Designing an app concept that uses the context of student debt to inform financial education.
Designing an app concept that uses the context of student debt to inform financial education.
Project type: University brief
My role: User research, usability testing, wireframing, prototyping
Tools: Miro, Figma
Duration 14 weeks
Project type: University brief
My role: User research, usability testing, wireframing, prototyping
Tools: Miro, Figma
Duration 14 weeks
Problem: How can we stop the alienation of university students and graduates in handling their student loan debt?
It is reported that 1.8 million people have student debt over £50,000 that they lack autonomy over. Despite the loans being income contingent, they are not built with the intention of independence but rather its high interest rates, automated, obscure system burden graduates and limits their options, this not only alienates university from its target demographic but suspends progression and participation in further life stages e.g. buying a house, car etc.
Solution: Designing and formatting financial education with student debt at the forefront.
My research led me to understand the unique aspects of student debt in that they work more as a tax than a conventional debt, participant sentiment in interviews appeared passive about the debt, but with fears on its effect on their future due to their low financial literacy and procrastination to begin learning. In my solution I addressed this by providing syncing options that take information automatically from your student loans account and input it into the app, the app further uses calendar syncing to look for areas within your calendar to start learning in order to build habits, and finally the app rewards your learning by providing you with a value in monetary terms of how much your learning affected the total of your debt.