Fintech

Design Revamp

A money payment app that teaches kids about financial literacy

Design Revamp

quick overview

Zimble, a money payment app for kids, was designed to help parents teach financial literacy while giving them control over their children's spending. The app incentivizes kids to complete chores and set savings goals, with parents overseeing transactions and tracking task completion. Initially, Zimble had basic screens, but the external design vendor's work failed to meet the client's expectations.

The project faced several key challenges:

Usability Issues: Existing screens lacked intuitive navigation and clear user flows for parents and kids.
Parental Control Visibility: Ensuring parents had full visibility into their children's spending and task completion.
Engagement for Kids: Creating an experience that balances fun and learning, making financial management enjoyable for young users.

Business Objective

To revamp Zimble's design into an engaging, user-friendly app that empowers parents with control while teaching kids about money management, ultimately improving user satisfaction and adoption.

About the client

Zimble empowers kids to manage their money while giving parents complete control over spending. Through the app, kids can set financial goals, receive payments for completing chores, and track their spending, all while parents oversee the process. Parents can monitor progress, set saving goals for their kids, and receive real-time updates through task stories in a fun, engaging format. This project was a freelance gig and consultation. Zimble initially had basic screens, but the client was dissatisfied with the external design vendor's work. I was brought in to revamp the app's design, addressing usability issues and creating a more engaging, intuitive user experience for both kids and parents. The goal was to elevate the design and create a seamless flow that aligned with the app’s purpose of teaching financial literacy to kids.

Stage 1: Client Engagement

The project kicked off with a physical meetup where the client's dissatisfaction with the initial design became clear. They felt the design wasn't capturing the user experience or the essence of Zimble. During this conversation, I assessed the problem beyond aesthetics, analyzing the value positioning and adoption potential.

Initial Design Assessment

The first step in the process was to take a fresh look at the existing design of Zimble's parent sign-up flow. I immersed myself in the experience, exploring the app from the perspective of both the parent and child users. During this phase, I focused on understanding how well the design communicated the core values and goals of the app, while also evaluating its usability and overall appeal. This hands-on exploration allowed me to identify immediate areas of improvement related to user flow and visual communication.

UX Audit of the Current Design

The audit revealed a lack of connection in the user journey. The existing design felt bland, lacking contrast, and failed to address individual personas. I created a sitemap with comments and layered feedback on each screen to highlight gaps and opportunities for improvement.

Quick Audit and my initial thoughts

After the initial exploration, I conducted a basic UX audit to gain deeper insights into the app’s shortcomings. Using a "method acting" approach, I placed myself in the shoes of the end users—both parents and kids—attempting to empathize with their needs and expectations. I also considered the business goals Zimble was trying to achieve. The audit revealed that the app lacked a cohesive journey and meaningful engagement for its personas, as well as issues with contrast and overall user flow. I annotated a sitemap, layering feedback across each screen to highlight these issues.

Stage 3: Discovery Workshop

A focus group session with Zimble’s CEO and co-founders was held to brainstorm Value prop and define the "hills" they wanted to achieve. The group consisted of business and product stakeholders, focusing on long-term outcomes rather than technical details.

Value Prop Discovery session

During the discovery phase, I led a Value Proposition Workshop to align the team on key user needs and business goals for Zimble. We started by discussing the defined user profiles, focusing on their jobs, pains, and gains. This allowed us to identify gaps between user expectations and the current product.

We then mapped out the value proposition, using sticky notes to define products and services that could meet user needs and create value. Throughout this process, we linked these insights to business success metrics, such as engagement and retention, ensuring that proposed features would support Zimble’s growth.

By aligning user needs with business objectives, we laid a solid foundation for the ideation phase, where we would prioritize features that solve real problems while driving long-term engagement for Zimble.

Stage 4 : Centralizing Business Logic and Key Functionalities

With the insights gained from the value proposition discovery session, I formed a clearer understanding of Zimble’s messaging and core user needs. Recognizing the importance of making the goal-setting experience fun and engaging, I proposed a shift away from traditional lists towards a story-based format.

Refining the product positioning and delivery

I then drafted a future state vision of what Zimble could become, incorporating key touchpoints like card activation, goal-setting, and spending oversight in a more intuitive and enjoyable flow. The feedback from stakeholders was overwhelmingly positive. The team appreciated how the design captured both the playfulness needed for children and the control required by parents, creating a balanced product that reflected the core values of Zimble. This exercise laid the foundation for mapping out the app’s visual hierarchy and feature prioritization, ensuring that both user personas were fully addressed in the final product.

Stage 5 : Ideating on the Future State

I prioritized the key elements that should take up the most screen real estate, focusing on mapping out a visual hierarchy. The goal was to ensure that what grabs the user's attention first aligns with their journey and needs at that specific point in the app.

UI Refinements - Clear, User-Centered Design

The initial UI design lacked appeal and didn’t resonate with the target audience. By introducing cleaner, more polished elements and incorporating familiar design cues from social media platforms, we aimed to create a more approachable and secure experience. The revamped design places essential features like account balances, saving goals, and recent activities at the forefront, ensuring that users can easily navigate the app with confidence and clarity.

Interaction Design Enhancements - Simplified and Engaging

In the improved interaction design, we focused on making user engagement more intuitive and fun. Notifications for tasks are now gamified, encouraging children to complete chores quickly. Parents can react directly to their child’s spending, providing instant feedback that promotes responsible money management. Additionally, the task review process is made more personal with story-like visuals, fostering a stronger connection between parents and children as they interact through the app.

Exploring interaction ideas

I created low-fidelity clickable prototypes to flesh out how the user interactions might feel. This allowed us to test the flow between different menus and modal popups, helping us understand how users would navigate through the app and interact with key features. These prototypes gave us early insights into the app’s functionality and usability before moving on to higher-fidelity design stages.

Stage 6 : Freezing the Requirements

At this reflection point, I gathered feedback from stakeholders and users to refine the design. After making key adjustments to improve usability and align with goals, the core features and flows were finalized. With the design meeting both user and business needs, we froze the requirements, ensuring a clear handoff to development with minimized scope changes.

Feedback and Refinement

We gathered critical feedback from users, which highlighted the need for non-monetary tasks to be equally emphasized within the app. The initial design overly focused on tasks tied to financial rewards, so we adjusted by introducing a clear separation between monetary and non-monetary tasks. This allowed for a more balanced user experience, where parents could assign tasks with or without financial incentives.

Final High Fidelity

After implementing the feedback, we polished the final designs, ensuring a cleaner and more user-friendly interface. The design now integrates key features such as account management, savings goals, and task tracking seamlessly. These improvements focused on making the experience intuitive and engaging for both parents and children, delivering a refined, fully functional app ready for development.

Stage 7 : Final Handover

The handoff was done without a formal design system, as the focus was on a design revamp rather than creating new patterns. I provided the team with the final working design file, including all screens and interactions, along with a sitemap that mapped out the flow and user interactions within the app. This ensured that the development team had all the necessary references to move forward smoothly.

Working files + Sitemap

Final Thoughts

The design revamp was truly a night-and-day difference, which goes to show that it’s all about finding the essence of the product, framing it properly, and positioning it effectively. The original design lacked a clear understanding of user needs and didn’t fully segment the experience between the two key personas—parents and kids. Once we aligned this with the business logic, everything came together seamlessly.

All in all, I think Zimble is such a fantastic idea. As a parent myself now, I can really appreciate its value and would love to use something like this for my own kids one day. It’s been an absolute pleasure working on this project, and I’m excited to see how it evolves in the future!