Making child investmnets simple and trusted

Stakeholders

• Elvis Preye Kerebi — Team Lead, UX Strategist and Designer
• Wisdom Chinwuike Nwadador — UX Writer and Product Manager
• Segun Akindunbi — Visual and Brand Designer

My responsibilities

• UX strategy
• UX research
• Wireframing
• UI design
• Prototyping

Tools

• Figma
• FigJam
• Miro

The problem

Imagine that you are an undergraduate and on your graduation day, your parents tell you that they have saved up NGN5,000,000 as an investment for you since you were a kid. You can use this money to build something for yourself. Now be honest, wouldn't you be happy or even beyond thrilled? Yes, every Nigerian graduate will be happy if their parents presented them with such upon graduation.

Now the issue is that the average Nigerian Parent has little or no knowledge of investing in their kids. They have the wish and a mind to give their children financial security and stability but have limited knowledge or resources on how to go about it. The Parents who have the knowledge, sadly have no stable and trusted way to make such investments for their children. This has a negative impact on the future of the children. Children are left to grow up and mature without having a means of having funds to their name.

The goal

Our goal is to successfully build a product that gives parents a safe and secure way to make the best financial plans for their children, from long-term investments to regular savings by investing in companies that promote sustainable development. We also seek to increase the financial literacy of parents via our educational resources available on the app.

The design process

The first thing I did as the UX strategist for this project was to validate the existence of the problem and become informed about user personas, features, and user-flow ideas through user research including user interviews.

Since I already had an idea of who our target users were (i.e., parents and intending parents), I did not need to create a screener survey. Instead, I reached out to these target users for a user interview. I decided to conduct a user interview as the research method to gain better clarity on the target user's philosophies, beliefs, expectations, and frustrations regarding investments for their kids. The following are the representative user personas created from the user interviews (10 participants):

Competition brief

With the number of investment platforms out there for Nigerians and Africans as a whole, there aren’t any with a focus on parents and their kids. Apps like Risevest only have this as a feature while still not solving major problems faced by our target users, such as lack of sufficient information on credible and profitable investments, and limited education on investing the right way. Other platforms like Bamboo, Cowrywise, Chaka, Wealth.ng, Piggyvest, I‑invest, Carbon, Pillow, and Trove are indirect competitors, but do not offer solutions to these problems. This is almost like a blue ocean market.

UX strategies

• Smart Investments
• Impact-driven Projects
• Gamified Investing
• Gamified Learning
• Wallet Interest
• Plan Invite
• Joint Ownership
• Cashback Rewards System
• Fixed or Flexible Plans

User flow

The user flow was created to focus on users’ tasks and set a foundation for the information architecture and user interface designs. Most business strategies were developed later in the process.

Information architecture

A sitemap was made, but the design introduced personalization and kids' profiles, meaning the sitemap was only a foundation.

Sketches and wireframes

• View Sketches
• View Wireframes

High fidelity designs

Hi‑fi designs addressed identified problems:

• Not knowing what type of investments to make for their kids

  

• Limited education on investing the right way

  

• Not being able to invest or save due to daily spending

  

• Other mockups

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

High fidelity prototype

Redesigns were made to improve user experience even at the prototype stage. Necessary screens were added.

What I learnt

This was a very interesting project. I learned the importance of teamwork and recording or taking notes during interviews to capture user insights.

What’s next?

Conduct moderated usability testing with the prototype and possibly field studies to further discover more about target users. Usability testing will help assess how intuitive the design is and if the microcopies are clear.

Conclusion

Well done on coming this far, thank you for reading this case study and I do hope it has been a good and insightful read for you. I’m open to collaborations on any projects if you have one, thank you.