EasyInvest

Inspiration

Did you know that minority groups, on average, have between 9 and 16 percent lower financial literacy scores compared to Caucasians? Additionally, a study conducted by Ohio State University found that an immigrant status lowers financial literacy exam scores by about 27 percent. Learning something new can be extremely daunting, especially for less privileged populations, however, it shouldn’t be. Being financially literate often entails the knowledge needed to make informed decisions pertaining to certain personal and/or business finance areas like real estate, insurance, investing, saving, tax planning and budgeting. Financial literacy shouldn’t be only for privileged populations - and EasyInvest is built to change that.

What it does

Taking inspiration from award-winning educational apps like Duolingo, our EasyInvest web app guides people through the basics of financial literacy by taking them through introductory concepts in investing, before reinforcing their learning with a series of case studies to simulate the process of making effective financial decisions. Furthermore, unlike other learning tools which leave you hanging after a barrage of learning materials, our website offers a quiz after each course where you can test your knowledge. If you get stuck with any of the prompts, there are multiple hints and prompts along the way or you can ultimately go back to the course page to review the material.

How we built it

After an extensive brainstorming session, we narrowed down the scope of our app from a comprehensive review of financial literacy information to a visually attractive app that focused on investing, saving, and budgeting. Next, we prototyped the user interface and flow of the app using Figma. After agreeing on the basic layout and features of the app, we began development in ReactJS to create a multi-page website to create components that matched the feel and flow of our Figma prototypes.

Challenges we ran into

One major challenge we faced was adapting to the limitations of remote communication which made it more difficult to directly demonstrate to each other what we thought was viable given the time constraints of the hackathon. On the technical side, our lack of an effective way to handle version control due to our difficulties syncing Github with Visual Studio Code was a big roadblock because we had to run local copies of the code that may not coordinate well with each other after significant development. A majority of our team were also first time hackers who had not worked in many collaborative tech environments. There was a learning curve in understanding each team members’ roles and how they fit into the project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that a majority of the visual prototypes created on Figma ended up being implemented onto the final product and the design of the website is extremely simple to navigate and visually pleasing. We’re also proud of being able to help each other understand our separate disciplines and being able to bridge the functionality and visual design components of our website together. Lastly, some of our members had to learn new coding methodologies and languages such as Javascript and ReactJS during the development of EasyInvest, which is an amazing feat.

What we learned

We learned new coding languages such as React and Javascript and the use of Figma for visual design. We learned how time consuming it can be to implement more complex, reusable components such as sidebars, buttons, and animations and to focus on building the minimum viable product. We also gained insight into the indigenous community and immigrants and the apparent gaps in knowledge regarding budgeting, saving, and investing.

What's next for EasyInvest

Next steps for EasyInvest include implementing more learning methodologies and best practices for helping less privileged populations. We hope to implement user testing to validate and iterate on our product based on collected data. We want to implement different language options for our learning modules to accommodate those who are new to English. In addition, we hope to build out the rest of our website with more robust interactions. Lastly, we hope to optimize our product for mobile platforms in the future.