There are three big issues with the financial education landscape: current solutions are outdated, especially compared to learning apps like Duolingo and Khan Academy; parents weren’t taught proper financial education in school, if they were taught any at all; and the economic landscape is getting more dire as the wealth gap increases.

Our mission with Finacy was to engage children in the classroom with a more modern financial education game, provide a means for parents to also engage, and build empathy for those who may not experience the financial reality of their peers.

Current State of Education Apps

EdTech is a difficult market. There isn’t as much funding available and we’re often dealing with issues ranging from procurement to curriculum when looking to enter school. Pedagogy and game design are also deeply technical fields that demand an expert knowledge and experience.

Luckily, the fintech, edtech, and gaming spaces include some truly incredible platforms from which we can learn and be inspired. I won’t include the apps that we saw as dated but let’s showcase some of our big inspirations.

Duolingo - Gamified EdTech

BYJU’s - Gamified EdTech

MyDoh - FinTech with Learning Modules

Toca Life World - Kids Gaming

Discovery

A common theme in early-stage qualitative research on younger users is access. Unless you have connections in schools, it’s difficult to get direct conversations. Even when you can the standard 1-on-1 interview is pretty intimidating for a kid. We’ll see this reality reflected quite a bit in the next few sections.

SMEs

As I mentioned earlier, the EdTech and Gaming space require some deep knowledge in pedagogy and game design, respectively. Therefore, our first stage was SMEs in pedagogy, child behaviour, and schools.

From our wonderful friends and colleagues we quickly learned that getting into schools early on would be a massive challenge due to state-based curricula and long procurement processes. This set us on a parent-child focus.

Building Personas from Parents

We began by sending out a survey to parents to learn what their financial education looked like, what they wished they were taught, and in what ways they worry about their children’s financial futures.

A well-crafted survey can provide a surprisingly solid set of early personas and this survey did an incredible job. From there we ran 1-on-1 interviews with select survey participants, validating and refining our personas.

Early-Stage Strategy vs. Scale-Up in Game Design

We were not a game design studio and did not have the resources to spend years on an early access title. Since we were also taking a hybrid EdTech/Gaming approach we could focus on the former while strategizing towards the latter with a gamified experience without having to deal with a game design engine.

We do, however, have to think like a game design studio for later stages. This means carefully choosing assets, building features that can fit into the wider game ecosystem, and building as much interactivity as possible early on.

Look and Feel

The cooperative lack of interactivity between a web app and a game means we need it to feel like a game through game-like assets, animations, and unconventional UI.

Paid assets are huge at this stage but we need assets that are modular so we can later build custom buildings, characters, vehicles, etc. I’ll show rather than tell:

Modular Assets

Animations

UI Elements

Experiments

Usability Testing

I’ve found that the best way to conduct user research with kids is with a prototype that they can get their hands on, rather through abstract questions. With a prototype we were able to do contextual research.

Device and Context

Not terribly surprising but tablets, Chromebooks, and landscape-oriented phones are by far the most important devices to support. Kids are also often multitasking: watching TikTok on a phone while playing a game on their tablet.

Text and Images

We overestimated reading comprehension of younger kids, meaning we needed to use more images to explain the concepts and later problems. Assets come in to save the day again! We also realized that we needed to split our sections into smaller pieces so we don’t overwhelm.

Sessions and Messaging

While our first release was based purely on teaching a concept and testing knowledge, our longer-term plan involved a life-sim to put those concepts into a real world. Perfect for multitasking!

We realized that we needed to create a system by which this method introduced features into the game as a sort of realism progression. For example, a 9 year-old can receive an in-game allowance that they can spend or save but having their bike break down might be a touch too real for them.

Final Designs