Interchange - A Financial Literacy App
The Big Picture
How can we better support adults struggling with financial literacy?
Like a cross between a dating app and a networking site, Interchange leverages users’ existing social networks. By prioritizing personal interactions in a user-friendly setting, Interchange aims to make financial literacy readily accessible and personally applicable. From peers who share similar financial interests, to mentors they didn't realize were already in their network users connect, share and expand their financial knowledge.
Qualitative Research
The Avoidant
The Responsible
The Responsible
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The Responsible
The Responsible
The Responsible
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Common challenges faced by both archetypes included feeling overwhelmed and/or lacking time.
Opportunities to improve included:
- mentoring or peer advice
- time-saving tools
- incentives
- encouragement for follow-through
Ideation workshop
Next we conducted an Ideation Workshop with X participants to further our design thinking. I found this similar to user interviews as participants often had more ideas to share than what they initially presented. I found it easy to solicit more ideas and explanations of their thinking processes.
For each of our 2 archetypes, workshop participants generated ideas for how we might help users:
- Identify and prioritize their financial values/goals
- Shift their money habits
- Appeal to their temperaments (both responsible and avoidant)
- Save them time
- Identify trustworthy sources
Participants then collaborated to cluster responses into 5-6 categories.
We used these categories to generate our value propositions, which drove our initial concept designs
What was loved:
Matching through social network connections
- “To be matched with someone would be really helpful”
- “Sometimes I need input from other people with expertise that will point me to a source”
Chat through text, video, or in-person meet-ups
- “I think it’d be really nice to connect with a real person”
- “The social aspect of this is appealing”
- “Community based interactions are important”
Resource access
- “I like that it uses other people's activities to get more information”
- “I’d use it to just like, get simple budgeting tools and the correct resources and hearing some other people's experience”
What was needed/wanted
Match credibility
- “How would you verify whether the person was a credible resource?”
- “It would be helpful to see how many people a match has helped, so you know if they’re really helpful or not”
- “How would the badges work?”
Privacy features
- “Maybe people would be offended by how many badges they have or their score? So maybe adding privacy filters/features?”
Community links
- “It would be great if it was an actual dating app”
- “Maybe add in community events?”