Image courtesy of Moneythink
By T.J. Cook, CEO, CauseLabs
When it comes to getting projects right, I’ve found it helps to assume we’ve got it wrong. Our hunches are off. Our assumptions are off-base. We then just might get it right when it comes to designing something people really want to use.
Our team here at CauseLabs didn’t know what we didn’t know when we started rapidly prototyping a mobile application for Moneythink, the established and growing financial capability mentorship program for urban, low-income 11th and 12th graders in the United States.
Ironically, projects that never identify incorrect assumptions are the ones most liable to be off course. Using IDEO.org’s human-centered design process and on-the-ground field data, we uncovered what we didn’t know, and our mobile app development changed for the better. Because IDEO.org talked with dozens of teens, the team quickly came to understand their mindsets and subsequent needs. That information, the kind that only comes from talking directly to users, helped us recognize what was wrong with our initial assumptions and pointed us toward better solutions.
To step back, the goal with Moneythink Mobile is to reinforce good financial habits, encourage smart financial choices and build on Moneythink’s proven financial near-peer mentorship model pairing college-student mentors with high school students for financial education. The idea for Moneythink Mobile came about in 2013 when CEO Ted Gonder made two important observations of Moneythink students. First, nearly all had smartphones. Second, the students made nearly all financial decisions outside of school, and therefore outside of the Moneythink program. Moneythink then started to explore the building and funding of a mobile tool that would give students a chance to show they had taken what they learned in class to heart by practicing the skills in their lives.
Image courtesy of IDEO.org
Jump ahead to this month and the nine-week pilot of Moneythink Mobile is well underway, with 70 students from eight classrooms in four inner-city Chicago schools testing the technology. The app includes challenges designed to help students build awareness of their spending and saving moments, create small financial goals, and engage in budgeting behavior while earning points redeemable for rewards along the way. Students update their peers on their progress in a social feed, sharing their financial decisions and commenting on those of others. After the Moneythink Mobile pilot, we will evaluate student engagement to optimize the app to meet students’ lifestyles, capabilities and interests. We anticipate full launch of the app in fall 2014.
Before we got to our pilot, however, we took part in IDEO.org’s design process and our own rapid prototyping method to de-construct our assumptions to better steer our design. Here are a few:
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