Sharesies
ROLE
work
Research & UI Design
duration
3 Months
KEY IMPACT
TL;DR
PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION
How Did We Get There?
Starting With Questions in Mind
Understanding these questions would build us a solid foundation to allow us move and explore further while aiding us in defining our questions for qualitative research.
Attitudes and behaviours towards money
Competitors
Different investing method
Sharesies' website and app
Investing predendents
Investing education
How might we better understand the attitudes and behaviors that non-Sharesies users have towards money and investing?
DISCOVERY
User Interviews
With assumptions from desk research in hand, we talked to people from various demographics to deepen our understanding of people's financial management, allowing us to more accurately identify the barriers.
During this process, I participated in three interviews as the leading interviewer and in three others as the note taker.
Key Insights
1
Independent Research
We believe that the Phonic test should be designed with the user’s emotional and cognitive needs in mind with a clear guidance, gradual progression of difficulty, and appropriate length help build confidence and reduce stress, especially for younger or less proficient students.
2
Human Interaction
Human interaction creates trust in receiving help which is main reason why our participants prefer asking family, friends or financial advisors for investing advice.
3
Specific Research
Experienced investors were more confident in their decisions because they knew which specific information to look for.
4
Risk
People have their own perception of risk investing in the stock market based on whether or not they are prepared to lose money, which influences how they go about making investment decisions.
PROBLEM FOCUS
After our initial research, we needed to narrow our insights down to a single area of focus. Therefore, we held a workshop with our clients. This helped us understand their interests, then identify a new, more specific problem statement.
What Our Clients were Interested in
Getting people the info when they need it
Making learning investing less of a chore
How might we help people grasp investing basics and start investing in a way that feels fun and fast?
IDEATION
Having a redefined "HMW" question, we thought of new education-focused ideas during an ideation session, and then rated all our ideas based on their simplicity, value and relation to our research insights and findings.
Shifting Direction
Effort-Value-Matric
COMPETITORS ANALYSIS
We then analysed the Sharesies website and discovered that their learning resources are not methodically structured. This was a gap compared to other leading investing websites, who had different approaches to investing education.
Data-based Charts
Appealing Illustrations
Short Videos
Step-by-step Instructions
How about improving Sharesies' website learning section to make learning about investing more fun and engaging?
CONCEPT DESIGN
Based on the website analysis, we developed two low-fidelity concepts – structured and interactive. The structured concept aimed to be a step-by-step, guided way of learning, whereas the interactive concept enabled learning by doing using fake money.
Interactive concept (mobile)
Structured concept (desktop)
Concept Testing
The concept testing objective was to understand how users with little to no previous investing experience understand and interact with our two final concepts (structured and interactive). We based our concept testing goals on three pillars:
Identifying where we can improve and refine the concepts.
Learning what is confusing or unclear about each idea.
Determine which concept would best suit participants' lifestyles.
Key Learnings
Learning 1
Learning 2
Learning 3
DESIGN SOLUTION
Investing Basic Mini Cousrse - A combination of structured and interactive learning elements that helps users grasp the basics of investing by following step-by-step guidelines while actively interacting with resources.
Decision No.1:
Three different learning methods to meet users' varied learning needs
Decision No. 2:
The interactive dragging bar can help learners grasp investing strategies in greater depth
Decision No. 3:
Related articles provide learners with more learning opportunities
Decision No. 4:
Five learning steps that create a foundation for structured stock market investing education
Decision No. 5:
Interactive quiz section that allows users to test their stock market investing knowledge
Stats help users identify which area they are more or less confident with
Desktop Version
introduction page
landing step 4 page
DESIGN ITERATION
Once we made our screens from the high-fidelity concept interactive (in both desktop and mobile view), we conducted some quick usability testing to get a sense of how people would actually interact with our learning concept.
Key Changes Made
OUTCOME
We were invited to give a presentation to the whole company at Sharesies' 5th Birthday party, and provided a QR code of our prototype so that people could look at the details on their phones. As a result, we received a lot of positive feedback.
FUTURE CONDSIDERATION
Doing more testing and user interviews would give us more data to validate our concept.
Talking to the software development team would help us better understand the feasibility of our concept.
Explore the video learning options more in depth and how it can work using learning animations.
Sharesie's Sign-up process was at the centre of our attention and we acknowledge its strong relation to investing education.
Given the complexity of the whole onboarding process, more time could be spent doing research into this specific area.
REFLECTION
Being Adaptable
When things don't go as planned or we run into constraints, we need to change direction quickly and look into other options.
Being Positive
A positive team collaboration helps generated ideas, use time efficiently and keep everyone productive towards the same goal.
Being Open
Being open to different fields (i.e., gaming) in order to become more creative in providing fun and engaging solutions.