HIPO Finances Made Easy So You Don't Miss Out

Inspiration: Bring human interaction and artificial intelligence into digitalized banking. With less people going into brick and mortar banks, the banker-customer relationship is eroding. Video conferencing brings back the person to person contact instantly, and at the click of a button. Your financial adviser can leverage Watson to help manage your money better, while serving your personally.

How it works

Challenges I ran into: My role was to consult the team as an anthropologist, and provide a deeper understanding of the needs and values of the targeted consumer (millennials). Unfortunately, my team was involved in another hackathon that demanded more of their time, and therefor could not avail themselves to my comments nor implement my suggestions that would add value to the app. Furthermore, the final product was developed without the time for us to get feedback from potential users.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of: Because the application was developed within a short time frame and my suggestions could not be added, I coached the team on how to deliver their pitch to the judges. I emphasized that the video conferencing was a value added in order to fulfill a void created by the digitalized banking system. It was important for me to get my team to understand the millennials’ need beyond video chatting. The Occupy movement and sea of home-foreclosures paint the landscape of uncertainty and distrust for millennials. While the personalized experience in choosing a financial advisor who met the client’s needs wasn’t incorporated into the final stage, my suggestions were acknowledged.

What I learned: Next time I will leverage primary and secondary data to support my suggestions and help the team better visualize the user experience and target their needs.

What's next for HIPO Finances Made Easy So You Don't Miss Out: The team intended to develop push notifications for every transaction the customer made. Utilizing behavior psychology, the noise of pennies dropping would ring into the user’s mobile phone as a way to remind them of their spending. More importantly however, I hope the team will add a feature that will allow bank-users to “shop” for a financial adviser. This would include profiles of advisers (with their picture) that would list their specialized focus (savings, bankruptcy, 401K ect) and also have a brief biography of the banker. By shopping for a banker/adviser the user has the capacity to choose someone they feel comfortable with in sharing their personal financial information. A ‘connect with LinkedIn’ button would also be integrated so users can search their existing networks for advisers. This concept builds on the best marketing practice: personal referrals. By personalizing the user experience and rekindling the human interaction, HIPO aims to diminish fears in financial management by providing transparency, knowledge sharing and trust-building.