Penny- Gamified Money Management App

In a digital age where financial management may be onerous and sometimes overlooked, our mobile money management app attempts to alter how users engage with their finances by using a gamified interface. This case study delves into the design, execution, and results of gamification tactics employed in the application in order to increase user engagement, promote financial literacy, and make personal money management not just accessible but also delightful.

Objectives:

1. Improve User Engagement: By using engaging gamified components, we want to improve everyday app usage and engagement.
2. Enhance Financial Literacy: To provide users with gradual and interactive financial management education.
3. Simplify Financial Management: To make the process of keeping track of, organising, and evaluating personal money easier.
4. Including Spare Change Savings: Integrate the spare change savings feature with automatic transaction rounding-up features, allowing consumers to save while they spend without the need for manual configuration or tracking.

Design Process

The Stanford Design Thinking Process is a process that emphasises empathy for users, defines particular user difficulties, generates creative ideas, prototypes, and tests solutions to solve complex problems in a user-centered manner. With this five-phase strategy, customer comments and demands are continually integrated into the development cycle, resulting in products that strongly resonate with people. This approach was used in the creation of the gamified mobile money management app to make sure the finished result not only satisfied the functional requirements of money management but also did it in an entertaining, user-friendly, and instructive manner. The project sought to improve user happiness and adoption by aligning product features with actual user behaviours and preferences through the use of the Stanford Design Thinking Process.

Empathise

This step was done to understand the user’s needs, experiences, and emotions.

Background Research- Creating a Mind Map

A mind map was constructed to graphically organise and produce ideas, allowing us to explore different parts of the project and uncover links between them. This method promotes a thorough awareness of the project’s scope and prospective solutions, hence increasing creativity and collaborative contribution throughout the planning stages.

Key Insights on Transitioning from Traditional to Digital Expense Logging Systems in Personal Finance:

• Traditional expense logging systems face issues like human errors and complex calculations.
• Digital technology has transformed personal budgeting.
• Recording expenses is crucial for efficient financial management, but many UK adults struggle.
• Younger generations, particularly those aged 18–34, are most affected by financial worries.
• Personal financial decisions significantly impact life and future.
• Understanding user preferences is crucial for developing technology solutions.
• Gamification features in money management apps can engage users in tracking and documenting expenses.

Screener Survey

Creating a screener survey for user interviews and focus groups is an important stage in every project’s user research phase. Its major goal is to find and attract participants who accurately reflect a product or service’s target audience or user base. This guarantees that the ideas and data gathered during these sessions are relevant and useful in informing the design process.

User Interviews, Focus Group and Insightful Conversations!

User interviews and focus groups are qualitative research approaches for gathering detailed information about users’ requirements, behaviours, and attitudes. In user interviews, participants are interviewed one-on-one about their experiences, allowing for a thorough examination of individual user journeys and preferences. In contrast, focus groups feature a controlled conversation with a group of participants, with the goal of fostering interaction and debate to expose a greater range of perspectives and ideas. Both methodologies are critical for understanding customer motivations and problems, as they immediately guide product design and development to guarantee that it meets genuine user expectations and increases overall user happiness.

Highlighted Insights from one of the user interviews

Affinity Mapping

Analysing Key Insights
1. A desire for real-time financial data and easier currency management.
2. Automated tracking, security, and integrated financial education are required.
3. A desire for a smooth transition to the current financial services.
4. A fascination with investment characteristics and balancing short-term and long-term objectives. The challenges include unstable income, privacy issues, and the need for automated solutions and user-friendly design.

2. Define

Empathy Mapping

It was done to understand in depth about what the user say, want, hear and do with their pains and needs.

Key Insights from Empathy Mapping:

1. Users want more financial control.
2. Security and trust are essential, and privacy concerns impact app adoption.
3. There is a need for automated features for investments and savings, as well as real-time financial updates.
4. Financial instruments are viewed as means to more general life objectives, necessitating integrated financial education and tailored guidance.
5. Word-of-mouth recommendations and social influence greatly influence user adoption. Demand financial management programmes that combine security, ease of use, and customisation.

User Persona

3. Ideate

How Might We Questions

HMW questions were beneficial to the money management app since they encourage inventive thinking and problem-solving aimed at user-centric solutions. This strategy turns difficulties into opportunities, motivating to brainstorm new methods to increase user engagement, simplify financial tracking, and promote financial literacy. These questions ensured that the app not only meets, but exceeds, the user’s expectations and needs for managing their finances.

HMW with Solutions

Rapid Idea Generation

Rapid Idea Generation for the money management app speeds up the creative process, resulting in a broad range of potential features and advancements. This strategy enables to investigate a variety of ideas for boosting user engagement, financial literacy, and the overall app experience, ensuring that creative and useful features are found and adopted quickly.

Crazy-8

The Crazy-8s brainstorming method encourages quick, varied idea development in a timed, regulated manner, encouraging creative problem solving and quick iterations on solutions. This strategy is very useful for identifying novel methods to improve user engagement, simplify financial administration, and successfully include engaging gamification components.

NUF Test

Creating a NUF Test Table for the money management app enables critical evaluation of new ideas’ originality, utility, and feasibility. This maximises the functioning of the app and user happiness by ensuring that features are not just creative and captivating but also realistic and attainable.

Competitive Analyis

Conducting a competitive study gives critical insights into the strengths and limitations of similar apps on the market. This information aids in identifying best practices, avoiding common errors, and identifying distinctive features that can set the app apart, all of which assist create a more inventive, competitive, and user-friendly product that attracts potential customers.

4. Prototype

Lo-Fi Wireframes and Evaluation

Lo-fi wireframes were made to quickly sketch out the design ideas which would later be developed into mid fidelity designs. The Lo-Fi designs were also tested with 2 users and evaluated the feedback with keep, increase, and delete canvas.

Mid-Fi Wireflow

Hi-Fi Designs

5. Test

Hi-Fi Evaluation

The Hi-Fi evaluation was done using the method of 5 Act Interview. Here are key insights from the interviews conducted:

Positive comments:

• User-friendly interface: Highlighted the simplicity of adding a bank card and the onboarding process.
• Easily understood visual depiction of financial data: Valued instant access to financial transactions and statuses.
• Interactive features: Acknowledged for their usefulness and ability to keep users engaged.
• Security precautions: Two-factor authentication was highlighted due to the financial nature of the app.

Areas for Improvement:

• First confusion: More direction or tooltip explanations are needed.

Suggestions for Improvements:

• Increased Customisation: Need for individualised financial monitoring and notifications.

Takeaways

The gamified money management app “Penny” provided valuable insights into user satisfaction and interaction. Users praised the app’s user-friendly design, simple navigation, and engaging features like savings round-ups and goal-setting, which effectively gamified the otherwise mundane task of financial tracking. However, feedback identified areas for improvement, including reducing information overload and improving feature discoverability. In order to accommodate different levels of financial literacy, future iterations should concentrate on personalising user experiences, streamlining the data presentation, and adding interactive tutorials. These enhancements are likely to increase user retention and satisfaction, making financial management both enjoyable and informative.