Research and concept ideas for Dreams.
Dreams is an innovative finance app that helps their customers save more in a fun way.
Our first real client case in school. Dreams were first launched in 2016. Dreams is a financial app that helps you invest, pay off mortgages and save money for your dreams usingsmart saving hacks. This project was our first and far from perfect. But a great learning experience.
As a relatively new and growing company, Dreams wanted ideas and concepts on how to upsell and cross-sell its services. Dreams wanted help with better understanding the needs of their customers and solutions that would personalize the experience of the users. It was a research-heavy case, where we focused most of our time mapping out the needs of different customer groups.
From the get-go, we knew that this would be a very research-heavy case. To make the most of the three weeks we were given, our team focused early on setting every member on different tasks and roles to make the team as cross-functional as possible.
The first week solely focused on researching, mainly by conducting tests, face-to-face interviews, and surveys. We did surveys with existing users and oral interviews withnon-existing users. What we could see, was how different behaviours and priorities were in different age groups.It may not come as ashock for many - however, much of the saving hacks and gamified elements centred toward a young audience. People in an older age group were not as likely to engage with their saving hacks. Our impression was that it didn't emit the level of seriousness they wanted. So, to provide a more personalized experience on the app, we thought of how we could saving hacks and gamified elements that would also engage this group.
The design we did feature some classical elements of gamification. Points and rewards. The user's activity in the app being rewarded with benefits such as discounts and offers. With these benefits, the users can save money on necessary purchases related to their everyday life and receive generous rewards for their continued hard work.
On the Score page, the user will get more detailed information about the points. Get more points by completing tasks and see all the discounts and offers which are adapted tothe user’s savings goals.
The differentbenefits offered in the app should allow users to save further with discountson necessary expenses. Perhaps a nice offer, like a free coffee or a ~10% discount on a bag of groceries? The benefits must be carefully chosen to not encourage unnecessary spending behaviour. Our idea is that points are collected through long-term savings. It is based on three different factors – the elapsed time of savings, the frequency of deposits, and whetherone chooses to manage savings in funds. This could be a way of creating incentives to save long-term and smarter. Because long-term saving is a behaviourthat is actively encouraged and rewarded with our solution, a form of a loyalty program is formed.
