LUCIE BOLÉ
A digital financial literacy program for teachers and their students
Role
As the Senior Interaction Designer on the team, I led collaborative efforts and discussions with clients and strategists to find innovative solutions to deliver the best digital experience possible. My responsibilities were to design the two platforms (for both teachers and students), and to guide the team's Junior Visual Designer to create a coherent design system.
🔨
Capabilities
Interaction Design
Prototyping
Design System
Illustrations
🔥
Team
Lead Designer
Interaction Designer (me)
Visual Designer
Strategists
Product Manager
🏠
Industry
Financial Services
Education
Challenge
The objective was to create a seamless & accessible hybrid solution flexible enough to work with all teaching and learning styles—giving teachers the same level of customizations as the paper program.
The team needed to maintain the customizability of their current paper program, but also create two platforms: one for the teachers to customize, set up and automate the program, and another for students to experiment with “real-life” financial tools and build lifelong financial skills.
Impact
We delivered an inclusive digital program that allows teachers and students to engage in a virtual micro-economy and develop their financial literacy.
Teachers are now able to set up the program with step by step guidance, customize to their classroom’s needs, automate payments and bills, and view student transactions and goals.
The student platform, a ‘real’ kid-friendly bank account interface, allows all students in the classroom to make and receive transactions, save money for personal goals, pay their bills and receive their paychecks just as they would do in real life.
Approach
I joined the team to design the minimum viable product of the digital program, after the A/B testing of wireframes with teachers was conducted and features were prioritized. I quickly assessed potential user flow issues, proposed solutions and collaborated with the client, to finally deliver two complex digital platform prototypes in only a 3-month timeframe.
I worked not only on experience and interaction design but also in making the design system approachable and inviting for the classroom atmosphere, taking into account legibility and visual interest, as students would be interacting with this platform on a daily basis.
🧑🏫
Teachers Platform
👶
Students Platform
Ethics
Sustainability, inclusion and accessibility were an essential part of my work on this project. I led ideation sessions around ethics with my team, to identify impactful opportunities within the project. I was responsible to ensure that the ethical directions identified and best practices were continuously followed.
These included: following WCAG guidelines, talking to a diverse range of research participants (race, gender, religion, culture, age, abilities…), ensuring accessibility to all research participants (screen reader users, interprets, wheelchair access…), making sure human diversity was represented through out all deliverables, and more.
be inclusive of different socioeconomic perspectives
consider older or shared tech
multiple modes of learning - audio, visuals...
take into account different learning modalities, styles, abilities
teaching materials about climate risks + green financing, ESG funds...
ensure usability with assistive tech
leave room for mistakes without the harsh consequences of the real worls
make sure our prototypes take into account green IT best practices
making features accessible with low internet connectivity
make sure website is accessible to all
test with users of assistive tech
give teachers instructions on reusing draft paper to avoid waste
🤓
Key Takeaways
Creating this MVP and jumping in a project mid-way was challenging in some ways, but I managed to quickly get a sense of the whole project's vision.
The first few weeks, I didn't have access to all the files and had to find ways to work around this limitation by finding new ways to collaborate with my team.
This project was also my first time mentoring a junior designer in creating a coherent design system. We've had several working sessions and I guided them with clear tasks and directions which ended up being an educational and rewarding experience for both of us.
© 2023 Lucie Bole