Solution summary
Buck Up is a service designed to enhance money management for young adults by integrating in their lifestyles. It is aimed at creating simplified banking experiences along with guiding them in making informed and conscious decisions regarding expenditures and savings through digital tools and physical experiences.
Need for intervention
The struggles of the economy have put heavy emphasis on educating the youth towards preparing for a secure financial future. There is a need to act and educate towards monetary planning and security for a balanced life.
Project responsibilities
As a team we shared worked across conducting user research, creating personas through synthesis, followed by journey mapping. A lot of the project work was also centred around creating service touch-points, emotional journeys and a sustainable business model.
Project partner
Team - Aditi Soni, Zena Corda, Sarah Das
Context
By establishing how to make smart monetary choices and having access to financial literacy, the children and young adults of today have the tools for success to achieve a stable economic tomorrow.
Research
Our goal was to understand the decision-making factors for money management by urban Indian young adults just at the start of their financial journey.
We conducted our research by organising in-depth interviews and coffee conversations with our peers, some staff members and also monitoring the way we think ourselves. We used tools like flash cards to rate and prioritise expenditures which helped us in understand different mindsets around needs and wants of the same.
Research synthesis
A peek into the new concept of savings and the millennial way of understanding finances and security through behaviours and subsequent personas.
Our solution
Buck Up // Approaching modern day financial literacy through three key intervention points that are reorganised banking, digital aid for behaviour change and communication using physical spaces.
A. Youth Account
This is for people of the 18-25 years age group. The account is divided in two parts that is a savings A/c and a secondary savings A/c. Every month a certain amount of money is set aside into the secondary savings a/c. This amount can be changed every 3 months. In case balance drops the money automatically gets transferred into the primary savings a/c. This way there is a regular update on having a potential back up in terms of your personal finances.
B. Mobile Application
1) Enabling the process of customised budgeting and focusing on decision making through ‘need vs. want’.
By categorising needs and wants, the app can create its own data around daily budgets and the type of purchases that are made over a period of time and also recommend possible changes in the spending pattern. Buck up will be partnered with selected grocery stores to help pre-plan regular purchases. This is specifically done with an idea to avoid unplanned and irrational purchases.
2) Learning saving via setting personal goals and personal in-app challenges.
While the purchase cycles keep increasing, there isn’t an equivalent to it in terms of also saving for the same. Based on personal wish lists and goals, the app tells you a spread out plan of how to save for the same. As a result, the users can feel a sense of ownership when they accomplish the set goal.
To encourage its users to save, Buck up issues bi-weekly challenges where the user would have to save a certain amount of money daily through the money wallet in the app. These small challenges provides a positive boost for its user to save and reach their goal faster and retain the involvement and excitement.
3) Converting financial achievements into motivation and influence using the power of social media.
C. Experience Centre
Indian banks are extremely intimidating for a new comer. With young adults being at a stage of starting to manage their own expenses, banks are one of the most important touch-points to help them learn the processes faster and better. To eliminate the intimidating factors of a conventional bank, we designed a new form of experience centre for them. The goal of this centre is to be a bridge between the official banks spaces and the user. While the concept is partnered with various coffee shops or a bank’s personalised space, it is also equipped with some professional present there to help the visitors and potential users be more familiarised with the Buck Up system. These advisors are well trained to provide in app demos, and also with some mock-up of system representation and enabling setting up a bank account for them. The space designed also works perfectly as working area for the users.
Systems thinking
Customer journey for Buck Up users.
Based on our solution, we created the service journey, component based user flows and customer journey maps for the same. This part of the project was done with the aim of covering all the touch-points of the systems and also evaluating the effect of the service on its users, when implemented.
Stakeholder and feature engagement at various touch-points.
Emotional experience and goals for the users in the journey.
