Helping children learn about money
Our attitudes to money are shaped from as early as 7 years old. This project set out to develop a new banking proposition aimed at parents a children, helping to build children's independence and nurture good financial habits.
"I like it, it makes you feel like as a child you are being trusted more in
the family" Sasha, 11
Case study summary
Challenge
The market lacked banking services tailored to children and families, meaning many young people’s financial needs were unmet.
Approach
I took an innovation design approach to involving a diary studies with 10 families, co-design workshops and iterative proposition testing.
Outcome
Designed a proposition to meet families’ evolving financial needs, directly influencing NatWest’s acquisition of Rooster Money.
As Lead Innovation Designer;
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Defined the design approach
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Shaped the proposition vision
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Created a strategic road map
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Mentored Design Team
My role
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Lead Innovation Designer (Me)
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Innovation Designer
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Junior Innovation designer
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Deliver Manager
Core Design team
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Product Owner
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Business Analysts
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Marketing Managers
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Strategy Consultants
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Wide range of SMEs
Wider team
Our future vision for family banking
Providing products and services to help young people build confidence and navigate uncertainty in a rapidly changing world.
The project objectives
Rather than creating detailed product features, journeys and roadmaps, this project would explore the future vision for NatWest's family banking proposition.
01
Understand wider lifestyle challenges and needs facing young people and families today
02
Understand how money management is introduced and taught within a family dynamic
03
Define a new segmentation model for young people and families
04
Create and validate a new strategic proposition and identify key opportunity areas
Discover
We used a diary study as the main research method to build a vivid picture of family life and the role money plays within the family dynamic. I then used a survey of 300 families to understand the area from a quantitative perspective.
Diary studies helped understand family life
A competitor analysis highlighted opportunities
Market analysis identified an opportunity for a holistic multiphase proposition built around longer term relationships with families and young people.
The diary worked with 10 families over 3 weeks
Families were recruited to reflect of various demographics, locations, ethnicities and family structures.
We ran a diary study with 10 families to capture 'moments of growth'
Families were asked to capture any 'moments of growth' that showed their children's increasing independence. The study was punctuated with three weekly interviews.
Past moments of growth
Started with an interview to understand each family and map key past milestones of independence.
Example moment: Walking to school alone for the first time.
Today (during the study)
Parents documented moments where children showed growing independence and responsibility.
Example moment: Taking charge of buying groceries.
Future aspirations
The study ended with a conversation about parents’ hopes and fears for their children’s future.
Example hope: Making good friends at secondary school.
Define
Collaborative synthesis led to new insights
The diverse research approach meant multiple different data types, which needed to be distilled into concise, actionable insights. I led a series if collaborative sessions to synthesise our findings
We learned that confidence is the main factor in building independence for young people
Confidence is the key
It's the main metric of success and a goal in itself.
This is true for both parents and children, being an essential ingredient children's independence .
Moments matter
A young person’s sense of independence is influenced by a combination of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ moments (explained below in segmentation model).
Independence starts small
Doing the ‘lite’ version of adult activities let's young people test independence in safe spaces.
This is often where money gets introduced.
Help is crowdsourced
For parents, balancing the level of independence with keeping their child safe is a challenge. Support is often crowdsourced through trusted social networks.
We created a segmentation model and customer archetypes
These two artefacts proved useful when communicating findings following research, and helped frame opportunity areas. The archetypes would play a key role in ideation workshops.
A new segmentation model
Analysis showed themes of pivotal moments which influenced the sense of independence. We were able to connect these with 4 different age ranges to create a new segmentation model.
Archetypes for parents and children
We had observed various patterns in behaviour from both children and parents which informed the archetypes above. These would be used to frame collaborative ideation and testing later.
Develop
Co-designing new proposition ideas
Co-design facilitation has always been one of my strongest points. I started with a collaborative ideation workshop then worked with my team to refine concepts for testing.
I started with ideation and concept sketching
I find this is an effective way of making high-level concept decisions early in the process. When mentoring junior designers I encourage them to experiment with sketching rather than jumping to digital first.
The remote workshop combined individual and group activities
I invited 20 participants who represented business (viability) , technical (feasibility) and customer (desirability) areas. I find this balance of participants creates a rich mix of skill sets and perspectives.
Refining ideas into tangible concepts
Following the ideation workshop, I worked with my team to analysis the outputs, identify themes and create tangible concepts we could test with customers.
Affinity clustering
With high level themes defined, I introduced a framework to tie the themes back to the customer need and provide a clear rationale.
7 distinct concepts
Each new concept was summarised and described using concept posters as shown below.
Concept posters were created for customer testing and co-design
Each concept poster focussed on the value exchange and outcome (the what) rather the mechanism of interaction (the how).
Deliver
Refining the strategic proposition
We went back to the 10 families and tested the 7 unique concepts. I then analysed testing data, prioritised the concepts which resonated most and refined based customer feedback.
Weaving concepts together to create proposition which evolves with families
The final outcome was a multi-staged proposition addressing the needs of families within each stage of our segmentation model.
Each stage of the proposition balanced parent and child needs
We highlighted opportunity areas and concepts for each stage of the proposition. The outcomes focused more on the value proposition and less on technical delivery.
Opportunity areas for each life stage
Refined concepts from ideation workshops were included in the final deliverables of the project.
Illustrations help describe visually
I often find using more visual ways to present a story or concept can resonate with audiences in ways written copy can't.
The impact
Our work played a key role in shaping NatWest's strategy
The strategic proposition and opportunity areas was well received by ExCo members. Insights and recommendations influenced the set up a Youth Banking department and a roadmap of activity.
NatWest acquired a family banking fintech start-up
Rooster Money offered some of the functionality defined within our strategic proposition and would provide a foundation to build from.
Enhanced product offerings and marketing
The project also influenced the decision to create accounts aimed at children and parents.
Money confidence campaign and tools
NatWest has since launched tools and content aimed at building young peoples money confidence and independence.
Fin.
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