dolla
Equitable fintech app to make investing easy and automated.
Project Overview
Challenge
Underrepresented groups, particularly Black and Hispanic households, face significant barriers to wealth accumulation due to a lack of access to financial investments. Despite similar spending power within their income brackets, they often prioritize short-term status-driven purchases over long-term asset-building. This disparity in equity ownership perpetuates the wealth gap, leaving these communities financially vulnerable.
Solution
Dolla aims to empower underrepresented groups to effortlessly build wealth through automated micro-investing linked to everyday purchases.
By leveraging the desire for status and habit-forming technology, the app enables users to invest spare change into highly liquid assets. The goal is to bridge the equity ownership gap by removing behavioral economic biases in financial decisions to support long term financial success while capturing a portion of the underbanked US consumer market.
Approach
Research indicates underserved households often prioritize status-driven spending but face lower rates of financial investment ownership, such as stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, limiting wealth-building opportunities. Dolla aims to address existing gaps by tackling these behavioral biases, offering an accessible experience that encourages smarter financial decisions and long-term security.
01
Bounded willpower
People may choose short-term benefits over long-term goals, even if they understand the optimal choice. For example, someone might put off saving a portion of their paycheck, even though they know it will help them reach their financial goals.
02
Framing
Expressing long-term benefits in short-term terms can help people value them more.
03
Providing smaller rewards
Offering smaller, more consistent rewards can help people engage in healthy behaviors.
Primary Research
Insights
From the interviews, three key insights guided the design process. Aspects of the app design and features were chosen to address each of these insights.
Lifestyle Preservation is Key
Users want to improve their financial health without drastically changing their spending habits or sacrificing their lifestyle.
Simplicity and Accessibility
Users find investing and saving intimidating and want an easy way to start.
Emotional Drivers Matter
Users feel proud and validated when they believe they are making financial progress.
User Personas
Personas were based on real user interviews and research, capturing their experiences, needs, and pain points. These personas represent different types of Gen Z users—beginners, experienced users, and those with different preferences—helping to understand user behaviors, goals, and motivations, guiding improvement of the overall experience.
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
I landed on focusing on the core screens users will encounter while using the app. In the wireframes, I aimed to include the key features such as round-ups, savings forecast calculator, and the ability to bypass the lengthy KYC onboarding process and gently walk users through the steps to set up the account in self-paced task prompts.
Branding
Name & Logotype
Typography
ZT Talk was selected as the font for the logotype and H1 headings. For remaining headings and body fonts, Inter was selected for its readability.
Color
The typical green common in finance was pushed to the edges to bring modernity and vibrancy. Slate blue was selected to add a complementary and grounded feel. Pink was selected to add a touch of fun to notifications that can sometimes feel bothersome.
