research

Financials & future planning are delicate topics with personal pitfalls and social taboos. We knew that asking in-depth questions about feelings, hopes, and fears would be an important part of our research. When putting together a research plan, we decided to focus on 3 main areas of inquiry: 

Motivations

• What are the main reasons that some young people don't save for retirement?
• What sort of short-term and long-term financial goals do young people have?

Knowledge

• Are workers aware of the benefits of saving early in their career?
• How much do young workers believe they will need to retire, in order to maintain their standard of living? How does this match up with current estimates?

Gaming

• What are the gaming habits of Millennials, and what are their thoughts regarding retirement games?

Research Methods

Complementary quantitative and qualitative methods were chosen to understand the needs and motivations of users, and triangulate findings.

Semi-structured Interviews / Draw the Experience

Seven participants were recruited for individual 30 min sessions, with a drawing exercise early in the session. Drawing helped participants articulate their current (1) financial landscape, (2) future retirement goals, and (3) expected action path. Drawings were compact maps of each user’s “financial life plan,” and guided the interview by providing context and a common language. Open-ended questions were used to elicit far-ranging responses & enable follow-up questions to flow naturally.

Survey

The survey was built in Survey Monkey, and consisted of 22 questions focused on general trends about millennial retirement planning and gaming habits. Answers were sometimes diverse, highlighting the need for app customization & personalization in the retirement space. For retirement gaming, users leaned toward more anonymity & less toward points/scoring than the other games they played. We were also able to identify the top preferred game mechanics for a retirement app: (1) Progressing to different levels, (2) Challenges/quests/missions, and (3) Being a part of a narrative.

Secondary Research & Competitive Analysis

Secondary research provided a good initial understanding of users (behaviors and pain points), and general trends and opportunities in the market landscape. Additionally, it helped confirm findings from the interview/drawing and survey. The competitive analysis provided insights into what had already been tried, what works and what doesn’t, and competitor's strengths and weaknesses.

Key Research insights

After completing the research, we spent some time organizing and analyzing the data to explore relationships and synthesize themes. We came away with 4 key insights:

• I don't understand this.. A large number of millennials lack adequate financial knowledge to effectively control their finances and maximize their savings.
• How much is enough? Majority of millennials are not aware of how much they need to save in order to maintain the same standard of living once they retire.
• Guilt and Fear. People will avoid feelings of guilt and fear. They prefer inaction to discomfort. The design solution must be positive and motivating, rather than feeling punitive or scolding.
• Customization. Users have different goals and plans, and often times conflicting priorities. Existing retirement applications are indifferent to these needs.

Personas

Based on our findings, we segmented our target users into three distinct personas, based on our understanding of their needs and goals for the system: 

1. The Seeker: Knows she needs to save, but doesn't know how to reach her goals (Primary Persona)
2. The Adventurer: Non-traditional dreams, non-traditional plans (Secondary Persona)
3. The Autopilot: Plenty of income; few worries (Negative Persona)

Personas allowed effective communication of research insights, were a source of inspiration during ideation, and helped us prioritize decisions surrounding functionality and features by adding a layer of real-world consideration.

Design Requirements

Based on the research we compiled a list of design requirements that helped guide initial ideation and kept us on track regarding tone and user experience as we developed the app itself. [Note: each of the following design requirements originated specifically from the user research listed within the brackets below.]

• Educational: The product must educate users about the steps they need to take – in small, easily digestible, and friendly steps. [Interviews]

• Customizable: The product must show the user how his/her retirement can fit within his/her current financial goals and priorities. [Interviews, Secondary Research, Survey]

• Easy to Understand: The language the product uses must be easy to understand, and free of jargon. [Secondary Research, Interviews]

• Positive & Motivating: The product must be positive and motivating. No part of it should make the user feel guilty or fearful (on purpose). [Interviews, Competitor Analysis]

• Personalizable: The product must ask users about their goals, priorities, and individual situation – rather than making any assumptions. [Interviews, Secondary Research, Survey]

• Soft Compulsion: The product may involve some elements of soft compulsion (auto-deposit, triggers, etc) in order to increase efficacy. [Secondary Research, Interviews]

prototyping & Testing with Users

After several rounds of ideation, we ultimately chose to move forward with our favorite idea–Treat Yo Future Self–into prototyping and testing. If more time had been available on the project, it would have been interesting to explore another idea or two in early testing with paper prototypes.

Treat Yo Future Self introduces the user to his or her “future self” using a chat UI and AI in order to help make saving for retirement a bit more personal, attainable, and emotionally-immediate:

• Through “messages” delivered at randomized points in time, the user’s future self asks the user for contributions toward activities in retirement
• A user’s consent to these “asks”—which are positioned in future-money terms to articulate the effects of compounding and investments—results in a real cash transfer between the user’s funding account and his/her retirement account
• The relationship between the user and their future self is conducted with a great deal of humor and personality, without jargon—choosing silliness and sarcasm over scare tactics 

Paper Prototype

We put together a paper prototype of the Treat Yo Future Self app on index cards to quickly validate our idea and app flow in an informal round of user testing with 6 participants. 5 tasks were built around scenarios that focused on all areas of the app, and allowed us to gather feedback for the entire flow.

Findings were synthesized and put into a simple table along with recommendations differentiated by severity level. Testing with the paper prototype quickly highlighted unsuccessful areas of the app design, and we discovered the need to clarify the onboarding process, and give users the opportunity to "chunk it" into more manageable steps. We also found that users enjoyed the overall idea of the app, particularly the conversational interactions and humorous copy.

Process Flow

Based on findings from the paper prototype testing, we built a more formalized process flow and were able to identify some areas to make the interactions more understandable, as well as simplify user onboarding.

High Fidelity Prototype

Some of the high severity recommendations from the paper prototype testing were implemented in an interactive prototype that was built with UXPin. Due to time constraints, we were not able to address all recommendations. Each team member covered a different part of the app experience simultaneously, and we used a UI style guide to ensure continuity of the overall design and feel. The prototype covered the app onboarding process and a sample interaction that the user would have with their Future Self via a conversational AI interface.

For usability testing, we put the prototype in front of 6 participants covering the same set of tasks as before, since both prototypes covered the same scope. Repeating these tasks at a higher level of fidelity allowed us to not only confirm some of our previous findings, but also look for any new user issues stemming from the redesign.

Summary

At the end of the project, we put together a comprehensive design spec document that covers all aspects discussed above in more depth, including user research, personas, app design with annotated visuals from the high-fidelity prototype, and the design rationale.