Adding round-ups towards an investment account.

A financial app for millennials

During my visual design course, I was challenged to create an investing app geared towards millennials. The product would be for Union Bank's existing line of digital products. Not only did I want to encourage millennials to invest early and often, but I wanted to teach financial literacy and make investing feel more approachable. 

Project Length: 2 weeks
Collaborators: Individual
Skills: Visual & Interaction Design, User Research

Research

During the initial research phase of this project, I talked to people working in the banking industry, as well as millennials with a range of banking experience.  From this research I determined product goals, opportunity areas, and personas.  

Wireframing & UI design

This individual project exercised my skills in visual and interaction design. First, I wireframed my UI design to explore different interfaces, components, and screen flows. Then, I used my knowledge of visual design to create a high fidelity visual app in Sketch. 

User testing

I talked to five different participants by going to a local cafe.  I asked participants to complete certain tasks (i.e. deposit 5 dollars) in order to uncover pain points and opportunities for improvement. This feedback drove the next iterations of my design.

Prototyping in Framer

In order to bring this financial app to life, I prototyped it using Framer.js. With this tool, I was able to experiment with micro-interactions of the visual design features.  When testing my app with users I could focus on more specific questions about their experience with the app which, provided more insight into my design decisions.

Learnings

+  Playful graphics can exist within transactional apps, but they must have purpose.

+  Relating finance to something tangible (i.e. growing a vegetable), makes a daunting topic more accessible.

+  Users like being able to see how small contributions can make a big difference.