Re:skale
A simple and intuitive app for helping young women achieve financial stability in their own terms. Sweet rewards are just an icing on the cake.
Team
Designers
Chan Ik Chris Jung
Jehnesa Herdsman
Developers
David Chen
Jade Wei
My Role
UX Design
UI Design
Research
Timeline
36 hours
Problem
Women on average makes 11% less than than their male co-workers in Ontario.
There has always been a pay gap between male and female in workforce. With soaring cost of living everywhere, young women may face more financial challenges. The traditional budgeting apps heavily rely on vigilant user behavior alone and this may not be appealing for many people. So how do we motivate young women to achieve their financial goals and maintain it?
Solution
Developing better financial habits through emotional fulfillment.
After analyzing number of reviews from financial publications and different users, my team decided to focus on help developing user motivation through emotional fulfillment.
- No Ads or Premium service tier
- Flexibility to set and track goals
- Customized incentives for motivation
Research
Discovering the root cause.
Research by HSBC has revealed that 44% of working women in Canada struggle with paying bills and 51% doesn’t know how much they need to save for retirement. Many budgeting apps have limited or no financial health and goal related features to help people save.Freemium service models may negatively impact userbase by locking useful features behind a paywall. Our team decided to focus on solving these issues by developing solutions to help young women maintain financial habit for better financial stability.
To test our hypothesis, the team analyzed number of reviews from financial publications and personal user experiences from different online sources such as public forums and official support portals. Number of patterns started to emerge from collection of data, and further analysis was performed to narrow down paint points.The emotionally charged responses made us realize that the financial stress is not only about materialistic needs but also directly related to emotional fulfillment of users. We’ve realized the empathy map was crucial process to understand the needs of our target demographic and find solution to help them develop healthy financial habit.
- Ads & Premium service tier
- Lacking financial health feature
- Lacking free service tier
- Can't track your spending
- Limitation on free version
- Ads and other solicitation
Direction
Fulfilling emotional needs to develop healthy financial habits.
Based on our findings, the focus of the design became providing flexible goals with customized incentives. Pressure free environment with no advertising and premium subscription tier was another crucial key point our team focused on. The team felt that people already struggling financially shouldn’t be forced to spend additional resources to get the help they need.
No Ads or Premium service tiers
Flexibility to set and track goals
Customized incentives for motivation
Design
Fulfilling emotional needs to develop healthy financial habits.
The user experience is augmented by gamified loop that provides rewards and incentives for good financial behaviour by achieving their goals. People often say they are trying to “balance the budget” when dealing with finance. We were inspired to visualize this “balancing act” in graphic scale that tracks expanses and savings. To provide friendly and encouraging atmosphere, the team decided to use pastel colour palette which are often associated with calming and peaceful aesthetics and potentially helpful in alleviating stressful situation.
Onboarding
Transparent onboarding process that highlights the core features to aid long term financial well being.
Financial Health & Budget
Provides easy budgeting tool for tracking income, savings, and expenses. Cheerful encouragement for 3 month streak is added layer of gamified experience.
Setting Goals
Users set financial goals in their own terms and track their progress.
Choosing Rewards
Users set their own interests for sweet rewards that provides additional motivation.
Results
Winning a sponsor prize for my first hackathon.
It was truly exhilarating yet humbling experience when our project was announced as a winner of Best Fintech Hack for Young Women presented by Scotiabank. This was a special moment for me since it was my first hackathon experience and I had to constantly push the boundaries of my comfort zone to test my abilities as a new designer. With help from experienced team members, I was able to see the project through the completion, and I’ll always cherish this moment.
Reflections
Seek solutions in emotional responses
- Our team started out to solve monetary problem for young female demographic. Instead, we’ve learned how to analyze the data beyond the surface level and create a solution to fulfill emotional needs. Different emotional responses can help revealing core issues and help formulating potential solutions.
Find "invisible" issues
- Learning about gender pay gap issue was an eye-opening moment. I didn’t realize it was still a widespread problem until I began research for this project. Understanding the situation is vital to design process but it isn’t always easy to empathize with other people when you lack a firsthand experience. I’ll need to improve my observation and analytical skills to find more invisible issues in future projects.
Feedback can help fill your knowledge gap
- During one of many project review sessions, I’ve been told by a designer in the banking industry that fixed living cost should not be presented in negative context. We shouldn’t have to feel guilty on meeting our basic needs and simple visualization idea could have negatively impacted user experience. This was another learning experience that a good intention alone isn’t enough, and you always need to do your due diligence.