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Society of Grownups
Translating a brick-and-mortar to a digital experience
Project StatementSoG existed as a stand-alone in-real-life space in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that offered group classes on a range of personal financial topics as well as individual planning sessions with a Certified Financial Planner. The company wanted to attain a wider reach by offering it’s services to a wider demographic by translating the experience online. This project was also the gateway to several different ways for the SoG to generate revenue. If successful, it would allow us to scale to grownups beyond the physical space and open opportunities for business models like the promotion of product partnerships, paid advice, white-labeling, and more.
❋ RoleI was the lead UX Designer on this project, driving research initiatives, facilitating workshops, developing concepts, wireframing, prototyping, conducting usability testing, and architecting the final product.
❋ Key User Pain PointGrownups are overwhelmed by the education and advice they receive around their personal finances and don’t know how to make it actionable during their “oh shit” moments and life transitions.
❋ Success MetricIn the prototyping phase, we were most interested in emotional response and desirability as an early indication of product market fit. Upon launch, we would look at sessions per user, monthly active users and task completion as indications of engagement and the ability to monetize.
❋ Comapny Core Values• Putting money in perspective
• Enabling your sense of adventure
• Democratizing financial literacy
• Seeking happiness over wealth
• Championing transparency
• Teaching as well as learning
• Helping you find your inner adult
Foundational Research
To ground our research, I designed a program consisting of:
• 1-1 interviews with existing customers
• A review and analysis of Financial session data (income, debt, etc.)
• Compiled market research
• Conducted a competitive analysis
From these initial insights, these major pain points arose:
• Personal finance is scary
• Triaging information amongst many sources is natural
• Users feel conflicting information is abundant, and there is no one true source to rely on
• Current personal finance apps specialize in one area (i.e., mortgage, investment); there isn’t a full picture of users fi’s financial health
• Income to debt is a huge limitation
• Most users were struggling with the decision to optimize for now vs save for the future, and were not able to do both
Conceptailizing
The core issue our foundation research revealed was that financial illiteracy was the root of all financial issues. We decided to begin there. Much like our CPA’s were doing in real-life, our digital concepts would weave education into our advice so that complex financial concepts became more digestible. Monetization moments would come at a later phase as we started to understand what products could be or service to users, and only after building rapport.
Goal: Prototype three divergent ideas, providing users with a plan to increase financial literacy and take action.
• What elements resonated the best?
• What’s missing?
• Did users understand the concept, and could they see potential value?
• What method of delivery worked the best & why?
Concept 1: The Mascot
Since we knew users’ primary emotions were stress and overwhelm when approaching personal finance decisions, we created a concept that offered support and cheerleading to curb anxious feelings and make the product more approachable.
Concept 2: Case Studies
In my observational research conducted during 1-1 Financial Planning sessions, I noticed a theme os users feeling reassured and having more clarity when their CPA shared similar stories from previous clients. This concept leveraged storytelling to keep users’ panic at bay.
Concept 3: Conversational
Our third concept leveraged a more conversational and perceived personalization feeling that users experience in real-life sessions with a CPA.
Testing concepts with users
I designed the testing protocol and interview question design and tested all three concepts with six users for each concept, comprised of 3 exisitng customers and 3 non customers. The high-level findings were:
• The Mascot works only sometimes
• Quizzes help break up the “work” and give a sense of accomplishment
• Values check-ins are essential in providing a sense or calm and accomplishment
• The idea of seeing “what the Joness’ are doing” was highly valuable
• Users find it very important to see their own data reflected rather than staged example data
Persona Development
After collecting insights from testing with users, I analyzed and consolidated user behavior and perspective into three major personas to aid the design, development, and marketing team in future product development.
Product Development
Results
Teams
As the product started to shape out, we saw a natural focus for teams to develop around the core elements of lessons, profile, design system, and tools. Product owners were deployed across these areas.
Beta Program
We formed a beta testing cohort from 50 existing and non-existing members. It ran for 3 weeks. We had weekly check-ins via Typeform surveys to see how things were going. We also collected feedback via email. Initial reads were largely positive. Though there was still a strong desire to see everything at once, making it tough for users to gauge long-term value.
A Unforseen Shift
Our parent company, MassMutual, was experiencing a downturn in profitability in other sectors of their business towards the end of this project. Eventually, they decided to reduce funding to new ventures, like ours, only keeping the content arm and a few classes running at Society of Grownups. Eventually, they closed down the space and de-prioritized this project entirely, and our team was unable to see a long run of our product.