Questions List

What was the problem and hypothesis?

What was my role and how did I collaborate with my team?

How did I decide on my solution?

What is the proposed solution?

How does my solution answer the question?

What were the challenges I faced?

How did the solution affect the users and the business?

What did I learn?

My role:

• Initial interviews: conducted 4 interviews and analyzed the interviews
• Competitive analysis: researched and summarized some of the primary, secondary, and tertiary sources
• Ideation session: generated ideas to help other teams complete activity and helped my team analyze findings from group sessions
• Concept testing session:  participated in activity as different roles during the six sessions, moderator, observer, participant, and note-taker.
• Created my own product concept and analyzed feedback from testing 

Team:

• Initial interviews: created script for interviews and compiled analysis and transcripts into one document. 
• Competitive analysis: created slideshow of our findings
• Collaborated on figma boards; google docs, slides, and sheets
• Ideation session: created Figma board for participates to fill, gathered necessary materials and information, and created a slideshow
• Propositions: worked together to complete proposition cards
• Concept testing session: created script and slideshow of our concepts
• Created a post research slideshow of our insights and findings

Interviews: 

To gain a deep understanding of our users' needs and preferences, I conducted ten interviews using a script and analyzed the collected data. The insights I gained informed my user-centered design by identifying pain points, gaming preferences, and preferred methods of accessing arcade games. Prioritizing user feedback allowed me to create a user-friendly and engaging product that meets their needs.

Working Assumptions: 

As a team, we synthesized the information we gathered from our interviews. First, we reviewed our research to identify emerging themes that captured key insights we gained from the interviews. We then clustered our ideas using sticky notes and grouped similar concepts together to create five main categories: users needs and behaviors, community care crew, technology and design, partner organizations, marketing and outreach, and impact and sustainability. Finally, we selected ideas from the interviews that stood out as being the most impactful.

Highest ranked ideas in the brainstorm by category:

• Early life:  Early choices (like loans) set people up for later struggles and successes.
• Emotions:  Emotions can have a big impact on financial decision making.
• Cultural: Media narratives around finances can be incorrect (about millennials). 
• Accessibility:  hard to trust what is best for you especially when institutions and/or people have wronged you or failed you (school, bank, family).
• Life Events: There are common areas of financial stress like: education, housing, and investment and wealth building

Competitive Analysis: 

As a team, we conducted a thorough competitive analysis to gain insights into how others are helping users with their financial literacy. We focused on primary competitors such as Mint, which provides budgeting solutions, Personal Capital, which offers investment guidance, and Rocket Money, which helps users manage their expenses. We also examined secondary competitors that support financial literacy to a lesser extent than our primary competitors. In addition, we explored tertiary examples of companies that are helping users with their financial literacy. By conducting this analysis, we gained valuable insights into the industry landscape and how we can better serve our users.

Executive Summary:

To gain a comprehensive understanding of our objectives, my team and I created an executive summary. This exercise enabled us to define the current situation, identify existing challenges, and uncover opportunities to improve our end products and better assist our users. To achieve this, we brainstormed and wrote down our ideas on sticky notes within a set time limit, and then grouped similar ideas together, labeling each cluster. Next, we identified key insights that would shape each category, allowing us to gain a deeper understanding of our goals and how to achieve them.  

• An app can make financial planning and education more accessible and inclusive for people from different economic and cultural backgrounds.
• The app can provide a user-friendly platform for community engagement, allowing users to connect, share insights, and learn from each other's experiences.
• The app can offer links to educational resources and tools to help users improve their financial literacy.
• The app can feature a news section to keep users informed of financial trends and events.
• The app can be designed to be accessible and inclusive to people from different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds.
• The app can offer multilingual support to cater to users who speak different languages.
• The app can simplify financial jargon and provide easy-to-understand visual aids to improve user comprehension.

• Remote: Team members were not always available for Zoom meetings, so the team relied on shared Figma boards and shareable documents to collaborate.
• Undefined or ambiguous project goals:  The ambiguity in the initial stages of the project, where the solution was unclear until after the propositions were created, caused confusion and uncertainty on how to proceed at each step. 
• Project limits: The project mandated that the end product have an interface, which could include an app, website, plugin, or similar. The provided screen frames included templates for laptops/desktops, smartphones, tablets, and watches.
• Limited budget/resources: The project had a limited budget, which made it challenging to incentivize participation in testing. Additionally, many team members had limited UX knowledge and relied on guidance from external supervisors.
• Time constraints: There was less than a week available to complete the interview script, conduct the interviews, and analyze the results. Additionally, the team had only one day to complete an ideation session and another day to test the first concept.

Solution:

• Improved financial literacy: The app has the potential to improve the financial knowledge and confidence of users, leading to better financial outcomes and an improved quality of life.
• Increased customer loyalty and trust: The app could provide unbiased ratings and reviews of financial products and services, leading to increased customer loyalty and trust for businesses.
• Revenue generation: If the app were to offer partnerships or sponsorships with certain financial institutions, this could generate revenue for the app developers and increase exposure for those institutions.
• Positive impact on both parties: Overall, the solution could have a positive impact on both users and businesses if it were implemented, potentially improving financial outcomes for users and increasing customer loyalty and revenue for businesses.

Impact on users:

• The app could help users identify and address financial gaps in their knowledge, such as understanding the basics of investing or how to create a budget.
• Users could gain a better understanding of financial products and services, and make more informed decisions about which products are right for them.
• The app could create a community of users who can connect and learn from each other, potentially leading to increased financial confidence and better decision-making.

Impact on businesses:

• Financial institutions could benefit from increased exposure through sponsorships or partnerships with the app, potentially leading to increased customer acquisition and retention.
• Access to unbiased ratings and reviews could help institutions build trust with potential customers.
• Financial institutions could potentially use the app as a tool for customer education, providing resources and tools to help users make informed decisions about their financial products and services.

This project was created as part of a directed project by University of Washington.

During the UX project, I learned several important skills and gained valuable insights into the UX design process. Some of the key things I learned include:

• User research: I learned how to conduct user research, including how to identify research questions, select appropriate methods, and analyze and interpret data. This helped me understand the needs and preferences of our target audience and design solutions that meet those needs.

• Design thinking: Through the project, I gained a deeper understanding of design thinking, including how to empathize with users, define problems, ideate solutions, prototype and test solutions, and iterate based on feedback. This approach allowed us to develop innovative and effective solutions for our users.

• Collaboration: I learned how to work effectively in a team, including how to communicate ideas, give and receive feedback, and manage conflicts. This allowed us to leverage each other's strengths and produce high-quality work that met the needs of our users and stakeholders.

• UX tools: Throughout the project, I also gained experience with a variety of UX tools, including wireframing and prototyping software, survey and interview tools, and analytics software. This experience helped me become more proficient in using these tools and more confident in applying them to future UX projects.

Overall, the UX project provided me with a valuable opportunity to apply UX design principles and gain practical experience in the field. I feel more confident in my ability to design user-centered solutions and collaborate effectively with others, and I look forward to applying these skills in future projects.