Quantifying “Get Your Money Right”
May 2023 - August 2023
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Background: SoFi’s “Get Your Money Right” moniker represents their commitment to helping individuals achieve financial wellness and empowerment through personalized financial products as well as innovative technology solutions.
👦 My Role
UX Researcher
⚙️ Research Methods
Survey Creation
Unmoderated Interviews
Thematic Analysis
🌟 Research Objectives 🌟
Gain a better understanding of what being financially free actually means to SoFi members from all backgrounds.
Uncover insights that will help create a measurable GYMR metric in the future.
Previous Research Context
A GYMR Pyramid was created in 2019 to illustrate the path that members would take towards financial freedom.
The higher up the pyramid a member went, the more they were “Getting Their Money Right”
The end goal for every SoFi member would be financial freedom.
Segmentation
GYMR Pyramid created in 2019
Since finances are such a personalized and subjective aspect of people’s lives, I wanted to gain a holistic view of how a variety of different individuals viewed their finances, their financial literacy skills, and what their financial goals were at the end of their journey. Segmentation allowed me to better understand the personalized obstacles that people faced in trying to “Get Their Money Right”.
Early Stage of Financial Freedom
Mid Stage of Financial Freedom
⚙️ Research Methodology ⚙️
Screener Survey
Using Dscout, I distributed a 10 question multiple choice and likert scale screener survey that was used to identify participants that fit within the three segments and their unique financial challenges. This was an integral part of the process to ensure that the data I receive would be diverse in nature and could help set up the foundation of the metric.
💬 Questions included…
“What is your current FICO score?”
Unmoderated Interviews
🔧 Tools
dscout
Figma
Problem Statement: SoFi wants to better define “Get Your Money Right” (GYMR) - the ultimate goal is to have a measurable GYMR metric. This research will need to help inform what components should feed into this variable and what it means to be financially free for SoFi members.
After generating user interest via the screener survey, I was tasked with organizing and reaching out to individuals to participate in a 11 question unmoderated interview using the Dscout platform. The majority of these questions were in a selfie facing video format to gather a user-centric perspective in a more natural environment. These were people at various points in their lives, both personally and financially and the questions were curated to have the participants reflect on their financial journey from a holistic perspective.
💬 Questions included…
How would you define financial freedom and what does it mean to you?
Tell us about a time when you had an unforeseen financial expense and how this impacted your journey to financial freedom?
Late Stage of Financial Freedom
“How would you describe your financial literacy?”
“On a scale of 1-10, rate your feelings about your current financial state”
Thinking about the steps you’ve taken in your journey to financial freedom, how does it make you feel?
Thematic Analysis
Feelings & Decision Making
The 10 interview transcripts were explored via a process of thematic research methodology to uncover recurring themes within each segment as well as throughout the interviews as a whole. This GYMR metric would have to be informative yet flexible when it came to helping SoFi members manage their finances in the present and prepare for the future.
I am unable to show the exact thematic analysis chart due to NDA, this is a recreation of the process that took place.
🔑 Research Insights 🔑
The foundation of the GYMR Pyramid are Basic Needs that are essential in building towards the future of Financial Freedom.
Every step after achieving Basic Needs are choices that individuals make based on their own personal goals (ex. retire by 50 versus buy $5 coffee without stress).
“Getting Your Money Right” is never a linear process, there will always be changes that occur in life which can affect your journey to financial freedom.
