Introduction 

Financial Partner - A platform to help to build confidence and empower small business owners to make better-informed decisions. This model is a potential solution for banks to support sole traders.

This was an individual passion project, which I was given the research, mindset, and potential solutions. My role was to focus on the design phase, I created a rapid prototype for future testing, validating problems in the small business banking segment.

The Challenge

I was given a mindset that identified the key behaviours of sole traders. My challenges were to:

• Choose an appropriate tool

• Feature prioritise a list of potential solutions

• Create a prototype for user testing

Goals

Role

Timeline: 2 days 

Platform: Mobile app

Team: Jasmine Cheng (Me)

Introduction to the Solution

After evaluating the midset provided, I created a mobile app prototype to help small business owners:

• Consolidate basic financial skills

• Change time-poor behaviour, and

• Aggregate banking articles and webinars

This mobile application links with your main calendar, allowing you to visually organise in-app webinars to your schedule. There are also features such as a saving function for articles and video tutorials, and an upgrade option to access 1:1 coaching with expert business advisors.

The Mindset —

A sole trader is a simple form of business structure, meaning owners without advanced financial skills to be responsible for all aspects of their businesses. They often:

1. Lack support in business management and do not know where to turn for help.

2. Lack time management skills, which eventually became ignorant in upskilling.

3. Get overwhelmed by the amount of information available on the internet

The Tool — I chose to create a mobile app

This model is aimed to launch under banks, to identify its early adopters, I decided to target people who use mobile banking.

From research in 2020, mobiles devices are responsible for more than 60% of digital traffic in countries like Australia, the US and China. 90% of their mobile time is spent on apps

Research from Roy Morgan also shows that mobile banking users' satisfaction levels were the highest, compared to interactions via internet banking and branches.

The Solution —

By evaluating the mindset given, the solutions are:

To provide support to help consolidate financial skills:

• Guidelines to upskill in business finance

• Short videos and tutorials, stories of other small business owners

• An online community and webinars to provide business advise

Visually organise their day-to-day schedule so they can identify opportunities to upskill:

• A calendar for owners to schedule webinars (free) and 1:1 coaching (paid)

Provide freedom to save materials and aggregate them in one place:

• Owners can save articles and videos for future references

• Access previous webinars and recordings in history

The Design System

Interactive Prototype

Future Steps

I will test the prototype based on the following assumptions/scenarios:

1.Small business owners are less willing to upgrade as they do not have the budget.

Methods to measure:

• Compare engagement rate when users land on the upgrade screen

• Measure conversion rate after users are notified with in-app upgrades during on-boarding

2.As this model was aimed to launch under banks, the credibility of the in-app materials will be less likely to call into question.

Method to measure:

• Number of saved articles

• Sign-up rate to webinars and increase in engagement on the upgrade screen

Want to taco ‘bout it? 🌮

Reach out on LinkedIn! I’m always down for a chat.