Bank of America | UX Design Conceptual Project | Two-Week Design Sprint (Sept 2022)
College students want to establish their financial footing and take control of their future, but lack an understanding of the best path forward. When it comes to budgeting, credit cards, banking fees, and loans, many students do not have the financial literacy it takes to address these topics.
During this two-week design sprint, our team was tasked with creating a product for Bank of America to help solve this problem and take students along for a journey towards financial wellness.
Bank of America Learning is a tool within the existing banking app that encourages students to learn about financial wellness through interactive lessons and videos. Additionally, research revealed that parents played a large role in many college students' financial decisions, informing our decision to include family interactions within the app.
This new platform incentivizes students to take action towards their financial goals. By rewarding students' progress through lessons and videos with tangible benefits, we are able to keep them engaged and excited by content that is thought by many to be boring.
Try out our new product yourself.
After conducting user research and multiple rounds of testing, our team was able to design an extension of the Bank of America app that provided students with a fun, easy-to-implement tool to advance their financial literacy. Here are a few highlights:
Parents have a large impact on many students' financial decisions. Students rely on their parents to provide support and guidance. While students may not want their parents nosing about their finances, including parents may be an effective strategy at keeping them engaged in their learning process.
We designed a way for students to learn alongside their families. They are able to keep tabs on their parents' own progress and send each other recommended lessons and videos. Beyond that, parents can incentivize their children to keep at it with small rewards.
Parents have a large impact on many students' financial decisions. Students rely on their parents to provide support and guidance. While students may not want their parents nosing about their finances, including parents may be an effective strategy at keeping them engaged in their learning process.
We designed a way for students to learn alongside their families. They are able to keep tabs on their parents' own progress and send each other recommended lessons and videos. Beyond that, parents can incentivize their children to keep at it with small rewards.
To kick off the project, I met with the research team (a fellow intern, Paige, and the lead researcher, Jen) to define our key research objective—understand why users are dropping off during each step of Flex’s sign-up process to prioritize onboarding improvements for 2023. We developed our research plan to address these key research questions:
After defining a research methodology, which consisted of qualitative interviews with prospective Flex users, Paige and I wrote an interview guide that would serve as the basis for our research. We broke up the 60-minute timeframe into 5 sections, focusing primarily on watching the user go through the onboarding process screen by screen.
We recruited participants on User Interviews. Our ideal candidate was a realistic prospective Flex user, so we set our criteria to align with that persona. They had to pay rent online and self-identify as living in a building managed by a company. Additionally, we screened for participants who found paying rent stressful and who had an income of less than $75,000.
Over the course of a week, we conducted Zoom interviews with 4 women and 3 men, ranging in age from 22-47. This is what they said:
After analyzing the feedback from 7 user interviews, we were able to identify three key findings. Ultimately, users need more information both before and during the onboarding journey to feel ready to sign up for Flex.
