— ROLE
Product Design Lead
User Researcher
— DATE
May 2021 – Aug 2021
— METHODS
Ethnographic Research
Surveys / Interviews
Empathy Maps
Usability Research
— TOOLS
Figma
OVERVIEW
According to the Census Bureau around 18.5% (60+ M) of the total of the U.S (329+ M) population is Hispanic. In recent decades it's been established that this population is fast growing and vital piece of the economic ecosystem of the U.S
With this in mind we seat out to understand the young hispanics, specifically the first and second generation aged between 18-38 years old. Inside this group we found that Single Hispanic Mothers often suffer from more problems as sole household heads and in many situations they are not a priority for the current financial tools. We want to change that.
We think Familia, can potentially benefit the Hispanic Single Moms and their children and improve their financial lives.
DISCOVER
The Ethnographic Research had a duration of more than 190 hours, and it included 24 participant ages 18-38 and in some cases their family members. This we conducted in partnership with RED Associated and focused on behavioral economics.
The findings from these behavioral research indicated the Hispanic community is focused on 1. Saving Beyond The Now, 2. Supporting Family Members and Communities and 3. Improving Credit Scores, which becomes the foundation for a prosperous financial life, and is what our participants aspire to have.
What we saw was that often times these participants expressed anxiety about the financial incertitude they could face, specially those who were still living with their parents or working in low-hourly-wages. They did not wanted to be in financial distress as they saw their parents suffer in the past.
That gave us a key insight: Financial education is a family affair.
Once we started thinking about the hispanics as a close-knit community centered around the family we started demystifying the family lives of our participants. That lead us to focus on the single mothers of the bunch and to do research about the hispanic single mother's population in the U.S
There's a total of 13M Hispanics Households in the U.S. Out of these around 3.2 are households composed of Single Moms, and their primary source of support often times is the government, in second place they find support from their families.
Overall the research on the difficulties single mothers suffer revealed they need help in several areas such as:
– Help with buying food
– Access to low or no cost health care
– Cash assistance
– Help paying medicare premiums
I also did research into the time they currently spend applying for government programs and which are the programs that they find the most beneficial for their situations.
In order to have a clear understanding and empathize further with the Single Moms, I conducted another set of 6 interviews, this time specifically with mothers to 1 or more children under the age of 10. We selected participants of Illinois, Texas, and Florida.
For analyzing the interviews information I use the method of building an empathy map where I focused on the "think and feel", and "say/do" spaces to understand clearly what could be their motivations and main pain problems.
That information is what became the base for our user Persona.
PROBLEMS
With the information gathered from along with my team, we selected 3 main problems where we think we can provide satisfactory solutions for Hispanic Single Mothers:
LACK OF EDUCATION
Many of them don’t have a strong financial education and would like to change this in order to provide that education to their children.
NO VISIBILITY
- Many mother’s don’t know what benefits they can actually apply for, and many times the process to apply is not clear to them.
LACK OF SUPPORT
- Often times single moms feel they don’t have the right community to support them and advice them for specific situations.
Contact
email@domain.com
000-000-000
IDEATE
With the insight from the additional interviews we moved into exploring different potential solutions. To get us started I facilitated a remote workshop using Miro with my team. Using the "How Might We.." method we started diving into exploring different solutions.
SOLUTIONS
We focused on solving the problems above with key design solutions that would address each of them.
EDUCATIONAL TOOLS
Provide them with access to materials and frameworks that mothers can teach their children, such as tracking of savings, spending and credit scoring.
ACCESS TO RESOURCES
- Simplified guided application that will use the user’s profile to find and suggest other options of gubernamental support or other family benefits.
COMMUNITY
- Connecting to a supportive community of mothers that can provide advice and understanding in areas like motherhood and financial education.
Contact
email@domain.com
000-000-000
Other examples of wireframes around community building within the solution.
DESIGN
In order to start testing if the solution areas we wanted to focus were accurate we created a brand name (which is what gives this project it’s name). Through brand awareness and card sorting exercises the team and I settled on the name: “Familia”.
VALIDATE
With the landing page ready we set to do concept testing with users we recruited using UserZoom. We set specific parameters for the user profile via a screener.
FINDINGS
We showed this landing page to women in the Florida area. See some of the highlights of the results below:
• The most appealing concept was “No more fear” because they are interested in learning more about managing their finances and clarify the financial concepts they don’t quite know yet
• 70% plan to request some government support in the near future
• 100% are living worried about their next paycheck
• 90% are worried about what they are going to teach their kids (financial education)
•Participants said they understand the purpose of the site to “provide help and resources to women struggling financially”
• Participants said the site gives them a positive feeling and would like to be able to test the app and bond with the community
•90% said they would come back to use the site
•100% would like to join and be part of a beta test of this app
• 100% shared their email for follow ups
• No one has seen a similar product that they think they can use in the market right now
Once we had this results, I decided to create a storyboard to exemplify the journey a single mother could follow, and explain our stakeholders where we could see the benefit of the use of this new product in driving customer growth and product adoption.
In these 8 frames it’s explained how a mother discovers our application, how they can sign in, onboard and start using the solution. Once they see the benefits we expect the single mothers will bring their families on-board as well.
DELIVER
We continued to work with the N.A leadership of our organization to set the next steps and technical feasibility of developing this solution.
Conclusions
Reasons to believe
As we continue to do research to continue refining our value proposition, design and interactions we have some conclusions that are guiding us towards the next steps of this project.
• We have uncovered deeper areas of problems that have helped us recruit users that we know can benefit if a solution is provided for their problem.
•Focusing on a niche (1.3 M potential users) can help us create a meaningful solution that can be scalable, and can be pivoted (single fathers, legal guardians) in order to grow the product later on.
• We have our own biases (considering that all customers think the same), but it’s surprising how much we can challenge those when you empathize and place your self in someone else’s experiences and try to understand their environments.
• This solution could grow with the users, meaning that using a “Benjamin Button” strategy (from Section 4 Strategy guide) it would become more important the more time is used by the mothers or their children.
• Four our primary business stakeholder (SAN N.A) this could be a new product that’s offered in the region (FL) that could help expand the user pool, and focuses on a growing market of debit card users (which are some of the primary transactions the organization has metrics of increase since 2020)