Sherpa

Competitive Audit
Survey
User Interview
Persona
Client Interface
Prototype
Concept Testing
 

Sherpa is an early-stage startup that is looking to offer a new way for early-career individuals to invest their savings in the stock market. The individuals they wish to serve currently hold a number of beliefs about investing, including its difficulty, upfront cost, and lack of flexibility.

Sherpa Leadership has personally witnessed their friends and family struggling with investing their money. They wanted to understand how they could apply their financial knowledge to develop a mobile application to connect and educate people to invest profitably.

TEAM: Kari Anderson, Sho Iwahama, Traci Shellum, CJ Marxer, Matt Even

The Challenge

Millennials are the largest generation in the workforce. They influence consumer spending and are conscious about about socially responsible investing. The internet grew up with them and they are socially connected with the access to technology. 

Currently millennials explain investing as complicated, difficult and complex. Working with financial advisors can be expensive and time consuming. The Millennials experienced the financial crisis in 2007 and watched their parents lose their jobs and investments. Many are conservative in investing and prefer to save their money to be risk adverse. These perceptions prevent a large population from gaining financial growth by investing. Financial investment apps fail to address the community and social connections Millennials utilize daily. The Sherpa app will address the trust Millennials can gain by connecting socially within a community. 

My assumptions beginning the project were that millennials had a stigma against investing in the market. I was concerned about the abundance of investment apps already available. The team set out to understand what did users value in an investment app.

The Journey

I began the project by simply breaking down what the components could be for a financial app. I sketched out the 3 phases of a users experience. First is to attract the user. The second step allows the user to practice before investing their money. The last component was engaging the user to invest their money.

User Interviews

The team individually interviewed millennials and shared wireframes with the goal to discover what users valued in a financial app. The key components reviewed in the interview were education, social media and security of information. 

The majority feedback from the interviews was that users would like more education on finance. They would like the education to come from trusted individuals they could follow. These remarks were confirming a social connection for the financial application.

Alongside the interviews a brief survey was also collecting information. The survey also confirmed that 70% of the respondents were interested in sharing financial gains and loses if they were part of community with a common goal of learning. 

Persona

I analyzed the interviews and surveys of the diverse group of millennials and created personas. 

Survey

The development of integrating social connection as a key component for Sherpa was tested in a survey. The proof of concept was communicated in a website landing page. The landing page was included within the survey. The participants provided feedback on the concept of the Sherpa model:

1. Learn by doing.
2. Diversify.
3. Follow, than lead.

Participant's shared their e-mail address as a commitment to use the finance app. A majority of survey participants did share their e-mail address, providing the team confirmation to the proof of concept.

Prototyping

Key interface screens were prototyped to communicate the social integration of the app. The diversification score, proprietary algorithm developed by Sherpa, was incorporated into the prototype. The score could be a factor users would review to learn investing success from other investors. 

Prototyping and usability testing surfaced a few concerns brought forth by potential users. Users asked if they would have the ability to filter what information was shared on their profile. This comment supported the human behavior of following before leading. Beginner users were not comfortable sharing their information until they had some success. Users also requested to be notified who was looking at their profile. Social sharing of financial information should consider some discretion.

The Conclusion

Users are very interested in investing, beginning with a low risk investment. The goal is to save for long term financial planning. Research and interviews provided insight that users wanted to learn by doing, follow trusted advice before leading and be part of community.

The research, testing and interations allowed my team to provide the insight of what users valued in an investment app. The insight was presented to the Sherpa Leadership. Sherpa was impressed with market research and are a step closer to knowing their user. They are awaiting further investment from partners to make their concept a reality.