Our client needed a piggy-bank-kind of function to be added to their app. Its main functions included giving the customer the possibility to put away a sum of money for specific projects or to stash away an emergency fund for a rainy day. But this function presented a major economic opportunity–a new concept several players had begun introducing in recent years: micro-investments. We developed a functionality that offered both services under a single integrated brand concept.

Brief

Micro-investing is understood to be the investment of “spare change”, sums as low as just 5EUR. A quick look at the market revealed a wide variety of business models that made use of this concept, from the big banks that gave the option to micro-invest, to the specialised players that offered apps packed with tools to invest as little as a single euro.

Our client wished to combine the savings functionality with micro-investment, offering their users a savings account that would make their money grow the same way regular savings accounts used to, decades ago.

Enhanced with the micro-investment capabilities, the saving functions would also introduce every-day users to the essential concept of investing, and it was our client’s hopes that this would eventually funnel some of them to the pre-existing, conventional investing functions of the app.

Team

I worked on this project as part of a team. The members of the team included:

· Project manager
· Brand designer
· UX Designer (Me)
· UX Researcher
· UI Designer

Discovery

We set out to find out how much our focus group was interested in saving money, how they felt about investing, whether a bridge could be built between the two and if micro-investing could be that bridge. But first, we needed to become more knowledgeable in the market.

A quick first look showed us how many other banks had indeed already implemented saving functionalities in their apps. They often included automatic saving setups, easy-to-use money transfers to mimic piggy banks, and roundup systems for spare change funneling. But their feature set could not compare to the array offered by the hybrid savings-investments and dedicated micro-investment players. These covered all the basics and on top of that provided dozens of tools to allocate small sums of money and invest in very secure options at the beginning, as well as more risky options as they became more confident micro-investors.

Micro-investment players took the knowledge and education of their users very seriously as well, adding tutorials, educational sections and even tests to make sure the user understood key concepts. Failing their test often blocked entire sections of the app, forcing the user to study and take the test again in order to gain unrestricted access.

Interviews

As for the customers, through the interviews we found out that there were a lot of misconceptions about how investments work, so unsurprisingly, many users were wary of the topic as a whole, full of founded and unfounded doubts and fears, and even a general disinterest as something that was both too complicated to understand and at times just suspected them to be an all out scam.

Conversely, most users were interested in saving money and either showed interest in dedicated functions inside their banking app that allowed them to do so, or used entirely separate apps to allow them to set up and follow a budgeting strategy.

In a few cases where the interviewee did invest, they were making use of dedicated brokers to manage their wealth, and only in one instance had the user indeed approached the topic of investments making first use of one of the established micro-investments players.

Process

The Wireframe

Several iterations of wireframes were discussed with the client with the aim of striking the right balance of savings functionalities and micro-investing extras. As we progressed, it became clear that our client preferred aiming for an investment section that would be distinctly separated from the savings section, especially for the clarity this afforded in the communication of what the service was and how it worked.

Two different funnels were produced, guiding the user through two different but interconnected functions. In the first funnel, the user activates a Savings service, with the option to set up recurring payments, establish objectives, etc. The second funnel is an Investment one, allowing the user to set up small amounts of money in very secure and conservative investments in order to test their growth. These sections would be further set apart by a distinct and recognizable naming convention and, in the case of the micro-investment choice, it would be further characterized by a short introductory tutorial upon first activation.

A series of banners would give constant access to the educational content we wanted to provide, as well as an “upgrade path” from the savings section to the micro-invest section.

After some more forth and back with our main stakeholder, we presented the project with our first official proposal.

Takeaway & future steps

The project was put on hold pending budget approvals and an internal review. In the meantime, I was removed from the team and could not know what direction it would take after this.

The project’s main problem during my last moment of participation was the mandatory investment questionnaire that was just inconsistent with the casual feeling and ease of use that the feature tries very hard to create, both through the offer of tutorials and all of our usability work. Hopefully, a second intervention will allow us to find a way to streamline the onboarding as this questionnaire would otherwise create so much friction it could kill the feature.