A money tracking for financially excluded Cambodians

Using digital and social innovation to help Good Return’s mission to end extreme poverty in Cambodia and beyond.

Client
Good Return

Role
Research, interation and UX Design

All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of ACCENTURE OR GOOD RETURN.

Problem

Over 80% of Cambodians don't have access to banking or financial services. With almost 480,000 micro-business owners living and working in a poverty-stricken economy that runs on cash, many struggle to understand their financial situation - a key barrier to making better money decisions and breaking the poverty cycle.

Challenge

Good Return’s mission to help end extreme poverty by 2030 means it's vital to scale across South-east Asia and the Pacific quickly and efficiently. With smartphone adoption rapidly growing in the region, creating a smartphone can help them reach many more entrepreneurs, their families and communities faster and cheaper than traditional analogue forms.

Solution & MY ROLE

I helped lead the Fjord/Accenture team and worked closely with Good Return, running the user research, UX design and development to create a finance app, My Money Tracker, in both english and Cambodian Khmer.

The app aims to help increase Cambodians’ awareness and understanding of their financial situation and behaviours, empowering them to make more informed decisions about their money use.

Designed in both Cambodian Khmer and English, My Money Tracker is the first money tracking Android app designed specifically for Cambodians.

Design process

Over the course of 7 months, the team worked across Australia and Cambodia to understand, empathise, ideate, prototype, iterate and launch an app that solves real challenges for real Cambodians struggling with their money.

We spent time interviewing a diverse group of people in their context of their daily routines, running small businesses such as fruit and veg stands and convenience stalls.

We were able to see, hear and learn how they run their micro-business and manage their money.

KEY insights

Observing and talking to people in their environment surfaced unique insights and behaviours about money and life in the poorest parts of Phnom Penh.

• Many don’t know how much they’re spending. With limited access to financial education, low literacy levels and lack of money tracking tools, many don’t keep track of their money behind a mental guess.

• IOU’s are extremely common, adding more strain and complexity to cashflow management. Everyone we met regularly used IOUs for items when they or their customer couldn’t afford to pay at the time. Keeping track of all this was unreliable, not accurate and was time-consuming for people to keep on top of.

• Everyone puts money away for unplanned and emergency costs, but few save. Without a simple plan or understanding of their financial position, most didn’t know how to set goals or believed saving money for the future was not possible.

• The line between business and personal finances is not clear cut. No one we met separated their business finances from their personal, as most didn’t consider their micro-business as a ‘real’ business. This limits the ability to track business performance and gain insights to improve.

• Women are accountable and responsible for the household’s money. There is a cultural expectation that the women of the family manage all the money. This pressure and reliability on her to be accountable for everything can lead to domestic mis-trust, anxiety and even abuse.

• Individuals self-hacked solutions to count and organise their money. Everyone had their own system - from clay pots to bags, people formed their own tools and habits to try to manage their money. Guesswork and memory often made these solutions untracable and often innacurate.

UNDERSTANDING THE DAILY MONEY LIFECYCLE

We identified a common theme that everyone’s cashflow was in a daily cycle. We mapped the common steps, activities, tools used and pain points along a journey of money use across a day. This shared understanding of the universal money habits would help design a solution that would be relevant in peoples’ daily routines.

UNCOVERING THE JOBS-TO-BE-DONE

We identified two 'Jobs' that low-income micro-business owners had when it came to their money.

'Help me have more visibility of what I earn and spend, so I can have better control of my money'

'Help me better manage my finances so I can achieve my goals faster'

Within each of these 'core' jobs were key needs that determine how satisfied these core jobs were being achieved, or if at all. These key needs were prioritised based on micro-business owners’ importance and satisfaction, providing the team with direction on where to focus our ideation.

IDEATING AND ITERATING CONCEPTS

The team created many storyboards and sketches of how a money tracking app could help Cambodian micro-business owners.

Concepts of conversational UI’s (in Facebook Messenger) as well as native app were rapidly developed, discussed and tested. Starting with concept testing, we iterated initial ideas until we had two working coded prototypes to take to Cambodia to test with people in Phnom Penh

TESTING and iterating IN CAMBODIA

Myself and the other project lead travelled back to Cambodia to run a series of testing rounds with Cambodian micro-business owners. Over 3 weeks we collaborated with Good Return, visiting areas in and around Phnom Penh to test the prototypes in order to learn, iterate and refine the concepts.

Between our testing rounds in the field, we analysed and synthesised what we had observed and learn, helping us iterate and prioritise the design for the next round of testing.

This allowed a rapid feedback loop to ensure the app would be useful and usable to our target users.

DEveloping the app

Confident in the refined prototype and having aligned on our MVP roadmap with Good Return, we travelled back to Sydney to begin designing and developing the app.

I led the UX design in a team made up of myself, the project lead, a UI/visual designer, a scrum master and two android developers.

Impact

The app has been launched to a closed group of users for Beta phase, where it will track user adoption, engagement and financial behaviour changes using analytics, interviews and surveys. To ensure My Money Tracker creates the intended positive human impact for both Micro-business owners and business impact for Good Return, the app’s measure-of-success is anchored to specific impact metrics. This helps the team understand if the desired outcomes of the app are being achieved.