THE CLIENT
Fifth Third Bank, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, has been the center of sound banking principles and superior service since 1858. Founded by William W. Scarborough and eleven other entrepreneurs they set out to help improve the lives of their customers and communities through banking. In present day, the purpose and promise remain the same, "to make banking a 'Fifth Third Better'".
THE CHALLENGE
Peer to peer (p2p) payment platforms continue to gain momentum in 2023, but issues and obstacles to adoption and usage remain. I was tasked to "design proposed solution(s) based in data and research that present opportunities for us to lead the next wave of p2p users in secure p2p payment technology."
Zelle's Key Challenge: Unlike other well known p2p apps, Zelle does not currently have an account strictly for teens. In fact, Zelle is prohibited to use unless the user is at least 18 years of age. I was challenged to ideate and design a product that would adopt Generation Z and Generation Alpha into the 5/3 (Fifth Third) Zelle platform, thus paving a way for the birth and longevity of new 5/3 customers. Seeing that the target audience involves minors it was important to factor in parents into my design and research.
"How might we create an engaging experience for the younger generations while also including parents into the fold?"
RESEARCH & PLANNING
First, I conducted aggregate secondary research to see what the data had to say in regards to younger generations and p2p apps. It is clear that Generation Z is adopting mobile p2p apps at fast rates as they come to age. It is expected that 80.4% of new users between 2023 and 2027 are to come from Generation Z. Both CashApp and Venmo offer teen accounts with limited privileges to the teen and full privileges to the guardian. It was clear that reaching Generation Z and Generation Alpha through their guardians and then onboarding younger users could raise usage and adoption of Zelle in the 5/3 database.
📈 Where does Zelle stack up?
Venmo = 77.7 million users
Zelle = 61.6 million users
Cash App = 51 million users
📈 What is the ranking of p2p apps amongst Generation Z?
Cash App = 68%
Venmo = 42%
Zelle = 36%
Straw Poll
My starting point was to take a quick straw poll regarding about 15 people's thoughts on Zelle. I wanted to quickly understand sentiments towards the app. I was met with more negativity than expected. Many expressed the lack of ease in accessing what they need within Zelle. A few others talked about their reluctancy to use Zelle because of the scams poeple had experienced.
"It is annoying to get to and Venmo is just easier to access."
These discoveries widened the scope of the project by adding in the ease of accessibility to Zelle in the 5/3 app and the issue of security. As the scope began to grow it was pertinent to meet with stockholders to discuss findings and next steps. It was understood these issues both play a part in the overall project, but after meeting with stockholders the priority in this challenge remained the adoption and usage of Zelle via Generation Z and Generation Alpha -- more specifically the teen onboarding process.
Comparative Analysis
I first wanted to perform comparative analysis in order to see how other platforms handle parental controls I performed comparative analysis with apps including Peacock, Paramount, and Disney+. This helped me to understand the mental model of guardians and also what it looked like on the child's end. It was imperative to look at and understand both sides.
This analysis aided me in understanding expectations and mental models of all users in regards to parental controls. Controls for the guardian will be a significant topic in designs for not only the guardian but also for the teen as they might have questions or expectations of what they can and cannot control.
My next step was to begin my competitive analysis of other p2p apps to see if there was a teen experience and how it operated. Analysis narrowed to p2p apps, Venmo and Cash App, as these two platforms are the only ones with a teen experience. Venmo proved to be more fruitful in my analysis as Cash App blocked anyone over the age of 17 to create an account (great for security and something to keep in mind for development).
Disney+ provides a kid proof exit for kids that can and cannot read. It also has a pin that one must enter each time to access the adult's page. No pin is required to enter child's account.
Peacock does not require the user to create a pin after creating a kid profile. Users will need to add a pin to the adult profile on own time in "edit profile" and enter it in every time when visiting adult's page (not ideal).
Paramount after creating a kid's profile requires the user to create a PIN to use when switching from "kid" to "non kid" profiles.
Competitive Analysis
🧩 Was the service easily accessible?
🧩 How did they involve parents/guardians?
🧩 How did they make it engaging for the teen?
🧩 Was the experience fulfilling for the teen and guardian?
🧩 How could I make it better?
Above were a few of the questions I needed answered or light to at least be shed upon in order to create a high-quality MVP.
Venmo Competitive Analysis
Venmo followed a few trends I was able to categorize as positive or negative which helped lead to possible opportunities in the design of the Zelle Teen App experience.
The discoveries I deemed to be opportunities needed to be confirmed through talking to users. I hoped to have enough time to gain consent from guardians and gather teen participants, but unfortunately the duration of the sprint did not allow for such events.
However, I was able to gather adult participants who had kids in both Generation Z and Generation Alpha to conduct in depth interviews. Seeing that this app heavily involves the guardians of teens I understood talking to them to understand their desires, pain points, and insights was crucial to my research and design.
In Depth Interviews
Next it was time to begin in depth interviews with participants who had children in Generation Z and Generation Alpha. I was able to merge business and research objectives to formulate questions that touched upon each objective in a harmonious way.
A Few Topics That Needed To Be Addressed:
🎯Understand the baseline perceptions of security in p2p apps
🎯Gauge amount of control user desires when using p2p apps
🎯Identify level of control guardian desires for themselves and teen
🎯Understand desire, if any, for moments of education for teen within app
🎯Gauge expectations (mental model) of teen app
🎯Identify their Burger King ("Have It Your Way) feature of app
Findings
📊Most used other p2p apps such as Venmo, Paypal, or CashApp.
📊The original selling point of Zelle being safer than other p2p apps was not that appealing to participants.
📊The instant transfer without a fee was a selling point when discussed.
📊Participants noted that when it came to safety measures they expected the bank to be doing their due diligence in keeping them safe while users still had control over things such as notifications, tracking, etc.
📊Although they seek agency over the security measures, respondents hold their bank accountable for any security issues.
📊They want confidence that a bank will always be on their side and make them whole.
📊All expressed interest in an account specifically for their teen.
📊Noted that they do not want "another thing to find" and what the teen account to be located directly under their own accounts.
📊Most participants cited that they would like the option for their child to have a digital debit card connected to said account. One stated their child "loses everything and I don't need there to be something else."
📊All took great interest in teen gaining financial literacy, practice, and education while using the app as long as the guardian still had total control.
Personas
The data collected allowed me to create 3 main personas embodying our target users.
Daniel King was my primary persona. It was important to design a fruitful experience for the daughter of someone like Daniel, as she is not as financially free as Reggie's and Yuki's kids. If I could design an engaging and beneficial experience for both Daniel and his daughter it could exponentially aid in the financial growth and begin the progressive evolution of a teen to raise the financial literacy/responsibility bar in their family.
That being said, raising the bar is for everyone no matter the starting point and I posit that designing for Daniel's daughter could begin to get the ball rolling or continue the roll for Reggie's and Yuki's children as well.
Due to limited time and access to members of my target user group, aggregate research in the form of an article published by Nielsen Norman Group, "What To Consider When Designing For Teenagers", aided in guidance to design an engaging experience for teens.
DESIGNING THE SOLUTION
To address the main desires and goals of Daniel, I decided to design a Zelle teen account (ages 12-17) that allows the guardian to have full access and control of said account all the while creating an engaging and education experience for teens.
As discussed with stakeholders, the scope of this project orbits around the teen onboarding experience and so I quickly got to work creating user flows, lo-fi wireframes, hi-fi wireframes, and prototypes.
Teen Onboarding User Flow
I created a site map to illustrate how the teens would onboard into their account and then the different possibilities they could explore once successfully onboarded.
Users will be prompted to "take a tour of their new place", but of course have the option not to and simply explore on their own time. Each of the prompts will not only tell the user what they can do, it will also be interactive for the person to practice new actions. If the action is completed a new prompt will be shown introspectively asking, "what else can I do?!", and will give an option to try something else or to exit the exploration. This will go on until the user exits or all spaces within the app have been surveyed by the user.
Teen Onboarding User Flow
Teen Onboarding Sketches
This is where the teen will be able to exercise a bit of autonomy with the look and feel of their app. Here they will pick the design of their card (decision of physical or digital would be left to guardian) and the style of how the app presents.
Teen Homepage including pay/request buttons, amount in accounts, and other possible actions.
More ideations of teen Homepage including pay/request buttons, amount in accounts, and other possible actions.
Teen "Goals" Sketches
The goals section is the area teens can set and aim for goals they have created for themselves such as saving enough money to by a Nintendo Switch or money for an item seen on TikTok Shop. The idea is they can set as many goals as they want, assign a picture to it, and track their progress with a progress indicator.
It was important not to overcomplicate the goals section as to keep up with the fast paced thinking and shorter attention spans of Generation Z and Generation Alpha.
Quick ideation of "goals" page and the possible steps that accompany it to create a goal
Teen "Savings" Sketches
I wanted to create a section that showcased how much money was saved and feature what rewards might be connected to the amount they had saved. Additionally, possibly showing how much money had been saved/spent in the week was a curious idea I decided to incorporate into a few sketches. Again, intuitive and engaging was the goal here.
Saving screen ideations
Lo-fi Wireframes
I iterated upon my sketches and after each round of peer reviews I was confident that I had arrived at a comprehensive set of features for my primary persona and user scenario. Next step was to create lo-fi and hi-fi wireframes to present to stakeholders
Lo-fi wireframes of different ideations of teen "Welcome" or "About" page.
Lo-fi wireframes of steps teen will take to onboard and get to home screen.
Lo-fi wireframes depicting when teen is fully onboarded and being taken through possible actions they can do within the different screens. Meant to be interactive and engaging.
HI-FI WIREFRAMES
Hi-Fi wireframes showing the welcome screen, home screen, savings screen, and goals screen.
Ideation of hi-fi wireframes showing the welcome screen, home screen, savings screen, and goals screen using different colors
It was important to incorporate vibrant colors on the welcome and home screens to shy away from the stigma that banking is boring and lack luster. These are the first screens users will see, thus it is important to present how we want to be received.
Additionally, giving autonomy to the user to add a picture to their goal if they desired (prompt would be on next screen when user hits the right facing caret and picture would take place of text) was important as some are inspired by words and others by pictures.
The addition of the reward indication bars on both the savings and goals pages are to induce the experience of rewarding stimuli which causes the release of dopamine causing feelings of pleasure, satisfaction, or motivation. All important emotions when trying to create healthy financial goals and habits.
CONCLUSION
I presented my findings, results, designs, and recommendations to stakeholders and it was extremely well-received. Many statements were made about incorporating my findings into the 5/3 app as soon as possible. It was understood that the scope of the project only addressed part of the overall challenge, but given the timeframe my work proved to be beneficial towards the company's overall goals.
The main purpose of this project was to bring in more longevity via customers to the 5/3 ecosystem and I hypothesize that this app upon testing and further iteration will do just that. This product will bring in new young customers ranging from 12-17 who will then be i the 5/3 system once they age out at 18 and can create an account directly within the database.
Pain points and desires of parents are addressed as they no longer have to scramble to get cash for their child and they can easily transfer money to their teen's account. Along with parents' desires, their child will be getting financial practice/education with each use of app as optional notifications can be enabled encouraging, helping, or alerting the teen about their financial behavior.
If I Had More Time...
📍I would have liked to be able to interview teens to gather their desires and pain points so I could incorporate them into the designs.
📍I was not able to flush out the notifications regarding education, alerts, or encouragement as much as I would have liked due to time, but the idea is that teens would receive notifications letting them know of their savings balance, how close they are to their goals, how much money was spent that day/week, alerts of frivolous spending, etc. All of these notifications would be pointing back to making good financial choices.
📍Perform testing on designs to gain intel on next steps for iterations.
Final Pain Points & Recommendations (Out of Scope)
Many of my interviews shined a bright light on many pain points customers have with the Zelle app, however acting on them did not quite fall into the scope of the project and stakeholders were clear on what was expected this first cycle of the project.
Pain Points:
🚨Most participants did not believe, understand, or know why Zelle was more secure as they claim.
🚨Many distrust banks specifically to both keep data safe and use in responsible ways.
🚨People complained that once in the 5/3 app it took "too long" to figure out how to access Zelle.
I recommend:
🔋Adding a section for users to click and read dedicated to explaining the security of 5/3 and thus Zelle. Seeing this area and associating it with security indirectly communicates to customers that Fifth Third cares about keeping customer's bank accounts secure.
🔋Sharing some detail or proof of the bank's role in making accounts secure may help put customers at ease, even if they do not read through all the information. Respondents may not actively seek out the details of the bank's internal controls, however they want reassurance there is something in place to mitigate risk.
🔋Reduce amount of clicks to access Zelle by possibly adding Zelle to the 5/3 homepage or creating a widget for 5/3 customers to access.
With all this said, this was quite a large project that had and has many facets to tackle. It was fun to generate new ideas for an upcoming generation and uncover grievances of current users. It is always a good time being an advocate for new and current users.