For a younger audience, financial literacy and long-term financial security are often foreign concepts that feels secondary to other, more immediate pressures like grades, social life, job hunting, and hobbies. Our challenge was to gain our audience's interest so that they would willingly engage in building good financial habits that would benefit them in the future.
Based on survey responses, feeling overwhelmed by the amount of available information was a significant hurdle. Similarly, many students didn't see the need to start saving money at an early age. Our approach was therefore to create appeal unrelated to the subject matter - introducing gamified mechanics to create something between a habit tracker and money management app. For those who felt intimidated or overwhelmed, we leaned into a soft, unassuming design with a friendly mascot, and added functionality for group savings goals and collectible mascots to encourage long-term progression and engagement.
Our final product was Nest Egg, an app where users could create customized savings goals then track those goals as eggs that eventually hatched and grew within a virtual garden as the user contributed to their savings. Our app also featured a learning centre that broke down financial concepts into bite-sized lessons, unlocking sequentially so that users could progress from beginner to more complex concepts and ultimately build a solid foundation of financial literacy as they move into adulthood.
Concept, Design & Creative Direction, Branding & Identity, User Research, Prototyping & Testing, Deck Design
