B.S. Visualization Capstone Project
Product design project with an accompanying research paper on how children understand money, how their parents teach them money management concepts, and my process in creating a product that serves as a tool to help parents facilitate money management education.
Deliverables: High fidelity IOT product | High fidelity mobile app prototype | Tablet app concept | Research paper | Lean business model
Projected Completion Date: May 5, 2022
The Challenge
Create a tool for parents to use with their young children to teach them money management skills in an interactive and fun way.
Research
Through reading many peer-reviewed research articles, I gathered insights about children's cognitive development, their understanding of digital money, and the effects of experiential learning.
The target age range of the children was determined to be 7-9 because that's when cognitive processes such as future-mindedness, delayed gratification, and metacognition are set. This age range is also underserved in the market as most allowance systems (prepaid debit cards linked to an app) are aimed at tweens and teens.
It was also discovered that learning from parent interactions and learning from experience were the most effective ways to teach a child values.
User Studies Method
I interviewed 9 parents of children aged 7-9 through either a phone call or filling out a Google Form. 3 of the kids joined the interviews.
I prepared 7 questions to ask and recorded any other interesting conversation points that came up.
Interview Analysis
Key Words: words selected from answers and conversations categorized by age
Structural Coding: key words were categorized under structural codes such as how parents teach and money storage.
Key Insights: coded key words were restructured to bring about a few key insights
Personas
A child persona and a parent persona were created by using the research data.
Competitive Analysis
SWOT analysis on direct competitor, EARNIT, and indirect competitor, Greenlight, were done.
Start of Product Ideation
I am still quite early into this portion, but I have brainstormed an app, parent-centric on mobile and child-centric on tablet, and a compatible child-centric IOT product.
Next Steps
Fully ideating product
Technical research
User flows
Low fidelity prototyping
User testing 1
High fidelity prototyping
User testing 2
Lean business model
Final research paper
