Problem Definition
I took on a week-long design challenge of designing a credit card for kids. A card that would allow parents to put the pocket money of their children in and have an overview over each child’s purchasing behavior. This was an opportunity for me to learn more about two topics that so far I have been unfamiliar with: e-banking platforms and designing for kids (I do not have kids or friends with kids). In the following sections, you will follow my approach starting from the study of the current landscape; forming protopersonas; sketching a journey map; deciding features; wireframing; reviewing my assumptions and finally, thinking about the branding.
Current Landscape
I jumped in by researching the landscape. This is a process that grounds you to reality: everything you think of has been already made. Plus, it gives you all the hints to jump in your research already with data. From the marketing material of the competition, their videos and ads, you get to infer the demand, the target audience and its problems. I found two popular apps performing already the task.
FamZoo provides prepaid cards for kids in the US. The app has numerous features, enabling scheduled and instant transfers; overview in the spending of their children; saving goals; tasks tied with financial rewards; savings with a custom interest rate (defined by parents); kids’ loans; kids contributing to family expenses; three different sub-accounts for each kid (for spending, saving and charity giving). Android users reported satisfaction for the effectiveness of the app to train the kids on budgeting but also complained for the sloppy interface and too many features.
On the other side, a simpler app is Osper, a service similar to FamZoo, but without paid job lists, loans and interest for kids’ savings. It enables scheduled and instant transfers; overview in the spending of their children; enable or disable online payments; lock and unlock the card whenever the card is misplaced (eg. forgotten at school). Android users found the app user friendly and effective in teaching kids how to budget.
Personas
During my background research and by creating a mini digital focus group on a facebook forum for the women of Vienna, I came across numerous reasons why a parent would take the path of a credit card for the kid. It is a good idea because of:
Convenience: the task of distributed pocket money is automated. This can be particularly useful for a family with more than two kids, divorced parents or other reasons which make logistics difficult.
Education: the kids learn how they spend their money, make budget and save towards their goals.
Control: the parent has an overview over the consumer behavior of a child.
Hygiene: a card can be washed, money no.
On the other hand, some parents reject the idea because they have concerns:
Privacy: the danger of hacking your kid’s account
Additional costs: the service doesn’t come for free.
Lack of trust: a parent has to be able to verify that the institution is Trustworthy and does not misuse private information or the money of the clients.
Talking to the mothers in facebook, I found out that the mothers are hesitant to start early with pocket money (it’s trouble and kids might lose it or give it away so they start after 7); well-educated mothers with a full-time job would find value in such a concept; they shall also have trust in online banking and be familiar with performing purchases through their phone; kids often misbehave with money and show little understanding (an example: a mother was mentioning that her son doesn’t want to spend his money on anything but he is very generous with her money), thus they really need some form of education regarding money and budget and responsibility towards their consumer behaviour and wishes. Based on this input, I made two protopersonas (personas-prototypes that start with some assumptions and have to be validated with research, see ‘Lean UX’ book), a mother and a daughter. The daughter has some outdoor time on her own; buys snacks, little things and mobile games and receives presents in the form of money. The mother is well-educated, tech-savvy and cares about education and making kids independent.
Journey Mapping
Explain, after the whys which could lead parents towards deciding for such a product, we try to predict the experience of using the product; the emotional pain points and the joy before and during the experience.
Features
The product has to satisfy the needs of the end users, so the features have to map directly to the reasons people would buy it: convenience, control and education:
Weekly allowance & one-time transfer (Convenience | the most important MVP feature)
Management of allowance between parents (Convenience | facilitates coparenting)
Request/send money to parents/siblings (Convenience | useful for exchanges)
Limited credit (kid)(Convenience | useful in an emergency)
Receive presents from relatives (Convenience | instead of a giftcard)
Web, mobile and apple watch (Convenience | a mom reported that kids in the school have apple watches for communication with parents)
Notifications for purchases and account status(Control | it allows for full transparency between parent and kid)
Lock/unlock online purchases(Control | allows parent to prevent the kid from buying from online marketplaces)
Define upper spending limit (Control | allows parent to manage kid’s spending per week independent of how much money the kid has)
Overview of expenses in categories(Education | the kid understands the consequences of her monetary choices)
Set saving goals (Education)
Lock/unlock the card when it’s lost (Safety)
Wireframe
make the wireframe a .gif in procreate.
Explain.
The was the initial wireframe, much simpler, with not all the information. Even though this seems more suitable for younger kids because of the little information it contains, from my research, I could infer that the target users would be above 10 years old (kids start receiving pocket money at 6-7 and parents would not immediately convert to a credit card system without first trying the plain coins), thus I finally chose to incorporate all the necessary information they might need to manage their assets.
Why is it called Supereon?
Idea for branding and pairing with a education cause, as a USP.
Hypotheses that need to be tested and concerns.