Introduction

Build Early Money Habits provides age-based, interactive money lessons for children 10-12
years old (5th and 6th grade). It is a five-week interactive live course taught online via Zoom
where children learn personal finance essentials. Parents pay a one-time fee to enroll
participants.

Build early Money habits

Objective and Goals

The client gave me a two week timeline and requested that I conduct visual research and analysis and use the resulting insights to develop brand attributes and artifacts to give them a distinct visual identity which included:

Competitive research
Creating a mood board
Defining color and image guidelines
Putting together a style tile
Producing a high fidelity prototype

My Process

Discover

Research

The ultimate consumer of Build Early Money Habits is online child learners. Therefore, it was
essential to begin this project by studying the literature surrounding research-based principles of
teaching children effectively. Recommendations for creating great digital content for kids
published by Digital.gov include:

Use similar settings, themes, and colors across the site
Make navigation paths clear
Use simple labels
Use large fonts, less formal fonts, and less text
Use graphics and thumbnail images, as appropriate, to make pages easy to scan

Competitive analysis

I identified four direct competitors specializing in children's financial education: BizKids, Outschool, EverFi, and National Financial Education Council. A comparison of the direct competitors revealed:

Only two of the four competitors used design language for kids (larger images, less formal text)
Three of the four competitors used vibrant color palettes to draw children's attention and engage them.

Define

Mood Board

Next, I created a mood board to define a clear voice and tone for the brand and cultivate a distinct visual identity. By highlighting the superior quality of the educational materials offered, I aimed to set Build Early Money Habits apart from the existing competition by emphasizing that financial experts carefully curated the lessons offered.

Company Introduction

I created a company intro that reflects the voice and tone established by the mood board and is used consistently throughout the design process and brand.

“We know how stressful finances can be, especially starting from scratch. We strive to bring you the highest quality of content from our experts that will not only keep your kids engaged but excited to keep coming back for more.”

Color and Image Guidelines

Next, I defined color and image guidelines that align with the voice and tone of the distinct visual identity created for the client:

Vibrant and engaging colors
Colors must align with brand feelings and experiences (trust, calm, stress-free, happy, relief)
Consistent images in the clip art style

ideate

Color choices

I utilized established color design theory charts to identify distinct color meanings and select appropriate pairings that adhered to the color and image guidelines.

Style Tile

I selected blue, green, and orange to construct the style tile. The style tile serves as a visual reference for the brand's design language:

Blue: trust, calm
Green: soothing, balance, rest
Orange: health, wealth, youth, happiness

Additionally, I highlighted the uncommon fonts to be used and provided a reference image.

Interface Design

I applied my carefully chosen design language to two different landing pages. I ensured that navigation paths were clear, utilized large informal fonts, and minimized text. These research-based approaches allow children to focus on the images while maximizing engagement.

Reflection

Outcomes

Thorough research allowed me to develop a clear and concise design language and distinctive visual identity for the client. The visual identity developed includes:

Applying vibrant colors aligned with the voice and tone of the brand.
Image-focused instead of text-heavy pages to increase user engagement
Clear navigation paths paired with simple labels for users of all ages

Next Steps

After creating two distinct landing pages, my next steps will be to conduct desirability testing and partner with the user research team. Partnering with the user research team will streamline layout and navigation trouble-shooting processes and identify any missing features.