Support low-income people of color build or improve their credit scores
Finana is a credit-building and financial goal planning app. Users can customize their financial plans and enhance their financial knowledge by engaging in community forums, consulting with financial advisors, and taking financial lessons.

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My Role
  • Led the project as a product designer & product manager
  • Served as the liaison between the sponsor and the team
  • Recruited and conducted ten stakeholders in-depth interviews
  • Structured final presentation as a compelling and rich story
With
Leah How, Taehyun Lee, Jessica Zhang
Year
2021
Sponsor
‍‍
Citi Ventures
RECEIVED CHANLLEGE FROM CITI
How might we (Citi) develop an innovative fintech product that increases racial equity, expands financial inclusion, and empowers people of color?
RESEARCH APPROACH
Trip to the Bronx
To gain a deeper understanding of the problem, we visited Bronx, New York, to experience our target users' living environment. During our exploration, we observed a significant presence of check cashing services, which are less common in central Manhattan. These services enable individuals to cash their paychecks without a bank account, but at a high fee.
15 In-Depth Stakeholder Interviews
We interviewed 10 target users and 5 expert (community expert, banking representatives) interviews to understand how low-income people manage their money, the challenges they face, and how we can help.
Stakeholders Ecosystem Map
KEY INSIGHT
Many low-income people of color use financial services that don't build their credit and cost them more money.
Without access to traditional banking services,
financially underserved consumers in the U.S. spent
$189 B/yr
in fees and interests on financial products
Households of color are
2X
more likely to have used check-cashing services and money as compared to white households
THE "WHY" BEHIND THE "WHY"
Why don't low-income people of color use traditional banking services?
  • Lack of trust in banks
  • Negative financial habit
  • Language barriers
  • Have negative banking experience in their home country
  • Unable to meet minimum balance requirements
Why does it matter?
Many of our users' long-term financial goals are to own a house, get a better car, or even start a business. All of these goals require a good credit score.
OUR FOCUS
How might we help low-income people of color build or improve their credit scores so that they can plan and make progress towards their long-term financial goals?
To truly understand our focus, we chose Keira as a representation of our target users.
DESIGN PRINCIPLES + FINAL DESIGN
With the help of Qualitas of Life, we co-created four design principles that served as the core values of our design. These principles are: Accessibility, User-Centeredness & Cultural Competence, Trust & Empowerment & Financial Sustainability.
Accessibility
  • Supports multiple languages
  • Minimum identification requirements: Without entering personal & banking information, users have the ability to access the online Community Forum & Resources
  • Financial Dictionary: Learn financial jargons in a more digestible way
User-Centeredness & Cultural Competence
  • Build a sense of belonging by sharing financial experiences in our online community forum
  • Receive professional advice from trusted financial advisors and community experts 
Trust & Empowerment
  • Gain trust through minimum identification requirements & our transparent data collection policy
  • Improve financial confidence by learning from our digestible lessons and financial resources
Financial Sustainability
  • Achieve long term financial success by breaking down goals into actionable steps
  • Create a personalized financial plan unique to each user’s situation
Reflection & Next Steps
Challenge: Halo Effect in user interviews
During our interviews, some users consistently provided overly positive feedback regarding our potential feature idea and design. It seemed as though they were telling us what they believed we wanted to hear. As an interviewer, it was challenging for me to elicit genuine feedback and thoughts from them.

New Try: Hosted a co-design workshop online!
Hosting my first online co-design workshop was a new experience for me! One valuable tip I would offer to others is to select tools that align with your users' comfort level with technology. Don't hesitate to embrace the simplicity of traditional tools like paper and pencil when necessary.

Future Improvement: Come up with a new product name
Our product name, "Finana," came from a co-design workshop with one of our users. However, following the final presentation, we received feedback suggesting that using a banana as a symbol for a product aimed at the African American community might be inappropriate. While unintentional, it is crucial to avoid any confusion or misunderstanding.
Leading the team in the synthesizing research workshop
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