Service Design
Facilitation of Design Workshops
User Interviews
Eco System Mapping
Grade: 12 (A+)
Duration: 6 months
Master's thesis In digital design and interactive technologies at the IT-University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
An exploration into how digital design can empower young adults to improve their financial literacy, using a research-through-design approach. This involved creating and testing 10 unique prototypes with users to uncover effective motivational strategies.
01 Problem
Initial Desk Research
To start off our project, we conducted extensive research reading through academic papers and reports. Here, we found that young adults increasingly struggled with managing their personal finances. This in turn led to feelings of sadness, overwhelm and a negative view on their futures. These facts motivated us to explore how digital design could help increase their motivation to increase their financial literacy. We therefore posed the question:
"How can a Research through design approach be applied to understand young adults' motivations for achieving financial literacy?"
Research Design
To help answer our research question, we drew inspiration from Zimmermann et al’s (2016) research design, by adopting a research through design approach. To keep a long story short(er), similar to Zimmermann et al. (2016) we conducted initial interviews with young adults. From these insights we created design provocations (lo/mid-fi design concepts in Figma). We explored the design provocations with young adults in order to gain insights into what might motivate them to become financially literate. From these rich insights we created three in-depth digital concepts that we tested with young adults. Following these iterations we produced design guidelines that might help inform future designers on how to facilitate meaningful relations between technology and young adults in their journey towards financial literacy.
02 Process
Overview of the iterative design process
Our overall design process consisted of partnering with We-Grow - a Danish NGO serving to increase financial literacy for young adults and conducting initial desk research. Then, we conducted intial interviews with two young adults in the age of 22 and 25 and an expert interview with a financial advisor from Nordea. We analyzed the interviews and based on these findings we did a design sprint where we create 10+ different design provocation (mid-fidelity design concepts in Figma) concepts that we could further test in our next round of "user research". We brought these design provocations with us when we attended a lesson in financial literacy at a Danish high school. Here, we observed how the young adults took in the teachings. After the lesson we set up a workshop with 4 high school students where we showed them our designs and talked about how each of them would, or would not, motivate them to become more financially literate. Similarly, we set up a similar workshop with university students. Then, we analyzed our findings and chose the three most promosing design to iterate further on. This resulted in three mid-fidelity design concepts that touched upon different financial areas. All of the three design concepts had sketched realistic UX flows so that we could better test how these were received by the young adults. We then tested these three design concepts with university students, analyzed the findings, and based on this we formulated overall design guidelines that future designers could keep in mind, when designing financial tools for young adults. The report ended with the top grade of A+.
Initia interviews
In order to learn more about how young think about adult personal finances, we conducted two semi-structured interviews. They each lasted 35-45 minutes and our goal was to unfold topics such as: Their spending habits, how they communicated with their friends and acquaintances about personal finances, to what degree the topic is surrounded by taboo and how a digital tool might look that could help motivate them with their personal finances.
Magnus, 20: The economic enthusiast
Magnus has an interest in personal finance reflected in his hobbies.
He is passionate about investments.
He writes articles for a Danish investment publication
He helps other young people on online forums
He has a detailed overview over his personal finances
He plans ahead and saves for his retirement
He does not want any financial tool to be entertaining. He prioritizes utility.
“(...) if there was someone who said: ‘are there anyone who can stop by and pack some boxes for three hours (...) I have a lot of time in my everyday life, I do not have a family, so I would be inclined to do that.”
Lasse, 25: The free-spirited young adult
Lasse prioritizes living in the moment and often spends money on nights out with friends.
He often regrets his spending the next morning
Lasse is extremely short-term focused, primarily aiming to make his salary last the month and pay rent.
He has knowledge of budgeting and financial sense from home but lacks the self-discipline to follow it.
Lasse connects poor mental well-being with a bad financial situation
Design provocations
We employed the 6-3-5 method for brainstorming, generating 18 different ideas to inspire ways our informants could become motivated in gaining financial literacy. To ensure our test sessions remain within a reasonable time frame, we established design criteria to help us narrow down which ideas were the strongest:
The idea must have a distinct function or concept – the provocation should be easily understood by the user.
The idea must be evocative – the provocation should prompt reflection on a future with the use of the digital concept.
The idea must address one or more aspects of Self-Determination Theory (SDT): autonomy, competence, relatedness, or extrinsic motivation.
Testing the design provocations
To test our initial 9 design concepts we conducted group interviews with high schoolers and university students. Here, we conducted semi-structured interviews.
The idea must have a distinct function or concept – the provocation should be easily understood by the user.
The idea must be evocative – the provocation should prompt reflection on a future with the use of the digital concept.
The idea must address one or more aspects of Self-Determination Theory (SDT): autonomy, competence, relatedness, or extrinsic motivation.
Rewards can motivate
In both studies, we found similarities in that our informants expressed that they would be motivated by receiving monetary rewards for their financial performance
"Even if it's only 2.31, you're like: 'oh well, I've won something anyway. Okay 2 DKK, but it's still the feeling of free money'"
Relatedness with peers
Our tests showed that young adults are motivated by digital design tools that foster connections. They were inspired by others to manage their finances and found that sharing experiences helped break the taboo around personal finance.
"It's very cool, it reminds me a bit of Reddit where you can see other people's budgets, and you can see how much other people get paid [...] Sometimes it helps to read or see what others have done, anonymously."
A raised hand versus a digital iron grip
This theme relates to one of our design provocations, that explored how the young adults would feel about losing complete autonomy over their personal finances to an AI, that decides what they can or cannot buy. We found that a complete loss of autonomy was not ideal, but a digital tool that guideded them could be valuable.
"What if instead of blocking the purchase completely, you get a notification on your phone that says: 'Hey, we can see that you're buying this. You're already 200 DKK over budget'. That's nudging instead".
Competition can motivated instrinsically and extrinsically
For some participants, the thought of competing with their friends in becoming financially literate seemed to motivate them, as they would form closer friendships. For others it could lead to feelings of guilt or shame, if they did not perform equally as well as their friends.
"Challenges can be specific to your friend group […]. Then I also think the challenge thing could be good. I think that would really help".
Opportunity solution tree
In order to choose which design concepts to further iterate on, we created an opportunity solution tree. We arranged the themes from our research with the seven design provocations to organize how our findings related to the different psychological needs from SDT: Autonomy, competence and relatedness. In this way, we considered these three psychological needs as opportunities to contribute to our desired outcome - to create motivation for financial literacy.The idea must have a distinct function or concept – the provocation should be easily understood by the user.
03 The final three concepts
Inspired by our opportunity solution tree, we created three design concepts that touched upon our findings from our interviews and that all sought to increase the intrinsic motivation areas; relatedness, autonomy and competence.
The three new concepts has been tested with a similar approach to the first seven: Think-aloud testings and semi-structured interviews. However, for Budget Buddy we decided to test in-situ, meaning we took our informants with us to a local grocery store. Here, we gave them the task of putting certain groceries in their physical basket and scan them at the check-out. Afterwards, we gave them a phone showing the notification from Budget Buddy, which stated that this buy would exceed their budget. This offered richer nuances to our empirical data, as we aimed to test as close to reality as possible. After our tests, we synthesized patterns in the data into themes. I have decided not to include the themes in this case study. Instead, the final synthesis; the design guidelines that we created from our insights will be presented in the next section.
Oinkonomy
Oinkonomy is a digital concept where you take care of a virtual pig by managing your finances. The mood and home of your piggy bank reflect how well you're sticking to your budget. You keep its spirits high by spending less in real life. If the mood is high, you gain more coins that you can use to assist your friends if they are having trouble maintaining their budget, or to buy new accesories and furniture for your pig's home.
Dennis, 25
Alma, 25
Carla, 26
Peerconomics
With Peerconomics, the user can easily view and copy budgets from people with similar finances and life situations. Initially, users must answer questions about income, spending and financial goals. Users are suggested budgets and learning material based on the knowledge gathered about them. Users can then easily get an overview and insight into the finances of similar users and can copy other people's budgets.
Benedicte, 27
Carla, 26
Dennis, 25
Budget Buddy
With Budget Buddy the user can set up individual budgets for different categories such as food, clothing and miscellaneous. Once this is done, the user can keep a continuous overview of their budgets in the form of Budget Buddy appearing as a widget on the user's home screen. When the user makes a purchase that falls under a budget that has already been exceeded, the user receives a notification that the budget has been exceeded. The user can now choose to confirm the purchase to complete it, or to decline the purchase and stay within their budget.
Carla, 26
Alma, 25
Dennis, 25
04 Design Guidelines
As the final deliverable of this research project, we have developed design guidelines based on self-determination theory. These guidelines are intended to serve as a starting point for future designers aiming to create digital tools that motivate young adults to become more financially literate. However, it is essential for future designers to conduct context-specific research to tailor these guidelines effectively.
Relatability:
Design guideline: The communication style of the design should neither talk down to nor go over the heads of young adults, but should meet them at eye level.
Potential risks: If the young adult is talked down to, this can minimize feelings of autonomy and competence
Relatability
Design guideline: The communication style of the design should neither talk down to nor go over the heads of young adults, but should meet them at eye level.
Potential risks: If the young adult is talked down to, this can minimize feelings of autonomy and competence
Competition
Design guideline: Gamification should only be used as a design tool to increase young people's intrinsic motivation by creating a sense of belonging among friends in social contexts.
Potential risks: This design tool can result in extrinsic motivation, as feelings such as vanity, shame, and loss of autonomy may arise.
Rewards
Design guideline: Symbolic rewards that communicate to the young adult that they have done well should result in an increased perception of competence.
Potential risks: Monetary rewards can result in extrinsic motivation.
Exposure of personal finance
Design guideline: Accessing other people's budgets should satisfy the individual's need for autonomy and competence
Potential risks: In this context, users should be anonymized as providing details about one’s personal finances can be sensitive information.
Guidance
Design guideline: When technology provides guidance in financial management, it should challenge young adults' skills appropriately.
Potential risks: If technology takes too much control over the young adult's financial decision-making, this can result in a sense of loss of control and lead to amotivation
Guidance
Design guideline: Financial management guidance must take into account the physical and temporal context of the young adult
Potential risks: If guidance is given at an inappropriate time while the young person is in a specific physical context, there is a risk that the young adult will prioritize other motivational factors over financial literacy
Relatedness with digital avatars
Design guideline: When the young adult's finances are represented by a digital personality, it should increase the sense of belonging and motivation to manage their finances
Potential risks: The representation can exploit the user's compassion and empathy, creating a guilty conscience or resulting in amotivation.
