
A Mobile App Committed on Cultivating Wealth Management Experts through Long-Term Flexible Systematic Learning and Incentives for People Who Have None or Little Interest with Limited-Time on Financial Knowledge Study
Solo Project / MOBILE APP DESIGN
May - July, 2018
$earning is a comprehensive stock investment educational platform, which introduces the psychological reward mechanism, system graphics, accompany learning groups, etc., to help provide Long-term learning incentives for coping with the financial knowledge learning frustrations. The irritations are caused by the contradictions among maintaining learning interest, massive systematic knowledge, and the limited, fragmented learning time. Through well-considered design, $earning will build and strengthen trustworthy customer relationships and eventually combine with $vesting as a twin app to help the investment beginners realize the wealth freedom.
The Phenomenon

When talking about stock investment, not everyone feels comfortable, confident, exciting. The general feedback is more like investing stocks is an advanced skill to learn, and the learning curve could be too long to master. The feeling of insecurity and out of control always present during the user interviews. Some people even think spending time in the stock market will decrease their life quality and life span because it brings anxiety, uncertainty, unhappiness. Especially for people who have no interest in the economy, math calculations, and related fields, paying attention to the stock market is more like double torture.
What people say:




Summaries: Stock-investment Knowledge is important and needs persistence in learning.
Competitive Research
Feature Comparison:

Competitive Map:
High Impact



Low Effort
High Effort


Low Impact
User Feedbacks & Pain Points
The User (Beginners) Feedbacks
"Compare with other stock trading apps, Stock Master is the most comprehensive one, but also complicated. The knowledge center of Stock Master simply provides access to Wikipedia. I mean, it contains great information, but it does not help me digest quickly, and I still need to do more research on my own, kind of overwhelming, though I do not consider myself is a brand new beginner."
"These apps are all quite tricky for me. And I always forget to check out those apps. Sorry I didn't check them out from last time you asked me."
"The professional terminologies, massive information, I easily lose the direction when I open the app, then I feel sleepy."
"Most of the apps do not provide an instant terminology check function, which makes me frustrating to search on my own."
"Real-time simulator seems pretty good to me. I installed Best Brokers. But I don't have the passion for checking it out often."
Summary of Pain Points:
After the competitive research, I found that many existing apps provide real-time market simulators to help users practice stock-trading without worrying about potential loss. But the user, who has limited investment knowledge and time, cannot stick to these apps for persistant practice and always feel exhausted when they encounter knowledge obstacles.
The further observation reveals that no matter how much spare time the users have, as long as they do not feel interested and confident in investment knowledge learning, they will not make time for it.
The Niche
How to liberate people from the overwhelming learning reactions and stimulate their passion for absorbing investment knowledge is the market niche. It solves the real problem that exhausting learning situation decreases study interest and confidence dramatically.
I believe that introducing a platform that brings constant joy and incentives with scientific time utilization on the investment knowledge learning will help people who have none or little interest with limited time to master wealth management more comfortably and quickly.
We will know this to be true when shows up the increased number of learning competitions, group discussions, newly registered professional advisors, investment beginners who stay with $earning loyally, etc.
Vision & Mission
Vision Statement:
To be the world's best investment learning & practice mobile app, where anyone, especially the beginners, can efficiently pick up, digest, and practice the complicated investment knowledge with great joy.
Mission Statement:
$earning strives to offer users the most efficient learning and practice method to build up their knowledge systematically in their fragmentary time.
Persona

Susan
- Own multi-stocks
Low High
- Frequency of reading stock-related news
Low High
- Financial /Investment knowledge
Low High
Bio and Demographics
- Age: 32
- Tech Experience: Use a Mac, iPhone, not a power user
- Education: Some College
- Family: Single, has one kid but not live with her
- Employment: HR, owns company restricted stocks
Goals and Needs
- Wants to have her own house someday.
- Needs money to support her kid.
- Wants to travel more.
- Wants to be more beautiful and attractive.
Behaviors
- Loves dancing, 3~4 times a week.
- Feels satisfied with her current job.
- Visits her kid, parents weekly.
- Dancing, shopping, and hanging out with friends quite often.
- Dates a lot.
- Has company restricted stocks only.
- Wants to travel.
- Spends money on clothes, shoes, make-ups regularly.
- Does not pay attention to investment that much.
- Wants to grow wealth.
- Has a good life/work balance means more to her.
- Does not want to get stressed-out by stock investment.
- Likes to enjoy life.
The Challenge
The User
The Investment
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Lack of interest in learning investment knowledge
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Lack of time on learning
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Insecure feelings on stock trading
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Pressures from potential loss
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The learning curve might get too long
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Intricate knowledge
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Massive information
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Constantly changing market
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Require systematic study
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Require practice
Bio and Demographics
- Age: 38
- Tech Experience: Use a PC, Android Phone, not a power user
- Education: Some College
- Family: Single, wants to get married someday
- Employment: Project Manager, wants to be prepared for retirement
Goals and Needs
- Wants to have his own house
- Wants to have enough money to provide for his future family
- Wants to have investment knowledge to make good investments
- Wants to have multiple stocks & bonds to increase his wealth with relatively low dispersive risks
- If his financial condition allows, wants to invest in real estate for better retirement preparation

Chris
Behaviors
- Reading news 2~3 times a week.
- Busy at work.
- At weekends, he usually visits his parents and hangs out with friends.
- Dates when time allows or makes time if he meets someone he likes a lot.
- Has an investment account and only invested around ten stocks.
- Tends to invest more and safer.
- Would like to use a simulator before real trading.
- Prepares to buy a house, still in the consulting phase.
- Wants to prepare for retirement.
- He likes reading stock-related news but does not know enough financial terminologies and analysis methods.
- Investments more relies on most people's choices or friends' recommendations.
- When he saw the financial terminologies, he skips.
- Own multi-stocks
Low High
- Frequency of reading stock-related news
Low High
- Financial /Investment knowledge
Low High
Solution & Strategy
1, Psychological Reward Mechanism
Trading Game Simulator
Psychological feedbacks:
This idea comes from gaming psychology, which endows incentive strategy when user overcome the proper tasks one by one. The gamer will get psychological rewards and would like to play more.
Unlike other real-market simulators, which only serve for virtual stock-trading, $earning integrates game theory into real-market simulator strategically.
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Sense of Achievement ---Winning from peers;
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Sense of Accomplishment--- Task completion;
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Sense of Being Urged --- Want to try competition again.
etc....
2, System Graphics
Personalized Learning Tree
$earning is committed to helping people with limited time and interest to learn investment. But investment knowledge requires systematic learning. How to use the learners' fragmented time to build a clear knowledge structure in their minds is quite challenging.
A personalized learning tree can combine their piecemeal knowledge into the knowledge system and provide a visual graphic to systematically consolidate the new knowledge.
3, Accompanying Learning Group
Chatting Room
(with Professional Advisors)
$earning creates a win-win environment to help both the users and professional advisors achieve success.
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Studying alone is really hard to continue. But with a group, people will not feel that way. They can share, discuss the knowledge. They might found that they are not the only ones who have trouble understanding certain specific knowledge.
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Users also can invite each other to trading competitions via the trading game simulator.
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For each group, users also can choose to allow professional advisors to join in for potential advising. If an user found a good advisor, they can have one on one chat on $earning.
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Also, professional advisors can build their businesses from teaching or advising. The reviews define their popularity.
4. Daily Learning-Stimulation
Smart Reminder
Smart reminder reminds $earning users of the on-going events. It cooperates with all other strategies and related features.
For example, who temporarily leads the competition; how much the user gains/loses on the real market simulator; time to review the learned knowledge; the latest key news for certain companies, etc.
It is worth mentioning that, combining with 'time to review' reminder and self-built learning tree, $earning utilizes fragmented time to build systematic knowledge for users. It follows the nature of human beings' memory and endows people who have limited time with learning efficiency and learning confidence.
low Fidelity Potential Solutions:
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Ideation
Story Board:

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Feature Prioritization:

Site Map:


Wireframes

Branding

Prototyping

2 Smart Reminder & Learning Tree Function
$earning motivates users from multiple angles. It could be from the competition the user participates in, the news of the latest market, the way to manage wealth properly, etc.
Since the target customers of $eaning are the people who have none of the little interest in financial knowledge with limited study time, the learning tree will help them organized all the knowledge they gained fragmentally into a comprehensive system to make their learning experience efficiently and effectively.

1 Goal Setting
Using the Goal Setting strategy for the Trading Game Simulator is one way to consolidate the psychology reward for users.
The goals come from users' personal needs and wants, not from the vague concept of making money, which endows meaning for wealth management.
Meanwhile, it cultivates a good habit for the user, which will be strengthened by the smart reminder function. Reminder example: Spending money by what you gained from the investment, not from the initial capital.

3 Smart Reminder & Professional Advising
Users may have questions from the competition, the regular check of the stock market, the news & insights, etc. Instead of self-learning, they can always seek help from professional advisors.
For example, in a stock trading competition, they can invite the professional advisor to access the competition portfolio, group chat, or both. For sure, an excellent professional advisor also can build his or her business through $earning.
Prototyping --- From register to a stock trading completion.
Future Steps


Strategy Map
