PIGGY BANK WITH VIRGIN MONEY
Group Project: Myself, Liam Twomey, Joel Warden
January - March 2017
BRIEF:
The popularity and convenience of digital banking and contactless payments are leading us to the real possibility of a cashless society. Each time technology changes society there are consequences and opportunities. If the change is too rapid then it’s possible that some people may get left behind. On one hand, a cashless society offers:
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Convenience
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It’s easier to track spending
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Money can be instantly transferred over long distance
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Security - cash is tricky to secure
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Reduced fraud and crime
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Data sharing to reduce complex activities such as tax returns
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People no longer end up with pockets of change on a night out
On the other hand, what happens to social activities such as:
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Teaching children about pocket money?
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Donating to charities, museums and the homeless?
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Giving tips to waiting-staff?
What to Deliver:
A concept that is mindful of the needs of those who may be left behind in a cashless society. You can tell the story of your concept through a video or a prototype.
RESEARCHING CASHLESS SOCIETIES:
Research Methods
In order to come up with and develop a solution to a problem we first have to conduct research into the topic to determine what problems currently exist and which ones need to be solved or tackled more urgently than others. Methods of researching in this project will include:
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Meetings and Discussions
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Online Articles
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News Websites
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Competitor Analysis
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Videos and Journals
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Personas
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Storyboarding
The three areas that we initially identified as having the potential affect people, or be affected by a cashless society were Children, Young Adults and Charities. We then went on to do research on each of these areas in order to understand how they currently operate in modern day society and what potential impact a cashless society would have on them, before generating initial ideas and concepts for each area.
THINKING OF POTENTIAL CONCEPTS:
We each decided that to develop a concept based on the area of research that we looked into. The process of thinking of a concept and evaluating it involved looking into the pros and cons of the concept and thinking of its application in a cashless society by coming up with a user scenario and or persona. The concepts that we came up with and their target audience that we presented to the client, virgin money were:
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Virgin Pocket Money - Children
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Real Time Money - Young Adults
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Virtual Charity Pot - Charities
Unsurprisingly we received both positive and negative feedback to each concept, at that stage it was to be expected due to them being just initial concepts. However, the one thing that was surprising was that more than one of the groups that we presented to advised us to try and combine these concepts into one that we would then take forward due to the fact that they have the potential to work cohesively as one product. The only stepping stone being able to do it in a way that wouldn't be too overwhelming to the user.
DESIGNING FOR FUTURE AUDIENCES:
For our final product, we developed a concept that is targeted at children aged 5 to 10 years old, with the purpose being to teach them about the value of money if there was no physical cash.
It will take the form of a tablet application where the child is given their pocket money in return for completing chores in the house. The child can use the application to designate certain things they would like to buy and save money towards each spending goal. This is where the physical metaphor of cash will be replaced, as each spending goal will be put in terms of chores, i.e. if the child had £5 left towards a spending goal, the application would say they needed to wash the dishes 10 times to achieve this.
We believe that by using chores, which are something every child has to do, we can install a sense of working for their money in the child, which will help them appreciate the value of it, thus replacing the tangibility of coins in hand, with time spent working and doing chores.
We feel like this concept encapsulates all the good features of our individual initial ideas, without feeling like we've just mashed them all together. This was achieved by doing further research into how children interact with money and their spending/saving habits, as well as looking into how parents can educate their children about the value of money in a world where coins and notes, aren't there.
CONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT:
The design and development of the both the child and parent apps was done in tandem with one another to ensure that there was continuity and consistency in the design of both. Whilst being for different audiences they're still part of the same product, so we didn't want to make it seem like they were 2 completely different apps.
We also created a series of unique characters, backgrounds and colour schemes and accessibility options to allow for the user to customise and tailor make their app since it will be their primary way of learning and spending money. We wanted to make this a fun experience, so using cartoon visuals alongside colourfull buttons and interactions helped us to accomplish that.
The visual language of the app is very icon based and images heavy to suit the needs of the target audience which is young children, who at 5 years old will have only just started education and presenting them with a lot of words and text might be overwhelming to them, so we opted to create our own set of icons to represent different things from chores to rewards.
FINAL INTERATION:
In the final stages of the project, we decided to make some changes to the interface of the apps to make them more appropriate for the intended users. The parent app was overhauled to make the UI less like that of the child app. The parent app is intended to be used by parents and therefore didn't need to share the colourful and cartoonish characteristics of child counterpart, it could be much sleeker and sharper. The change to the child app came in the form of changing the background from a solid colour, to a picture image. This was done to showcase increased customizability and features of the app as well as make it more appealing to the audience.
MORE SCREENS:
