Mobile App

2024

Gradbank is a mobile-first financial consulting and micro-investment platform designed to help university undergraduates develop sustainable financial habits. Rooted in human-centered design principles, the project explores how digital tools can support students in understanding, managing, and growing their finances, preparing them for long-term financial stability beyond graduation.

Undergraduates often receive inconsistent income from various sources but lack the structure or literacy to manage it effectively. Many struggle to differentiate between short-term wants and essential needs, leading to impulsive spending and poor saving behavior. This research sought to understand how a digital solution could intervene early — helping students build confidence and control over their financial decisions.

Guided by Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) methods, I applied a mixed-methods approach to uncover students’ financial behaviors, motivations, and barriers.

Quantitative Research: Conducted a structured survey with 25 students to identify spending patterns and saving habits.

Qualitative Research: Interviewed 2 participants for deeper insights into emotional triggers, attitudes, and decision-making contexts.

Competitive Analysis: Evaluated fintech apps like Cowrywise and PiggyVest to understand how existing solutions engage young users and where they fall short.

This multi-layered approach grounded the design in real human needs rather than assumptions.

Using affinity mapping in Miro, I clustered recurring themes and frustrations such as “lack of guidance,” “short-term financial mindset,” and “low confidence in investment decisions.” From this synthesis, I created two detailed personas, Oyenkama Eka-Ikoma Fortune and Daniyan Praise, representing distinct user types with different saving motivations and digital literacy levels.

These personas guided every design decision, ensuring the final solution remained empathetic and relevant to users’ actual contexts.

To ensure an intuitive experience, I designed clear user flows and information hierarchies. Each screen and feature, from onboarding to savings goal setup was mapped to specific user needs uncovered during research. This step transformed abstract insights into tangible, testable interactions.

Low-fidelity wireframes were developed to visualize early layouts and test the flow of information. The visual identity, including the logo and color palette, was later designed to convey trust, empowerment, and growth values essential to financial confidence among students.

Goal-Oriented Savings: Helps users plan and track saving goals with milestones.

Micro-Investment Options: Enables small, low-risk investments to encourage early wealth building.

Financial Education: Offers short lessons and tools for financial literacy.

Career Opportunities: Connects students to job and internship listings aligned with their growth goals.

Security & Reliability: Prioritizes trust through transparent design and reliable interactions.

Through usability testing conducted on Maze, participants rated onboarding as intuitive and appreciated how goal-oriented saving motivated consistent engagement. Feedback emphasized the value of visual progress tracking and simplified investment guidance. One of the users mentioned that the onboarding was too long and adding a debit card during sign up is unnecessary. I should be able to save without having to add my card so he said. After this feedback, I added the skip option to the add debit card section on the onboarding.

This project deepened my understanding of how digital interventions can shape real-world behavior. More importantly, it revealed the emotional dimensions of financial management among young users; anxiety, self-doubt, and optimism. These insights continue to inform my research interest in designing for behavior change and digital financial wellbeing, central to my HCI focus.