App Design for FinTech

Situation

People are living longer and as a result requiring more funds to cover their retirement. At the same time, Governments and company-funded pension systems are under strain in a low interest rate world.

The youth in the country are especially susceptible to this as their own financial literacy is low.

Challenge

• Your client, a financial institution, has hired you because it recognizes that young workers aren’t engaging in their retirement planning early enough in their career and believe that there is an opportunity to help them.
• As the Product Designer, you are tasked to think through a digital platform that could be used to help young people increase their saving for retirement.

Understanding the challenge

Young workers aren’t engaging in retirement fund planning at an early age which is a big problem since government and company funded pensions schemes have very low interest rates.

This means that when the employee retires, they would not have grown their retirement funds over the years using the government or company schemes.

Therefore these people need to start saving for their retirement early in schemes and places where the interest rate is higher and helps the them grow their money exponentially so that they can retire with a big fund that helps them get through their old age.

Articulating the problem statement

Educate the youth about financial planning for their retirement and help them start investing early.

Research

Who are we designing for?

After understanding the problem and talking to the client we do some research on what is the age group that would be using the services. This helps us to understand who are users are and what they do.

We find out that the age group that would use this service are between 20–30 years. Since people in this age group are in their early stages of career and it is the best time to start saving for their pension fund.

Competitive Analysis

The service has 2 primary competitors:

1. Policy bazaar

• The service can be accessed both on mobile and web which gives the user the flexibility to access it on multiple platforms.
• Policy bazaar also shows the user vital information about each plan on the plan page itself and the user doesn’t have to open the plan page to view such information.
• The user interface of the mobile application is not good as there is no visual segregation between filters and plans available and therefor confuses the users.
• Policy bazaar has a separate section for retirement plans and shows multiple plans available.
• There is a section that shows the user 7 year returns and it does not mention that the % mentioned is per annum.

2. ET Money

• ET Money can be accessed on both web and mobile as well which gives the user the flexibility to access it on multiple platforms.
• Both the mobile and desktop application are great from an accessibility perspective and all information is clearly communicated to the user.
• ET Money has a separate section for NPS (national pension scheme) and educates the user in detail about the scheme.
• The user can also see how much tax they can save if they invest in the scheme.
• The maturity calculator shows the user 3 options, aggressive (high risk), moderate (medium risk) & conservative (low risk) which helps the user understand the risks involved in investing in each plan.
• ET money has a separate section consisting of videos for educating the users about each type of financial asset.
• The app does not show how much pension would one get after retirement and only shows the returns in %.

User Persona

Since we’re clear on what the problem is, we’ll start off by creating a user persona to know who are we targeting and what do they do. Assuming that we talked to the client about who they are trying to target and made a persona on the basis of user research with a few possible users of the application as well as competitors from the same age group and demographics.

On the basis of the persona, we understand that the target audience for our application would be people who are in the early stages of their career and may or may not have good financial planning skills for their future.

Empathy Mapping

After understanding who the user is, we will create user empathy maps to empathize with the user and understand how they feel about starting investments.

User Goals

1. To do research on what are the possible schemes or financial assets should they invest in for their future.
2. To understand approximately how much will their money grow by the time they retire.
3. Start investing the scheme/financial asset of their choice.

User Pain Points

Assuming that we talked to the target users to understand their pain point to furthermore understand what needs to be done and why.

1. The user is unsure about investing since they don’t understand all information shown on existing platforms.
2. Users that are new to investing face a lot of difficulties figuring out which investment to start with depending on their financial needs and need to do a lot of research and take multiple factors into consideration before making a call.
3. New users are also uncertain how the investment works in general and how the market works.
4. Users are also uncertain when investing through an app based service that of their money is secure and will they be able to take their money out of the market in case of an emergency.
5. Since our target audience is new to investing, they might not understand financial terms. This confuses the user and they don’t feel confident about investing their hard earned money.

Hypothesis

After getting to know our user and talking to them, we understand what problems the users currently face and why are they unsure about investing their hard-earned money. The primary reason is lack of reliable source of information that the user can access and can educate themselves from. This leads to bad investment decisions and bad experiences that can be avoided by changing the way how people invest and get started with investing.

Brainstorming Ideas

After doing the preliminary research, I decided to brainstorm ideas around the user is and what they require to create an optimal solution that educates them about the market and how investment works as well.

1. The service should tell the user about various financial assets they can invest in and the risks in each of them.
2. The service should also educate the user and help them calculate how much their money would grow at the time of their retirement.
3. The service should help the user compare and choose the financial assets depending on their goals. This could be done by asking the user a few questions like how much money they’re willing to invest every month and how much returns they expect and do they want to withdraw their money in case of an emergency. On the basis of that, the user should be suggested the financial assets that fulfills their financial goals.
4. The service should update the user about how their financial assets are performing once they start investing.
5. The user should be able to create an SIP which helps them invest automatically every month without fail as the user doesn’t need to do the process manually every month.
6. The user should be able to see how much pension would a particular fund give them after retirement every month.
7. The best way for the target audience is also to invest in mutual funds or retirement fund since these funds are managed by people who know about the placement of the funds and their role is to maximize the growth of a fund. The target user might not be able to do as much research as them and therefore mutual funds and retirement funds are the best option for their retirement planning.
8. The user’s D.O.B should be a part of the onboarding process since it’ll help them calculate the maturity amount when they turn 60.
9. The dashboard for the first time user should be tailored for their needs so that they are shown options that help them reach their financial goals while still having the ability to explore in case the user wants to.

User Flows

On the basis of our research and brainstorming, we come up with the user flows to design an experience for the user that covers all their pain points and make them feel confident about investing.

Wireframing

Started out by creating a flow for onboarding the user where a new user is asked a few questions after signing up to help assist them on their investment journey. This solves the problem of the gap between the user’s understanding of the app and investments as a beginner and shows the user options tailored to their current knowledge.

Then, I worked on the dashboard that the user will see as a new user and tried to highlight the important sections for a beginner which is tailored on the basis of their answers to the onboarding questions. The wireframes here show a “suggested for you” section that further segregates into 3 sections so that the user can reach their financial goal while understanding the risks involved clearly.

High-Fidelity Screens

Assuming we did usability testing after creating the wireframes and reviewing how we can solve the user’s problem, we design a few high-fidelity screens keeping in mind the target audience and the fact that they’re new to investing. I used different colors to segregate different sections and to highlight CTA buttons so that the service is great from a usability perspective.