Design a digital tool for positive financial behaviour

Abstract

Money is a worry for many people, and one of the main factor to create well-being in society. Nowadays, 44% of young adults, say that money is their main reason for suffering from stress (Pew Research Center, 2020). Most of the young adults (62%) don't feel financially stable and about two-thirds state that they are living short on money, from pay-day to pay-day (CNBC, 2019). They usually have student debt, a harder time getting a mortgage and a permanent contract and on average fewer earnings than previous generations.

The problem of money and young adults is very common and could be scalable all over the world. In this project, the target group and the context were based on The Netherlands, due to the changing-situation nowadays of higher levels of debt, lower levels of income and difficulties to buy a get a mortgage, buy a house, or get a permanent contract (Nibud, 2019).

Research shows that the correlation with the money that these people are earning is very little. It’s not a problem of income in most of the cases, but a problem of behaviour. The behavioural model of Fogg (Fogg, 2009) explains that new behaviour is developed when people feel motivated up to a certain degree and take action to include that certain behaviour in their everyday life. I wanted to provide young adults with a solution that combined motivation, triggers and ability. A lack of motivation and trust in financial services and of tools to create better money behaviour with a focus on the long-term goals for millennials was found.

This graduation project has the goal of helping young adults with low financial capabilities that are in the contemplation stage (Prochaska 1979; Prochaska and DiClemente 1983) to change their current financial behaviour for one that improves their financial health in the future by offering tailored solutions.

The whole project followed a double-diamond process (TU Delft, 2019) and was performed following a user-centred design and strategic design approach. For this project Research consisted of user and context research. Including activities like literature analysis, user and expert interviews, online surveys, benchmark analysis of competitors, creative sessions and desk analysis. These activities were useful to understand the Target group on a deeper level. The research phase studied the young adult's ambitions, problems, goals, values and needs about finances, as well as their behavioural, financial, demographical and cultural context. The user research insights combined with the contextual research insights were analysed and combined with a result of a problem definition and a design direction.

The design direction looked into the use of Artificial Intelligence and social features to support people to create better money behaviour. The design direction was framed together with the design goal and vision. As a design vision, the financial journey was compared to a car journey and the solution of a navigation app indicated inspiring qualities and affordances to use as a starting point in the new phase of the project: ideation. The ideation phase consisted of a creative session, a definition of the key experiences and a creation of several concepts that after being tested and iterated in different levels of fidelity, lead to the final design.

Finally, the report finishes with a definition of the final concept: SARA.AI, that supports young adults to become financially free by offering user-tailored solutions. SARA is a user-centred financial robot-advisor that is personalised and always available for the user, giving real-time information of the financial situation, and focused on improving the financial behaviour of the people. It’s about substituting the experience of having a financial advisor by a service which is user-centred designed, accessible, and smarter. SARA helps people by the use of three core experiences: Setting either spending limits or saving goals every month for the users, visualising the daily/monthly progress on a roadmap showing the future financial goals and the estimated time of arrival and using the power of social rewards and achievements to motivate users to keep improving.

SARA.AI means financial freedom. It is about giving the users the power to live the life that they want. To choose their goals, the way to reach them, and to take control of their lives. Not only for people with knowledge in finances but for everyone.