A platform for
underbanked women.
&Sister
Company: Interactivism
Discipline: User Research, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI)
Duration: Jun ‘21 - Aug ‘21
Tools: Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
Methods: Ethnographic Interviews, Affinity Map, Prioritization Matrix, Personas, Competitor Analysis, Critical User Journeys, Prototyping
My Role:
Conducted 40 user interviews with immigrants in French and English
Extracted key insights
Led and organized affinity map
Developed deep and textured personas
Conducted competitor analysis
Designed high-fidelity prototypes
“Every month, along with eleven other women from her church choir, Leah put $200 in the geh pot. Each month, the pot rotated among them. Last month had finally been her turn. Leah had put the entire $2400 in the envelope for her daughter.”
— Min Jin Lee, author of Pachinko
Background
&Sister aims to empower low-income women to break the cycle of poverty.
We accomplish this through rotating savings clubs. They provide peer-to-peer loans and micro-insurance that are based on trust, financial inclusion, and positive peer pressure.
With COVID came a digital revolution, thus widening the gap between the haves and haves-not.
Pair this with low credit scores, predatory lending practices, and lack of trust in financial institutions, people are struggling now more than ever to help themselves out of poverty.
Purpose
Challenge: How might we provide low-income women with a digital platform to save money, access interest-free loans and financial education?
Desk Research
Formally called ROSCA’s in the US, they go by different names all around the world, such as stokvels, tandas, chit funds, and susu to name a few.
I studied the unique features of savings clubs from Bangladesh, South Korea, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, the Philippines, India, the Middle East, and West Africa.
Gye (Korea): members can pay extra to receive the pot first, while there’s a bonus for receiving it last.
Tontine / Esusu (West Africa): uses app built with credit score, health insurance, and small loans. Disadvantages include inflexible regulation, outdated bank laws, and lack of funds.
Stokvels (South Africa): groups are formed based on specific need, i.e., property investment or school fees. Includes stokvel constitution.
Tandas (Mexico): used by a 1/3 of the population and largely run by women. Strong social glue since members are relatives and friends.
I spoke with immigrant populations far and near.
I conducted 40 interviews in Paris and Los Angeles, in French and Spanish respectively, to understand motivations and pain points.
Understanding money may be a sensitive topic, I approached these conversations with understanding, respect, and empathy.
User Research
Affinity Map
I created an affinity map to organize insights, behaviors, and motivations.
Click on the preview to see the differences across saving clubs.
Key Insights
I recognized that trust stood out as the most crucial component that held the group together.
It accounted for the lack of formal regulation within saving clubs and contributed to a low default rate, below 0.05%.
- High trust, ensures accountability and minimizes defaulting
- Smaller groups, ideally 8-15 people to build trust and easier decision-making
- Special purpose groups, builds a supportive community
- Auctioning order, helps members who are in need of immediate monetary relief
- Same income bracket, lowers default rates
- Immigrant communities, popular because of low trust in financial institutions
I created these four personas to highlight different motivations for joining a saving club.
This includes building a credit score, having access to large sums of money, and building financial literacy.
Personas
Product Requirements
I then created a prioritization matrix that identified key features that are realistic within the scope of our company’s resources.
Orange highlights crucial features that meets user’s pain points.
Lo-Fi Prototypes
Final Wireframes
Future Projections
With pilot testing already underway, we are working on creating an MVP to organize and build trust. This foundation will allow us to hook into the financial market by partnering with banks for SME loans, debit/credit cards, and credit monitoring. Future projections include expanding to South Africa, Latin America, and the Philippines, and ultimately creating our own digital currency: an &Sister coin.
Reflection
&Sister introduced me to the importance of conducting thorough user research when tackling a new problem. Einstein said if he had an hour to solve a problem, he would spend the first 55 minutes understanding the problem.
By talking to people around the world and pulling tips from Mike Kuniavsky’s practitioner’s guide to “Observing the User Experience”, I realized that understanding users’ motivations is the most important part of any product development cycle.
“A good product that doesn’t satisfy the needs, fulfill the desires, or respect the abilities of its audience is not a good product, no matter how good the code or the visual design.” - Kuniavsky
Approaching conversations with curiosity over judgment, I was able to build a solid foundation on which I could extract valuable insights and generate a host of ideas.
It was fascinating to delve into the world of fintech to empower and give low-income women the tools to break the cycle of poverty, and envision the creation of a new digital currency that is tied to the value of the female economy.