gradient Cards - to make the cards more eye-catching.
Icons - we used convention icons that are easily recognizable by users.
Mid-Fidelity Prototype
From the data that I have gathered, our team came up with a couple of new features for the app, along with some interface changes from the old beta app.
Dashboard
Notifications and updates - We changed the previous “Updates” section with a “notifications” icon in the global navigation because it was very similar to the recent activity section and we believed it would be a better use of the screen space to change the design to something that is less intrusive. So, when users receive money or there are some tasks they need to do, they will get a notification in this section.
Avatar Customization - one of the findings that we gathered from the analysis of the previous prototype testing is that children want more autonomy when using the app. So, the new design will give them more freedom with how they want to personalize the app by giving them their own avatar that they can eventually customize to their liking.
Reward System - in order to work on user retention, we designed this feature that will give users another reason to come back to the app. So now, in addition to using this app to manage their money, they can also earn coins and badges when they work on a business plan, or for continuous use of the app.
Bucket Summary - we designed the Buckets Summary section in order to give users a visual guide of how their money is organized within these buckets.
Investment Button - All the buckets in the previous prototype are used to organize, move, or get money; and the invest bucket in the current design doesn’t have those features, which creates confusion for the users. To address that, we designed a different section for investments. Instead of having an Invest bucket, we believed it would be more effective if users could access their investments separately.
Buckets Page
Buckets Page - an iteration we made to the buckets page was making it a slide-in panel instead of a new page. We decided to do this so all of the tasks are confined to one page to maximize efficiency.
Icons - in the new design we created, the bucket icons are customizable to give the users more control over what their buckets will look like, to give them more ownership thus making them more accountable for their buckets.
Investment Page
Education Mode - based on the data that I gathered from the previous prototype testing, it was observed that children don’t really read text unless it's absolutely necessary to go to the next page, or if it’s created in digestible chunks. So with these findings in mind, we designed an educational mode that users can toggle on or off if they want to learn about investment concepts or other money functions.
Investments Page - we designed a visual representation of all the money they saved up for their future investments, and in this new feature, the design will teach them how to grow money by giving them a walk-through to create a business plan. We designed this as a walk-through instead of just text because based on our user interviews, a lot of users want to learn by doing and application.
Mid-Fidelity Prototype Usability Test
I conducted a series of usability tests on the mid-fidelity prototype to test its functionality, intuitiveness of navigation, ease of task completion, and language.
Overview:
Participants: 4
Tasks:
Find the notification
See all potential badges you can unlock
Move money from toy to electronics bucket
Get money from donate bucket
Learn how to grow their money
Key Takeaways:
Notifications Icon - The notification indicator was ignored by all of the participants, it was not eye-catching.
Investment Card - Three out of the four participants had trouble getting to the Investment page, Investment card did not look clickable to them.
Headings - One of the participants was confused about what “Recent Activities” means.
Moving Money To A Different Bucket - The bucket categories on where to move the money were confusing for one of the participants she thought she needed to put a value on all 3 categories
“I just wish there was a button cause this honestly doesn’t look like one. ”
“This is kind of confusing. I’m not used to this cause it looks like you’re moving money for all three of them.”
“Why didn’t it come up in recent activities? It should come up so you don’t miss anything.”
“OH, there’s an investment guide right here. I saw the blue and…wait why didn’t I notice that?”
High Fidelity Prototype Iterations
Based on the usability tests conducted, here are the prototype iterations that I recommended based on my findings:
Notifications - one feature we changed was the notifications icon, it wasn’t as eye-popping as we would have liked, so we made it bigger and changed the color to make it more noticeable.
Investments - there was confusion navigating to the Investment section when asked where they would go to grow their money. So we put a short copy to guide the users and we changed the layout and moved it on top of the Bucket Summary Section, so it is one of the first features users would see when entering the app.
Heading - we changed from recent activity to money tracker because we wanted to let users know that this section is just for tracking money and all other updates will be in the notifications.
Move Money - For the move money option in the buckets, some of our users in the usability test mentioned that the layout on the left made it seem like they were transferring money to all three categories. To get rid of confusion, we made it a drop down menu to be more clear as to where they’ll be transferring money from and where it will go.
User Impact
“Creating the business plan is pretty easy, if I’m starting the lemonade stand, it makes it so much easier, it calculates stuff for you, it does it so easily.”
Users reported that they enjoy the business plan guidance and learned a lot about how to start a business
“The cow!!” (notices it right away) “It’s really cute!” *proceeds to read instructions on the cow bubble*
Users all had a positive reaction to the cow character thus making them pay attention to more.
“There are lots of things that motivate me to go on it, especially the avatar maker and the achievements that you get.”
All users love our gamified collection system and reward system.
Next Steps
As for the further development of the product here are my recommended next steps:
Further exploration of the animated character concept, maximizing its efficiency not only as a tip suggestion tool, a to-do list reminder but also as a branding representation.
Conduct diary studies on updated design to gain more insight into user engagement and behavior.
A mobile or tablet responsive design in the future should also be explored.