Why is this happening？
Background
Driven by Cornell's and CFCU's mutual interest, a collaborated digital financial education project gets started...
For CFCU, the local credit union in New York, they wants
1
Gain more potential customers
2
Build trust with existing customers
3
Potentially increase the repayment rate
For Cornell, the education institute in New York
They want to provide students with free financial literacy education and also build a friendly relationship to develop long-term cooperation.
So, our product team is honored to be chosen from Cornell for this feature embedding in the CFCU digital app.
Process
How do we get there?
SYNTHESIS
Product Goals
Design Goals
User Journey Map
DESIGN & ITERATION
DELIVERY & DEVELOP
Ideation + Sketchs
Design Prototype
User Testing
Design Iteration
Design Deliverables
Front-End Development
Back-End Development
Future Product Plan
RESEARCH
Understand the Context
Stakeholders Interview
User Data Analysis
Survey + User Interview
= I participated this part with other teammates
= I led and finished the whole part
Let's Learn From Our Users
Research
DATA ANALYSIS
To gain a holistic view of our customers and also consider current resources, we analyzed ~3000 current customers' data to understand our customers' demographic information & behaviors. Here are the overviews:
AGE DISTRIBUTION
REPAYMENT RATE VS. AGE
SURVEY
We surveyed to know more about the target customers' current financial knowledge level, how people currently learn, and the problems they encounter when dealing with financial-related decisions.
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62% of participants didn't pass the financial literacy test
They are aware of the importance & difficulty of financial literacy
But they lack the tools &motivation to learn financial literacy systematically
USER INTERVIEW
we interviewed 6 participants to learn in-depth thoughts about the potential difficulties of learning and what financial literacy means to them. Here are the most common quotes from the interviews:
What do we learn and what should we do?
Research Synthesis
Who are they?
Young Adults
18~28 Years Old
They have High Overdraft Rate and Low Repayment Rate
Know the importance & difficulty of learning financial knowledge
Lack of tool/motivation to learn financial knowledge
Have busy/tight schedule on social life and work typically
What are their goals?
Learn and apply in the real-life financial knowledge efficiently
No disruption to the existing tight schedule, so they want to use small chunks of time to learn like TikTok
What are the design goals based on the research?
Motivative
Small chunks of learning time
Able to apply the knowledge in the real world
How might we?
Ideation
Firstly, I ideated on various concepts & also sketched them out...
1.
Learning Material
Video/Text/Audio
Interactive quizzes
Progressive/individual learning module
External Rewards
Gift Card (like amazon)
Credit Card Reward Plan
Internal Rewards
Game Objects
Learning path/records
Apply
Review based on the learning curve
Rewards for applying
Then, I evaluate and pick the best one...
Considering the most motivated and the highest learning efficiency in a small chunk of time time, we choose gamification. Another reason is that, from our survey, 36% of users said they would like to play the game in their spare time
2.
Furthermore, I use the Design theme of growth as the major gamification concept.
3.
We decided to use trees as the major character of the design since they represent the theme of growth.
CHANLLENGE: Learn and quiz to gain rewards; finish daily financial activites
MENTAL REWARDS: Growing the trees & flourishing the forest
EXTERNAL REWARDS: Gift card/Rewarding plan (WIP)
GOAL: Have own flurish forest by learning and applying the knowledge
Based on this, I came up with the game mechanics
4.
Each kind of tree corresponds to one learning concept. The number of species is limited, so users are encouraged to explore different learning areas instead of just staying within a few. Users can use their game currency,"Leafcoins", to upgrade their trees which can be gained by accomplishing daily activities like paying off the debt by month.
How do we approach a user-friendly design?
Design
Low-fidelity & User Cases
USER CASE 1
Users are able to choose a learning module to learn and testify the learning by quiz, and also can get rewards by learning
Enter the feature
Homepage
Choose a topic to learn & answer the quiz
Get Rewards
USER CASE 2
Users are able to check all the rewards(go to the forest) and review previous sessions.
Go to the Forest and Review
USER CASE 3
Users are able to notice and use game currency
Game Currency
USER CASE 4
Users are able to plant a new tree while finishing one tree
Choose a new Tree
Design System
CFCU doesn't have its own design system, so based on known user cases, I designed an initial design system
#4C2683
#4EAD6A
#92989E
Accessibility
WCAG 2.0 AA standard
Then, How do we update/Iterate the design based on user research?
(It might take few seconds to load the high-resolution design. Thank you for your patience!)
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Step 1. Onboarding Tutorial
Interactive Tutorial for first-time users to guide them in planting their first tree
Challenge
As a gamification Feature, CFCU Forest will introduce many new concepts to users. How might we make users understand the game mechanics in a straightforward and simple way?
How to Introduce Game Mechanics?
Step 2.
Make the Design Self-Explanatory
For each new change, a tooltip will provide explanatory information and also guideline.
Users can also find explanations by clicking on the object
Now, Let's see what we have for this launch...
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Onboarding Tutorial
1.
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Start A New Tree
2.
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Learn & Take Quiz
3.
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Getting Rewards
4.
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Review
5.
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Rewards By Daily Activities
6.
Impact & Update
How is the product progressing and what is the next step?
We tested with about 28 participants and got some rough data about the product. In hi-fi prototype testing, 27/28 of the participants want to use the product and 7 out of 8 none users said that they are willing to open an account in order to use this feature.
The feature is under development and expected to launch 🚀 this year. We will also keep track of user data through API:
Average Use Time
Content Completion Rate
Number Of Active Users
Number Of Fees Incurred By Engagement Vs Non-engagement Members