LittleSavers
kids finance app to empower kids with financial literacy
Problem Space
Financial Literacy can impact various aspects of life, including personal goals, career choices, and overall happiness. By teaching kids about money management, we can contribute to and prepare them for future success and financial security.
Problem Background
Kids, as young learners, are unaware of the importance of managing their money effectively. They might not be aware of or understand the concepts of budgeting, saving, or making informed decisions on spending. Our goal is to empower them with this essential financial knowledge early on.
User Pain Points & Research Insights
We conducted a Survey to understand the user needs and pain points regarding educating kids in Finance and made the following observations.
- 73% of the parents are interested in teaching kids about money management.
- Parents use allowances to teach kids about finances.
- The biggest challenge parents face in teaching kids is a lack of interest or motivation to learn.
Feedback
“Our preliminary user research to validate this problem with parents revealed that Children aged 6 to 12 are in the midst of developing cognitive skills such as abstract reasoning, which are crucial for grasping complex subjects like financial literacy. Engaging this age group in financial education requires creative, interactive methods that transform abstract concepts into fun and engaging learning experiences. The challenge lies in making financial principles like savings, budgeting, and investing relatable and applicable to their everyday lives.
Solution Explanation
We ended up focusing on 4 key features for our product, ensuring we stayed within the constraints of an MVP as well as satisfying our user stories.
Feature 1 - Dashboard overview
Wallet: This shows how much a child has earned. Earnings come from two sources: completing chores and receiving one-time gifts from their parents. This allows parents to monitor their child's progress and understand their earning patterns.
Goals: Parents can see how much money their child has set aside towards their savings goals. This feature helps parents encourage their children to save and reach their financial targets.
Chores: The dashboard also displays the number of chores the child has completed. This overview helps parents keep track of their child's responsibilities and ensures that rewards are given based on completed tasks.
The dashboard gives parents a clear view of their child's financial activities, helps reinforce good habits, and encourages conversations about money management. It promotes trust and teamwork in learning about finances.
Feature 2 - Chore Management
Adding Chores:
Parents can type in chores and set how much the child will earn for completing them.
Child's View:
Kids can check off completed chores when they log in.
Approval Process:
Parents get notified to approve the chore, and once approved, the money is added to the child's wallet.
This feature makes it easy to assign and track chores, helps kids learn responsibility, and provides instant rewards. It also encourages communication and teamwork between parents and kids.
Feature 3 - Child Profile
Both parents and children can access the child profile. Parents can toggle between different profiles using avatars.
Children can see how much money they've earned in their wallet, view their full transaction history, add new goals, and allocate money to existing goals.
The chores section provides a quick overview of pending chores, chores waiting for parent approval, and completed chores.
The child profile gives children a clear view of their financial progress, helps them set and manage goals, and keeps them organized with their chores. It also allows parents to easily monitor and support their child's financial learning journey.
Feature 4 - Goal Creation
Creating Goals:
Children can create a goal on their own or with help from a parent. They can set the amount needed for their goal and customize it by adding a description, link, and emoji.
Customization:
Goals are highly customizable and can represent actual items (like a Nintendo Switch) or special events (like a pizza party).
Benefits:
This feature is beneficial because it allows children to visualize their savings objectives, making their financial goals more tangible and motivating. Customization adds a personal touch, making the process fun and engaging.
Iterative Design Learnings
After completing 4 unmoderated and 4 moderated tests with our high-fidelity prototype, we uncovered a few important pain points that could be addressed and fixed easily.
A few participants expressed the need to see the due date of a chore when viewing “All Chores”. This would allow them to quickly see what chores are due when, as well as know which days are free for more chores.
A couple of participants felt that the contrast between the progress bar and the background was too low. Increasing the contrast will ensure that users can easily see how far along they are to achieving their goals.
Due to the nature of how the test was conducted, a few participants initially expressed confusion over what the product was intended for. However, we had designed a landing page that would give potential users more information and an overview of the product prior to making an account. Further testing could be conducted to confirm whether or not this is sufficient for customer conversion.
Implementation Details
Technical implementation
- Where is it hosted? Netlify for frontend, render for backend
- What is your tech stack?
- Flask for the Backend framework, React for the frontend framework, Tailwind CSS framework, Elephant SQL for the database choice, and typescript
High level journey of a request
- We chose React for its state management, and we chose Flask for the lightweight framework. To improve the application design we plan to implement a better database
- The application allows you to create, edit, delete, and display goals, chores, and wallet for the child’s account for easy management of each feature
Technical challenges
- Authentication for the application
- No known scaling issues
- Keep trying when you are stuck and you will prevail!
Future Steps
The financial literacy project was aimed at educating children aged 6 to 12, and the next steps which we would take involve:
Curriculum Development: create a comprehensive curriculum that breaks down financial concepts into age-appropriate lessons, using storytelling and interactive activities to make learning engaging.
Parental Involvement: Develop resources and workshops for parents to help them reinforce the concepts at home and understand their role in their children's financial education.
Learnings
Product Manager Learnings:
Preeti Anubolu
Designer Learnings:
Emily Walker
Designer Learnings:
Jo Sturdivant
- Adapting to an Established Team: Joining the team in week 6 of 8 was challenging, as I had to quickly adapt to existing workflows, dynamics, and goals. This mirrors real-world situations where you often integrate into teams mid-project, and flexibility is essential.
- Work-Blocking for Efficiency: With only two weeks to complete the project, I learned the importance of a structured work-blocking system. This approach allowed me to manage my time effectively and meet deadlines under pressure.
- Making Data-Driven Design Decisions: Unlike my past projects, I had to rely on research conducted by others. This was a valuable experience in using pre-existing data to guide design decisions, helping me focus on the core insights without starting from scratch.
Developer Learnings:
Ryan McMorris
Learnt to communicate with other developers to maintain Git reposititory.
Developer Learnings:
Vanady Beard
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As the back-end developer, I learned how important it is to create efficient and reliable systems that support the entire application. This experience also taught me the importance of optimising the database and ensuring the backend is scalable and easy to maintain.
Developer Learnings:
Stephen Asiedu
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As a back-end developer, I've come to understand the importance of being familiar with various database systems and modules. This knowledge enables me to build diverse applications and maintain versatility in my work. I've also learned that the responsibility for making the right choices rests on my shoulders, guided by my best judgement.
Developer Learnings:
Michael Mcwig
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Learnt to collaborate with the team to prioritize necessary features.
Developer Learnings:
Maurquise Williams
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- Process of Creating an MVP: Developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) taught me how to focus on delivering core functionalities balancing between essential features and avoiding scope creep.
- Collaboration in a Real-World Tech Setting: This experience taught me how to collaborate efficiently in a fast-paced tech environment, keeping the team aligned and productive, even while working remotely across time zones.
- Sharpening Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving Skills: This experience honed my ability to think critically and solve problems efficiently. By tackling challenges and finding quick solutions, I sharpened my decision-making and troubleshooting skills in a dynamic, real-world setting.
Developer Learnings:
Jeremiah Williams
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All in all this experience was very awesome I learned that in coding with others being transparent is key
Developers Learnings:
Justin Farley
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I learned how important communication is when working with a team. Communication provides understanding, advice, ideas, and much more. While working with the product team, I’ve found that communication keeps everything flowing smoothly. Working with a team also showed me that every member brings something different to the table and we all have to work together in order to align and meet our end goal.
Full Team Learning
Understood the different milestones and challenges in creating a product.