Money app

Design Lead & Manager, 2017-2018
Design management, Design strategy, Workshop facilitator, Research testing, UX/UI design

Change financial behavior for good by empowering kids to make meaningful financial decisions with the guidance and support of their families.

Intro

Every parent wants their kids to be well and have a bright future when they grow up. Parents teach their kids many essential life skills throughout their childhood. When the kids are young, parents teach them simple skills such as tying their shoes and brushing their teeth. As they grow older, the lessons become more complex, such as driving a car or learning the value of hard work. However, money is rarely the subject of conversation at home or at school. Some parents feel they need more guidance and support regarding their own financials, let alone teaching their kids.

Money App was created to solve both side of the problem: to help kids learn great financial habits and to help parents feel confident about teaching their kids about money.

My role

As the design manager, I worked closely with a cross-functional team of researchers, product owner, product managers, and developers to continue the project's trajectory and momentum. Some of my responsibilities include:  

Facilitated workshops to define product definition, goals, and strategy

Collaborated and built relationships with dev, product, and other teams at Capital One

Advocated for design, research and users

Created a holistic design vision and scalable design system

Led and mentored two product designers

Project walkthrough

Business rationale

Kids often receive money from their family in the forms of gifts, pocket money, or rewards for chores; and they have real needs to manage their money well.

90%

received money as gifts

40%

earned pocket money for chores

83%

saving to reach a goal

Sources: OECD (2015), Capital One Internal Research Reports (2016, 2017)

Capital One recognized the user needs and offered Money, a checking account for teens. However, we had a problem: Our banking apps were not designed for kids or parents, which created a huge gap in their experience. This is a crucial problem for us to solve since parents and kids have better options out there. By serving parents and kids well, Capital One would get better brand values, higher customer conversion rate, and product graduation.

Capital One banking app wasn't built for kids or parents

Fintech companies are creating tailored experiences

Our mission

Empower kids to develop positive financial habits with the guidance and support of their families

Empathy research

We conducted empathy research with pairs of parents and teens to learn about their existing mental models. The goals were to understand why, how, and when parents & kids interact with each other regarding financial matters. We focused on gaining empathy and stayed away from proposing design solutions at this stage.

Interviews:
50 (32 parents & 20 kids)

Locations:
On-site: SF, NYC
Online: Usertesting.com, Dscout.com

Research insights

Kids live in the moment, having not yet developed the skills or perspective necessary to plan for the future. Kids are motivated to save when they want to buy things (toy, clothes, a trip) and it's almost always a short-term savings goal.

Worse, kids are boxed out of the world of financial services, lacking a sandbox within which they can gain experience and build good behaviors.

Kids are motivated to save for short-term goals

Parents want to transfer values, not just money; they want kids to understand money, not just spend it.

To do this, they need a structure that provides visibility and control while giving their kids the opportunity to learn by making decisions and facing the consequences.

Parents want to use money to teach kids values

We're after some big wins

Previous work on business rationale and empathy research helped us to define concrete goals to drive us forward

Customers

Help kids build positive financial habits
Level-up the financial conversations between parents and kids, helping parents instill values
Make it easy for parents to manage money with their kids

Capital One

Drive product adoption and retention among existing Capital One customers
Create a new design paradigm for kids
Create a proof-of-concept for relationship-based product

Initial concepts

Our initial concepts allowed parents to quickly see their kid's balance and high level of activities. Parents could set up challenges, often in the form of chores, for kids to earn money. High utility actions such as Send and Request money were pulled up for easy access.

Parent's view

Kids had three main task to achieve: 1) Completing challenges to earn money 2) Distributing earned money to Save or Indulge buckets 3) Adding item to their Wishlist and use the Indulge fund toward those items.

Kid's view

Building the habit loop

We wanted to build a loop that would reinforce kid's saving by gamifying how they solve challenges to earn money, which in turn help them save to buy their wishlist items. However, rounds of concept testing indicated our model was faulty.

We came to realize that in order to make the habit loop to work for kids, it needed to be simplified. We heard repeatedly from parents and kids how ineffective doing chores for reward money was. Furthermore, kids found splitting the money between Save and Indulge complicated and hard to understand. On the other hand, we knew kids were already saving for things, and it worked for them.

After the second round of research, we took on the idea of money should be treated as a tool for kids to learn about money. In The Opposite of Spoiled, Ron Lieber, a subject expert on kid's finance, believed that kids should be given allowance regularly so they can learn how to manage money.

Revised habit loop model

With the new model, kids are given allowances from parents and the habit loop is reinforced when kids achieve their goals.

"Money is not a reward, but a tool for kids to learn essential values. Allowance should be given to kids on a regular basis."

Ron Lieber, New York Times columnist & best selling author

Deliverables

Credits: Kyo Kim, Bonnie Vig

Parents set up allowances for their kids during onboarding

Parents can set goals for kids and track their progress

Kids can set their own goals and buy what they saved for when ready

The design evolution

Passing the baton

We handed off the successful proof of concept to the Consumer Bank team in Q2 2018 and supported them throughout the transition period. Money was strategically integrated into Capital One's Money Teen checking account in 2019.

Pilot Program via TestFlight (Q2 2018)
Parents: 240
Kids: 372

Metrics
Successfully completed goals: 168+ (~68%)

Recognition

Fast Company honorably mentioned Money Teen Checking account as one of the best-designed finance projects of 2020

Thoughts & learning

You are not your users

None of the team members had kids. Without first-hand experience, how could we understand parents and kids mental models and build a helpful product for them? It was crucial for us to invest time and effort up front to step into our users' shoes via empathy research, in-home observation, and role-play.

Building relationship with external teams

When it comes to building relationships, the approach is as important as the execution. Working with Brands has taught us to listen and learn about their point of view. We then took what we learned to inform our proposal for change with an open mindset for collaboration.