The new way to save and invest
Working with Dreams, we aimed to create a non-intrusive solution to teach users about their economy by just spending time in the app.
Dreams is a savings and investment app with 500.000+ users in the Nordics. The company aims to make saving money easier, more fun, and more achievable.
" How can Dreams include a validated solution for education that increases financial wellbeing in their app? "
Solution
We drew inspiration from finance apps on the market, analyzed survey data, researched communities such as Dreams' own Nordic Dreamers, and interviewed potential users on their financial habits and needs.
Through a design sprint, we ideated and found our direction, created a clickable prototype that we usability tested with users, and later iterated upon based on feedback.
USED METHODS
MY ROLES
The Klarna app - one of the services I drew inspiration from
The solution sketch with the most votes
The frames in our clickable prototype
• Money is emotional • Money is personal
• Money is social and societal
The Academy section
Dreams had previously delved into teaching with what they called "Dreamsakademin" (Dreams Academy), where users could read long informational texts to later be able to test their knowledge in a test.
The Academy section is our version of this, where we instead treat it in a bite-sized fashion. Users can read a chapter of information or watch it in video form.
Each chapter ends in a multi-choice test, where users are rewarded with a badge upon completion. The system also allows Dreams to reward their users in other means, for example with promotional offers from their partners.
The Budget section
When designing with "learn by doing" in mind, the Budget section was created.
Users can connect their ordinary bank and set up a budget using spending categories to get a clear overview of their economy, and savings potential for the month.
We found this was a critical feature to add since the current offering doesn't take this into account when giving users suggestions.
By analyzing spending behavior, the app can give personal tips and suggestions, with time the app gets to know you better and gets smarter.
Bi-products of design changes
There were lots of features in the current app we liked, but to fit our new features in a logical way, we moved some things around and a few new sections were created.
The Discover section
The Discover section is one of these new sections, here we collected tips and promotional offers from Dreams' partners.
Dreams are also very proud of their community "Nordic Dreamers" on Facebook. So we sought it be appropriate to link to this community, alongside Dreams' other social media presence from within the app.
At one stage in prototyping, we discussed the possibility of moving the community off of Facebook and into the app, but our research showed us the difficulties of moderating a community, this idea was since quickly scrapped.
The new home page
Some of the features moved into the Discover section allowed us to visualize a more fun overview of your savings on the home page simply dubbed "Dreams".
Here, your total savings is shown, and your "Dreams" are visualized through bubbles that differ in size depending on the savings target's size. The bubbles are enclosed by a status ring that shows the progress towards your goal.
Final thoughts
Key takeaways
With more time we would have liked to do a second round of usability tests to validate if the changes we had done after the first round was implemented properly.
Personally, I would have also liked to conduct a poll at the beginning of the project to get fresh data from potential users alongside the analysis of Dreams' competitors and previously collected data.
• Getting to follow a brand book was good, and lent more time to focus on UX
• Important to adjust the scope after the time given (quality over quantity)
• Getting to provide insights that would lay the foundation for real changes was a great motivator
Experience our solution
The following prototype was made for educational purposes, pages are in Swedish, and only partially interactable.
Thanks to!
The team
Sara De Prado, Secretary
Kevin Leckremo, General designer
Johanna Strandberg, Decider
Henrik Svensson, General designer
William Wernemar, Project lead
Dreams
Kathleen Asjes, Head of Insights
