

Cognitive-based design to influence structured financial planning and money management for young people
Stakeholders
Head of UX and Design
Head of Engineer
UX/UI Designer
Product team
My Contribution
UX research
Design strategy
Interaction design
User interface design
UX evaluation
Duration
5 months

About
Blackbullion is an education-focused fintech company that supports financial wellness for all students and is trusted by 40+ institutions in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.
Challenge
How might we help young people manage their money regularly and motivate them to put their financial knowledge to practise?

Research approach
Adopting the notion of cognitive theories in metal budgeting to design

Cognitive theories

Design process
User-centered design

Understanding problems
User Behaviors Analytics
Literature review
Competitor research
Stakeholders interview

Ideating, prototype & design
Wire-framing
Paper prototype
Hi-fi prototype
UI Design

Evaluating
User Experience
Guerilla testing
In-lab Usability testing
Eye-gaze tracking analytics
System Usability Scale
Who are the users?
More than 60% of users are between the ages of 18 and 34. They live in the big city and use the site mostly via mobile and desktop devices*
*Data collected from Blackbullion (Google Analytics) during January to April 2022
What are they doing?
I synthesized data from students’ interviews, stakeholder interviews, and ~10.000 user data records of Blackbullion about the budget calculator tools.

How we manage budget mentally?
I created a model based on Mental Budgeting theory and Budget Intention theory

Design Strategy
When someone begins managing their money, they must first evaluate their financial situation and income-to-expense ratio.
Design Strategy
Understanding the situation helps them formulate a strategy and take right actions to reach their goals

Design Improvement
From onboarding to engaging with users once they make plans, the user experience was enhanced
Before

After

Design Improvement
Goal-oriented approach
Before

Lack of engagement
Hard to find and create a plan
After

Positive effect
Good attitude
Design Improvement
Make the design more human
Before

Process seems difficult
Cognitive overload
After

1-1 discussion
Cognitive ease
Design Improvement
New interactive patterns
Comparing two versions using gaze plot analysis. The bubbles show where people look and how long they stay there.
Before

High number of fixations
Long fixation duration
After

Reduce time and cognitive load
Simple and easy







Emotional Design

UX Evaluation
Adapting eye-gaze tracking metrics to usability testing
Areas of interest to analyze the users' attention to various visual components.


Gaze plots to understand the visual hierarchy of interfaces to optimize the placement of screen elements
Heat-map to understand user's visual search experience

Recorded session





