Project - To develop a feature for the Empower FCU banking app.
Target User - Persons with disabilities that want to practice financial responsibility.
Deliverables - A feature that is nested in the mobile banking app for use with smart devices.
My role - Research, planning, design and implementation.
Tools - Sketch, Invision and Adobe Suite

PROCESS

RESEARCH

Assumptions:

• Target user will have help when they use the feature.

• Target users will want icons, characters they can identify with.

• Target users have difficulty with motor skills and sensory input.

Statistics:

• Intellectual disabilities are 25 times more common than blindness.

• Approximately 6.5 million people in the United States have an intellectual disability.

• Approximately 1-3 percent of the global population has an intellectual disability.

• 10 percent of Americans have a family member with some sort of intellectual disability.

INTERVIEWS

During the research process of my interview, I had the luxury of discussing my project with persons that work with persons with disabilities regularly. From these conversations, I gained a better awareness of some of the challenges that this population faces that might not be readily apparent. We discussed sensory issues, impulsiveness, emotional issues, etc. My target group for interviewing originally was any person with a disability. What I realized, was that not everyone would have an immediate need to learn financial independence, but they might in the future. My target user group became persons with disabilities that have a job, and have a bank account.

• 100 % expressed that managing their spending was difficult.

• 75 % of target users said they would try a feature that would help them with their financial independence.

• 100 % use their mobile devices primarily for entertainment/gaming.

• 100 % agreed that it is hard to find learning apps created for disabled adults. (over age 18)

PERSONAS

After one interview, I realized that the persons that could gain traction for this feature would have a disability, be employed and have a bank account. Unfortunately, that number of individuals is probably low compared to the individuals that are unemployed and do not have access to a bank account. My persona reflects what could be the vast majority of the developmentally disabled population.

Employment rates vary by type of disability. Employment rates are highest for people with hearing (51.0%) and vision disabilities (41.8%) and lowest for people with self-care (15.6%) and independent living disabilities (16.4%).

I did like the idea of having a “super user”. But what I realized later, is that having a single super user, does not account for the idiosyncrasy’s possible within a super user group. One such user was extremely wary when it came to using a banking app for fear his information might be compromised. That is a very real concern among the population I am developing for.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

My work was pretty much completed for me when it came to the site architecture. However, it only became apparent where the feature might reside once I had a site map completed.

INTERACTION DESIGN

Points of entry for the feature, within the app were pretty much spelled out. Because this is a new feature, I figured that an email blast, and promotions at the website, or at the Empower app would be the most used entry points for persons that have accounts with Empower FCU.

LOW FIDELITY PROTOTYPING

Once again, I enjoyed creating sketches for the Moneysmart feature, as it allowed me a certain amount of freedom and time to question how the feature would function and what screens would be necessary to accomplish the task. I spent an entire day just drawing screens, rearranging them and then drawing new screens.

WIREFRAMES

It was very helpful to have detailed sketches to work from. With the sketches as complete as they were, it was only a matter of translating that information to Sketch. And, because I had a UI template to work from, it was relatively easy to develop styles to work from during the wireframing process.

UI DESIGN

The Empower banking application has it’s own UI specific to it’s corporate style guide. It was my goal to work within the styles that they had already established, however, I did take some liberties to create a UI that would be inviting to my target users.

PROTOTYPING

I did have some concern about the degree of control that the user would have to move around the feature, but I didn’t want to overwhelm the end user, considering that many of my end users struggle with sensory issues and anxiety regarding money management. It definitely is a learning process to determine what kind and how much information is necessary to set a user at ease while they navigate through a task.

SUMMARY

Once I had a finished prototype to test I was able to realize where my feature was working, and what things I may not have accounted for. For instance, I was able to prove one of my assumptions correct, and that was, that my end user would probably have assistance while setting up and navigating the feature. What I didn’t account for is the range of diversity in the user behaviors when testing the feature. Anxiety is one of the disabilities that I completely overlooked. And it can derail the whole process. My friend Jeremiah almost quit the test before finishing! What I also found is that the level of confidence when attempting to use a feature like this can be challenging. Some of the iterative changes I made after my testing where to make wording more simple. Another change was to where my testers clicked to get a response. This project was very challenging, and going forward it would be nice to find a way to more thoughtfully explain the feature and ease some of the anxiety during testing.

Try the app here.