Inspiration
Studies have shown that financial literacy is the lowest among Gen Z^1. A 2021 study commissioned by the Financial Times suggests that people between the ages of 16 and 24 were the least likely to be financially literate out of all age groups surveyed. Within this group, financial literacy tends to be lowest among those who have never attended college, which could be why almost 40% of them feel anxious and stressed about money^2.
To help Gen Zers learn about personal finances, we wanted to develop a gaming app for financial literacy. We chose to do this for mobile because 96% of adults in our chosen target group owns smartphones and therefore can easily use it^3, as well as them being able to learn “on the go”, quick and easy.
We took inspiration from Duolingo, Snapshot, and Nerdfitness.
What it does
Dollars & Sense will help these young adults learn about personal finances by setting goals and gathering points when they complete specific tasks. Similar to how connecting Progressive auto insurance users to the Snapshot app can make them eligible for insurance deductions, selected banks who choose to partner with Dollars & Sense will give young adults (ages 16-24) the opportunity to have their APY percentages increased OR their credit card interest rates decreased. This would all depend on how active and complete their learning goals are.
How we built it
We built the app using Replit, Visual Studio Code, HTML, CSS, Figma, Canva
Challenges we ran into
Figuring out how to keep all the individual pages centered and not smushed together when viewed on a desktop or mobile device. Deciding on what applications to use for our project and making a mobile app or website. Learning more about what HTML can do and figuring out how to use CSS properly. Had to drastically scope down from making a mobile application to a web app because of our skill level and time constraints.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Team: We collaborated a lot and learned from each other. Because of that, despite not coding as much of the web app that we wanted, we were still about to agree and produce a nearly complete prototype that we’re proud to present. Even with the web pages, we were very stumped after realizing we had two different HTML files corresponding to two separate CSS files. Still, we were able to talk through it and produce a clean, coded web design to illustrate our idea.
- Shaquanta - Learned how to use new elements in HTML and how to do CSS in general. The login page turned out nicely, even though it was painful to make.
- Yana - that we have a completed prototype
- Johanna - Learned about more features in Figma, and how to incorporate different types of interactions in my design
- Mariah - Learned about VS code and more HTML/CSS elements.
What we learned
- Importance of scope
- Laying out and outlining designs before embarking helped us narrow our scope
- Frequent communication to keep us all in sync
- Learned what a repository is
- Learned what a container is in CSS/HTML
- Learned more about Figma
- That app development is much more complicated than we anticipated
What's next for Dollars & Sense
To expand the web app as a mobile iOS/Android app and include an even more user experience with features such as:
- Scanning receipts to track budget and earn even more points
- Fun short videos to enhance the learning experience
- Have a purchase analysis
- Additional financial literacy courses on retirement, family planning, stocks, crypto, home-buying vs. renting
- Partner with Miami high schools & colleges
- Collab with banks for special offers/perks
We also want to conduct user testing to see what users like and dislike, as well as to what extent the app fulfills their needs.
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