Improving Financial Literacy with E-Learning Systems

RESEARCH TEAM: 

Drue Thomas, Shayna Goldstein, & Melissa Santero

DePaul University,  Chicago, IL 60604, USA

The lack of financial education taught in American schools is a running joke among millennials.  So much so that there is an entire meme about it.  It's funny until you realize that  a lack of financial literacy is one of the strongest indicators that a young adult, will be vulnerable to financial hardship later in life. 

Our main goal is create an efficient and engaging way for young adults to learn about personal finance. Specifically, we aimed to create an e-learning system framework tailored to managing personal finance.

We wanted to answer the following questions:

• What is the current state of financial literacy among millennials?

• How might we improve financial literacy among millennials?

• What can we learn from existing educational systems?

• What would our new system look like?

OBJECTIVES

1. Identify the current state of financial literacy among millennials

2. Select a suitable vehicle for our framework by reviewing standard e-learning methodologies and existing applications

3. Create and test an initial prototype of our e-learning system.

Methods

EXPLORATORY RESEARCH

Preliminary Research

We started by performing some preliminary research in order to acquaint ourselves with the existing literature on the topic.

This project was actually inspired by a UX Strategy article I wrote called "Consumer Empowerment: A Strategic Approach for Banks". This paper proposed new strategies for Financial Institutions to empower consumers to build trust and improve relations with millennials. One of the key strategies I recommended was creating more robust financial education systems that employed e-learning tactics to facilitate deep learning and far transfer.

For our research review, we picked up where I left off and further explored financial literacy in young people, its correlation to financial vulnerability, and areas of finance that are the most challenging. We also evaluated existing e-learning systems and financial institution's learning tools.

Contextual Inquiry

To supplement our research, we interviewed participants within the millennial age range across a diverse sample of race, gender, locale, and family background. The interview script began with a consent form, introduction, and warm-up questions; followed by questions probing for demographic information, financial education background, future goals, and ideal features for financial education applications. At the conclusion of the interviews, Affinity Diagraming using Stormboard revealed common themes and insights to be used in throughout the rest of the project

What we Learned:

• Interview participants expressed an interest in learning more about finance and taking more control over their finances.

• There was some disconnect between knowing about finance and actually being able to perform tasks (i.e. budgeting, investing, etc.).

• There are few competitors in the financial literacy space despite an interest in more tools.

• Personalization and timeliness are important features of a financial tool.

Survey

We also conducted a short survey with our target audience. This survey allowed us to validate some of the information we gathered from our contextual inquiry with a larger pool.

 We gathered participants by using DePaul University's participant pool, directly requesting participation from friends and family, and posting participation requests on social media. A screener was used at the beginning of the survey to determine if they fit within our target audience, discarding results if the participants age was outside of the millennial target bracket. We evaluated out  survey results by reviewing charts created by SurveyMonkey.

What we learned:

• Financial goals and experience vary across participants.

• About 50% of survey participants had not previously learned about finance.

• Of participants who learned about finance, most learned from their parents.
  

SKETCHING & LOW FIDELITY WIREFRAMES

With the information we learned from our exploratory research we began sketching concepts for an e-learning system  that would be enticing to younger users and allow for a high level of personalization. 

Because of time constraints, we decided to focus on the core user interface elements, rather than specific lessons or measuring the improvement in financial literacy (I will actually be doing a separate research project on that topic--COMING SOON!). 

Borrowing elements from existing systems, plus some of the features our users mentioned during our interviews, we created key screens of the experience as paper prototypes.

USABILITY TESTING

We performed two rounds of usability testing using, first, the paper prototype, and second, an Axure prototype. While performing the usability tests, we followed a script that contained, warm up questions, and 3-4 scenarios to step through. We encouraged subjects to talk out loud and discreetly take notes and count errors.

We evaluated the first test before creating the hi-fidelity version of the prototype. For our second usability test, we used an Axure high-fidelity prototype to test the more interactive elements and expand our scenarios to include an actual lesson. There were few to no errors for this this round of usability testing with the exception of the 3rd scenario related to trophies.

What we learned:

• Clear navigation between lessons and progress indicators are key to user success.

• Trophies are harder than they look! While a trophy system was a good motivational tool for continuing lessons, aspects of the system and visual aspects confused users.

KEY RESULTS 

FAMILY MATTERS

From the interview and survey, it was clear that family members are the most influential source of financial advice for millennials; 70% of participants learned from their parents (More than those who learned in high school--33%--and in college--21%--combined). This meant a few things:

1. If you have family that are knowledgable about money, you are more likely to be financially literate.

2. If you don't have access to financially-savvy family members, your education will likely be limited to what you learn in school (if you have access to it) or, you will not learn at all.

This is problematic, but it points out a gap in the financial education space. It shows that we need a practical and accessible alternative for young people to learn about finance. These results also revealed a natural separation in our research questions. In the future, we will likely develop separate research specifically about the state of financial literacy and the implications of access and environment on financial success. 

EXPERT ADVICE IS KEY TO CREATING E-LEARNING SYSTEMS

We initially wanted our interview and survey results to narrow down specific financial topics or focus areas. That way we could feasibly build a functional e-learning prototype that would appeal to a wide range of users and we could create a rubric for testing improvement (think pre- and post- testing like my "How to Follow Recipes" project). 

Instead, we found that there is a lot of complexity in financial priorities per person. There was not a distinct "ranking" of financial priorities like we thought--from person to person there was high variation. This seems to align with our findings from the one-on-one interviews that finance is highly personal and varies based on the persons age, current financial situation and prior knowledge about finance.

Because we are not subject matter experts, it was hard to create "lessons" that we could accommodate the non-linear progression most users would have. This made it difficult to create even a partial system to use in a testing environment. If we were to build on this application, we would likely need more expert involvement.

This project is ongoing. For more information, please reach out!