Deo sango

My Role

Umoja money pool was a result of a personal project I developed through multiple phases of user experience design from discovery and ideation through personas to user flow and interaction design

Tools : Sketch, InVision, Artboard, Google drive, Paper

Targeted audiences

From the onset, the main goal was to understand the end user needs. Umoja primarily targets immigrant communities across North America and Europe; who may already be familiar with the rotational savings practices and also other parts of the globe where its practices are common such as Africa, South Asia and South America.

Understanding the challenge

Money pool or ROSCAs (Rotating Savings Credit Associations) comes under a large number of different names; for example, it is called “stokvel” in South Africa, “Chit fund” in India, Susu” in West Africa, Chama in East Africa, Hui (Chinese communities in East & SE Asia). However, these traditional money pools lack transparency, accountability, lack of record-keeping, security and convenience, fraud and bankruptcy by organizers, default by members which affect their growth and effectiveness leading to stagnation and eventual disintegration.

Goal

I have decided to create a digital money pool platform that complement the traditional informal collaborative savings. 

• Build a mobile based solution for conveniently managing the informal savings groups operations

• Provide transparency and accountability to group

• Access to transaction history

• Automated notification reminding each group member when to pay or receive/avoid default

• Automated pay in & out process to reduce default

Solution

• By digitizing this process, Umoja platform will  enable group members to achieve financial inclusion quicker 

• Connect groups with each other for sharing information, knowledge and co-investments

• The app will shift the burden of the administration away from the pool organizer

User Research

Interviews

I conducted several interviews with potential users that are involved in the traditional money pool. Users interviewed were selected from the migrants group since this is Umoja's primary target segment. This stage was important to understand the current situation of the traditional money pool practices.

Main topics / goals of user interviews

• Insights on money pool operation

• Knowledge about digital money pool app benefits

• Awareness of present technology on the market

• Users vision on the product (Money pool /app)

Competitors

Looking at immediate competitors in the money pool Fintech sector, gave me a good idea of what's available to customers now, and how I can do things better. I looked at the following competitors and popular money pool apps to see how they focused on goals -

• Emoneypool

• Stepladder

• Esusu.org

• Kyepot

Persona

After consolidating and analyzing the research data gathered, I envisioned two main personas that best describe the demographics of Umoja target market. These personas allowed me to constantly be reminded of the people that I am designing the product for, their needs and wants, as well as pain points.

Sketching

After gathering the information that is based on the research, it's time to start ideating potential solutions. At this point I know what the problem is and who I am designing for. I started sketching a few design ideas on paper by adding the elements and screens that were necessary to reach users' goals, to see which ideas worked best before moving to digital tools.

Low-fidelity Wireframes

After a short brainstorming and coming to some agreements, I started to put together some early hand-made sketches designs to make up wireframes by defining UI elements, design patterns and visual hierarchy using pro design tools (Sketch app)

User Flows

In order to make a good interactions that ease users understanding, I built detailed user flows to outline the features, functionality, and all key tasks required throughout the experience

Prototype

Keeping the user's needs and pain points in mind I came up with my final version of the design and created a prototype in InVision for user testing. The prototype allowed me to test navigation.

User Testing

I carried out user testing using the prototype to hear users' feedback on the usability, navigation and features that potential umoja money pool users expected from the application.

Iterating

Based on the data collected during user testing, I made two main design iterations improvement dealt with color changes, icon style and content display .

Final Design

The final design was the result of months of iterations and user testing.The design revolved around the concepts of flexibility, clarity, and friendliness

What did I learn?

• Listen to people (user or stakeholders)

• Paper-prototype is a powerful tool

• Deliver work layers