Koa: Research and design solutions for a Kenya based fintech

Research Plan

1. User Survey Findings:

• Top expectations were convenience, security and privacy, and transparency

• Top motivations were savings and investment plans offered, interest rates offered, and the ease of use

• Trust meant Transparency, Credibility, and Security to users

Our only initial access to users was through Koa’s community of Telegram users. The telegram channel is one of the avenues that users come to clarify, complain or seek more information. We had 46 unique feedback points. This led to some interesting insights and starting points to begin our research on Koa’s pain points-

• withdrawal

• transfers

• referrals

• interest rates

Things to note here is that the users not only wanted to know the timelines but also how each one of these processes worked and looked? So not only the whens but also hows and whys…

3. User Interview Findings:

There were clear themes that emerged from the interviews…

• Users wanted to get the big picture information on processes and progress

• Users wanted personalization

• Users wanted proactive and clear communication

• Seeing progress once they set specific goals motivated them to save more

• Users trusted Britam and that helped build trust with Koa

4. Competitive & Comparative Analysis

SWOT Analysis

After we had a better understanding of the competitive landscape, we were able to do a SWOT analysis for Koa

Once we had a clear idea of what the Koa user’s likes, dislikes, needs, and values were, we were excited to create a persona that we would design for!

Meet Kelvin!

We defined Kelvin’s problem…

Kelvin wants to understand how each feature within the app works so that they can make informed decisions about saving money towards their goal while staying motivated to keep saving. He wants to ultimately build trust and confidence knowing their money is safe when using the Koa app.

Challenge

By the time we reached the design stage, we were 2 weeks into a 3-week sprint. We had to re-evaluate and see if we would have time for usability testing, considering the time difference, a tight timeline, access to users’ screens remotely. While the interviews could be conducted via a WhatsApp call instead of zoom, usability testing came with its own challenges. We had to set expectations with the stakeholders about what the deliverables will be and worked around this problem to make sure our solutions reached the testing stage, even though the sprint ended. I will speak more about this in the DELIVER stage…

Design Strategy and thinking

Both we and our stakeholders were excited about the research we had conducted so far. We now had to plan out our designs so we were able to address each pain point in a simple, executable, and intuitive way. I am excited to share with you each design solution and our thinking behind it. From our research, we had identified the four main user needs which were

• Building Trust

• Motivation

• Clear and Proactive Communication

• Personalization

2. Trusted partners screen addition to onboarding carousel

We found in our research, that even though Koa was a new App to Kenya and still was working on building trust, 100% of the users interviewed trusted Britam, and some had mentioned that they decided to join Koa, because they heard through a friend that Koa partnered with Britam. While this information is readily available via google and Koa’s website, it isn’t shown on onboarding. We added a screen of trusted partners to the onboarding carousel to inform users upfront about Koa’s trusted partners such as Britam. This was a “now” solution and was very well received by our stakeholders

Motivation: Monthly Financial Journey & User Savings Journey

1. Monthly Financial Journey:

There was no monthly summary of users’ savings, experience, and activity on Koa. Users had expressed that seeing a big picture of their savings would motivate them to save every month and set more goals. It is accessible from the homepage and it includes Monthly total savings and interest earned, snapshots of referrals earned, goals reached, deposits made, customer care queries. The stakeholders were also excited about this.

2. User Savings Journey:

This feature allows users to take a look at their savings goal from a big picture perspective within Koa. This would also encourage users to continue saving and create new goals.

1. Informational Journey Roadmaps:

We incorporated a clickable link that explains the step-by-step process and timelines for earning a referral bonus. Similarly, the informational journey roadmaps were created for withdrawal, savings goals, and one explaining quick save vs goals.

1. Customized Notification settings

There is currently no way to customize notifications on the Koa app. Users wanted push notifications that would help remind them to deposit into their savings, updates on when their friends joined Koa, and timeline updates associated with their withdrawals, transfers, and deposits. The Koa homepage had pending items on it, and creating this feature it would reduce the clutter there. We built a slide-up overlay to explain what each notification meant.

Usability Test Tasks

As spoken to earlier in the design stage, we did not get to usability testing, so instead, we planned out all the tasks for each design solution on our Figma file and handed it over to our stakeholders so that these solutions could move on to be tested. I am sharing some of our tasks and how they were laid out…

Learnings and Insights:

Working with a completely different market and people was a unique and insightful opportunity, not only in learning from them but also to collaborate and empathize, with their problems, outlook, and perspectives. I am so very grateful that I had this opportunity! Here are some of my learnings…

• To listen and prioritize what the business and users needed “now”. The information journey maps, even though were simpler solutions than the chatbot, would solve current problems of user hesitation and confusion.

• Even though the stakeholders were very excited to implement some of the design solutions, we were not able to conduct usability testing, which was one of the stakeholder’s asks. However, to be able to pre-empt our reduced deliverables, communicate them and thus adjust the expectations of the stakeholders was one of the best learnings.

• Problem-Solving and being able to see how to move the process along with what resources we had, instead of waiting for others or ideal ones. The case in point is the amount of insight we were able to gather from the telegram channel, much before a single user interview was conducted.