Background
Team: Harrison Miao, Mahlet Copeland, Muskaan Agarwal, Asfaha Asfaha, Kamya Venkatesan
Role: Researcher & Product Design Consultant
Timeline: January 2021 - Jun 2021
Tools: Figma, Survey Monkey, Google Sheets
Project Overview
NerdWallet is an American personal finance company that helps educate consumers about various financial products and services available on the market. NerdWallet aims to help users make smart and informed decisions about the financial services they use.
NerdWallet asked us to conduct a 2-week diary study to get a complete picture of what a provided segment of financially-savvy users do with their finances during the course of a month to strategize how NerdWallet might further help them with these goals.
Research
Research Question
How might we design a personal finance management system that will enhance the personal finance management experience of financially savvy users?
User Research
In order to understand what our target segment of financially savvy NerdWallet users were doing to manage their finances, we designed a diary study to monitor their actions daily over the course of two weeks.
Research Methods
Demographics
Synthesis
To best understand which behaviors were universal and which were specific to particular subsets of users, we affinity-mapped both the interview and diary study responses throughout the week to find trends.
Key Insights
From our research, we found trends that illustrated the general attitudes and behaviors of all of our research group.
While we synthesized our data we discovered that some behaviors were more varied depending on the participant’s lifestyle. We were able to sort all of our participants into three groups which best described their financial behaviors.
Behavioral Trends
Ideation
Brainstorming
We began ideation by brainstorming a few ideas each and creating an affinity map. We then proceeded to dot vote and narrow down our ideas to the best 4 that reflected our research findings and captured the problem space.
Final 4
Low Fidelity Sketch
We decided to prototype our idea of a goals-oriented tool that would allow users to track, adhere, and commit to their goals. We also decided to add an intake survey that would help determine what goals might be beneficial to the user. After the questionnaire provides sample goals, the user can then edit and adjust the goals to their preferences. They can also add new goals, or delete goals that they have completed or no longer need to track.
Final Proposal
Step 1: Questionnaire
Our final designs involve three main steps: onboarding, goal setting, and goal tracking. We wanted to provide the users with a user profile that would represent them and store goals that they value. When users navigate to the optimize tab they will be prompted with a questionnaire that is used to identify the user's current lifestyle and financial situation. From there, the questions would generate some potential financial goals that would align with the user's interests and needs.
Step 2: Personalize Goals
After the questionnaire provides sample goals, the user can then edit and adjust the goals to their preferences. They can also add new goals, or delete goals that they have completed or no longer need to track.
Step 3: Track Goals
Users will be able to check-in to the goal-setting tool to track their progress and identify the sources of their contributions. Relevant NerdWallet articles will also be featured to further inform users about useful tips and tricks that could help them achieve their goals.
Step 4: Manage Goals
Over time users will be able to adjust goal settings to fit their needs. This includes adjusting the type of goal, the dollar amount objective, the deadline of the goal, how the goal progress is displayed, and even adjusting how progress is shared within social circles.
Reflection
In the past 12 weeks, we have gained a lot of knowledge about financial technology and how technology can help people build their wealth. Through conducting diary studies, interviews, and collaborating with stakeholders, we learned how to conduct research effectively and coherently as a group to better serve NerdWallet's user base. We also had the privilege of working with Zach Lamm, a lead UX researcher, who guided us through the research process and helped us gather accurate data on user behavior and sentiment. With Zach's assistance and that of other team members, we were able to achieve our goal of producing prototypes to help NerdWallet users achieve their goal-setting aspirations. Overall, it was an amazing experience learning and growing with the NerdWallet team. Thank you for having us!