Nav.it– Redesign Fintech Community

Project Overview

Nav.it is an early-stage startup on a mission to help everyone build a future of health and wealth. Our mission is to redesign its “Community” system to create a more fun and engaging experience to combine with the app's current gamified system.

Our team consists of 4 UX designers working directly with the design lead to understand Nav.it’s current situations and strategic directions. I was the Ideation Lead, UX Researcher, and UX Designer.

Most fintech apps don’t really provide a community system. Even if they do, the level of engagement is somewhat low.
Our initial problems include the following:

The Process

We are interested in finding...
How might we improve users' life quality through Nav.it community?

We are interested in understanding…
1. Nav.it’s competitors (fintech apps and online communities) and any gaps in the market.
2. The demographics of our target users.
3. People’s expectations and needs out of a fintech community.

We learned that they mostly focus on Fintech education, coaching, mental health management, and financial wealth management rather than community. There is a lack of social aspects& communities within these Fintech apps. Many of these Fintech apps also lack user engagement.

Survey
We sent out a survey to gain a general understanding of the types of online communities of what user segments tend to join and understand the role that Fintech can play in these online communities. We received 26 responses in total.
Findings:

1. Discoverability of Fintech communities is low even among interested people. 75% of people expressed interest in joining a financial community, but 92% of this group are unaware of any existing Fintech communities.
2. Engagement levels in general online communities are low. On average, respondents reported an engagement level of less than 5 (on a scale of 10) for the online communities that they are a part of.

Interview‍

Our questions aimed at understanding the features users want/need out of a fintech community, the blockers preventing people from joining fintech communities, and the features that keep users engaged in the online communities they are a part of.
We interviewed 8 participants in total.

Findings‍

1. Both employees and students expressed that they discovered popular fintech apps and other online communities through their friends and social network.
2. Engagement levels in general online communities are low.
3. People are more likely to revisit and engage with online communities that have interactive elements.

1. Increase Discoverability of Financial Community
2. Increase User Engagement by Adding Interactive Elements
3. Provide a Sense of Security and Privacy

“How might we increase discoverability and engagement of online Fintech communities by adding more interactive elements and maintaining user privacy and security?”

After the research, we are having a clearer vision of what our mission is.
‍
Business Goal:
Redesign the “Community” system or other related features with both unpaid and paid experience, driving more users to become monthly subscribers.

User Goal:
Interact with people in a similar situation and learn more about personal wealth and health.

Based on the 2 user journey maps, we created 2 main user stories to think of how users interact with our solution and how it can meet user needs. Then, we generated as many features as possible and did affinity mapping to organize & figure out which features best fit the user needs.

We came down to 2 directions for the user happy path:

1. Exploration Engagement: exploring the community
2. Supporting Engagement: getting support from the community

We followed these 3 design principles to narrow down our feature selection process:

1. Mindfulness: matches with the product's vision of keeping track of user's financial health & wealth
2. Educational: users could learn new knowledge from the community
3. Enjoyment: the community is fun to engage with

Following the design principles, we brainstormed several user flows and wireframe screens individually first, then grouped together as a group to vote for the key features.

After several rounds of iteration, we defined a clear IA covering the best experience for the users based on the app’s current features. This ensures the designs will be in the right direction and we got a clearer understanding of where to place certain features within the community feature so that it is more clear for users.

The community was divided into 2 main sectors: Public Feed & Private Feed (later on renamed "Friend Circle"), which both contain several features respectively.

Based on the key features and IA, we generated different versions of wireframes for each screen and voted for the favorite layout.

Public Feed Exploration
Focusing on the flow of users exploring through the public feed. Created screens for Q&A page, comment section, Insight page, and My Post page.

Friend Circle Interaction
Focusing on the flow of users creating groups and interacting in groups. Created screens for group creation progress, the established Friend Circle page, Group Garden page, Group Funds page, Nudging function, and Reward claiming screens.

The objective of our usability study plan was to evaluate the ease of navigation using the new “financial community feature”.
We recruited 7 participants in the age range of 21-30 and scheduled zoom calls to evaluate the following testing goals.

• Do users feel engaged within the new community page?
• Do they find the information in the community helpful for their personal finance journey?
• Do they envision themselves using the app to interact with their friends about finance?
• Do users feel more comfortable with using the new community page with their friends?

• Consider ways to make group garden more engaging by thinking about different incentives or reward systems
• Perform A/B test on the entire community feed to determine if it meets users’ needs and determine if it increases user engagement
• Conduct second round of usability testing to evaluate efficacy of new features

• Improved comfortability with navigating ambiguity and defining scope. Be prepared to pivot based on discovery of real needs
• Be proactive to understand the “why” of the designs. The research is the foundation of everything. Make sure the goal is set right
• With more time, we could do a second round of research to dive deeper into our user thinking regarding incentives that could promote user engagement. We could reorganize our interview questions to ask more follow up questions and understand users’ intrinsic motivators for downloading Nav.it app