My Role
Product Designer Freelancer
Interaction Design, Visual Design, User Flows, UX Writing, User Research, Prototyping.
Timeline & Status
2 Month - Testing with limited access
Project summary
In early November 2023, I joined the Kappu team as a UI/UX designer. Our mission was to craft a mobile app that empowers Tanzanian VICOBA groups with better access to financial services. It was an exciting opportunity to use my design skills for something truly impactful. This is my story of designing Kappu, the app that empowers VICOBA community.
Tanzanian VICOBA (Village Community Banking) groups face significant barriers to accessing financial services, limiting their ability to save, borrow, and invest effectively.
These community groups play a crucial role in providing financial services to people especially women in rural and urban areas, however, these groups are often hampered by manual recordkeeping, limited communication channels, and a lack of access to technology.
To address these challenges, the Kappu project was initiated to help streamline operations, enhance financial literacy, and promote economic empowerment among Tanzanian VICOBA practitioners.
Throughout the project, we used a participatory design approach to ensure that the voices and experiences of VICOBA members were central to our decision-making process.
We kicked off this collaborative design process by organizing workshops at the AAYFO boardroom, where we had the privilege of engaging directly with different VICOBA group members.
From day one, our objective was clear, to empower VICOBA members by giving them agency over their financial futures. Showing appreciation, encouraging open conversation, and treating everyone equally, increased the motivation levels and the willingness to contribute meaningfully to the discussion.
While efficient transactions were certainly desired, they were just the tip of a much larger iceberg. The true challenges were laying beneath the surface and hidden within the complexities of the VICOBA group's daily operations, the VICOBA groups struggled with:
Keeping track of everything on paper was a big problem. It took a lot of time, people made mistakes, and it caused confusion and distrust within VICOBA groups.
Sharing information within the group was also difficult. This meant people weren't always on the same page, which made it hard for them to work together effectively.
This discovery reframed our approach to designing the Kappu mobile app. It wasn't enough to focus solely on transactional processes; we needed to develop a holistic solution that addressed the broader needs of VICOBA groups.
Because we needed something accessible, portable, and familiar to bridge the gap between fragmented communication and manual record-keeping, a mobile app emerged as an ideal solution.
With Kappu, we aim to bridge the gap between traditional practices and modern solutions, ensuring that VICOBA groups have access to the tools and resources they need to succeed in today's digital age.
We listened intently to individuals like Ms. Grace. She's a remarkable woman—dedicated to her family, managing her own business, and taking a leadership role in her VICOBA group.
Our dream is to give folks like Ms. Grace the power to make big moves in their finances and their communities, all with a little help from Kappu.
Our conversation with real users helped us figure out what the app should do, but also how it should make people feel. We knew that the app's vibe could make all the difference in whether users liked it or loved it.
We knew that to make the app truly great, we had to focus on how it felt to use. By putting empathy first, we aimed to create an experience that users would remember and enjoy every time they opened the app.
So we have to outline goals and scenarios for users needs and expectations for the VICOBA solution. By addressing them, the app can provide a valuable tool for Ms. Grace and her fellow VICOBA group members.
From the user's insights, we also discovered that there was a need for designs that were not only practical but also sensitive to the unique ways in which VICOBA groups operated. With this insight, we honed our focus to provide targeted assistance to VICOBA groups, ensuring that our solutions met their specific needs and challenges.
We focused to assist VICOBA groups to:
Simplify administrative processes by making tasks like record-keeping and documentation more efficient and less time-consuming.
Effectively communicate within their groups for better collaboration and information sharing.
Promote financial transparency by providing tools and features that allowed for clear and accurate tracking of contributions and transactions.
Designing with Ms. Grace and other VICOBA members in mind allowed us to envision the ideal user experience tailored to their needs and preferences. Rather than solely focusing on interfaces, technologies, or business goals, we delved deeper into understanding how the app fits into the lives of our users and enhances their day-to-day experiences.
we took a good amount of time to understand how everything should work. This involved looking at how users move through the app, organizing the information, and making sure everything made sense. By doing so, we aimed to ensure that the designs resonate with users and offer a seamless experience.
We developed a set of experience principles as a crucial step in the design process. It defines the personality and spirit of the app, which in turn guides the creation of a consistent, engaging, and meaningful user experience.
These experience principles capture the essence of the VICOBA app, guiding design decisions, reinforcing core values, and maintaining key attributes to deliver a delightful and engaging experience for users.
To fully comprehend the situations in which the VICOBA app will be used, we gathered insights on the contextual factors influencing the user experience. These factors include the user's environment, social dynamics, personal motivations, and the device used to access the app.
By understanding these contexts, we could both design an app that caters to the specific needs and behaviours of VICOBA users like Ms Grace.
In building the app's structure, we started with the big picture. We brainstormed ideas and drew sketches to visualize how everything would fit together. Then, we organized these ideas into a clear structure that would make sense to users.
This approach facilitated the establishment of a clear hierarchy, assessment of interactive behaviors, and representation of data, all while adhering to our core experience principles.
Informed by our key insights and the top-down design approach, we carefully mapped out the information architecture of the VICOBA app.
To test our information architecture hypotheses, we performed a card-sorting exercise by Engaging representative users in sorting content labels and features to reveal mental models and associations.
Based on user feedback, we iteratively adjusted the information architecture until we reached a satisfactory level of usability and user satisfaction.
To define the primary pathways for our personas, we considered their typical goals, preferences, and pain points. This analysis led to the creation of customized journeys for each persona, ensuring that they could efficiently access and utilize the app's features.
By defining these primary pathways, we addressed Ms Grace's needs and expectations, creating a frictionless and rewarding experience that encouraged repeated app usage and drove engagement with the VICOBA community.
Our approach extended beyond Ms. Grace, by tailoring pathways to various personas, we catered to the diverse requirements of the wider VICOBA user base, fostering inclusivity and ensuring that everyone could benefit from the rich features and functionality contained within the app.
In our design process for Kappu, we created three distinct prototypes to explore different design concepts and approaches. Using Lean UX principles, we followed a structured approach to evaluate and select the most suitable prototype based on user feedback and key metrics.
By conducting iterative testing and refinement, we were able to select a prototype for Kappu that effectively met the needs of our users and supported our project objectives.
I leveraged the power of Figma to bring our design concepts to life through interactive prototypes. Figma served as a versatile and collaborative tool that facilitated seamless communication and iteration within our design team.
Recognizing the importance of a seamless onboarding experience. Simplifying the process was our top priority. We wanted to ensure that users could effortlessly navigate their way into the app and get started easily.
The goal was to eliminate confusion and provide clear guidance from the moment users opened the app. We wanted users to feel supported and empowered as they completed each step, knowing that they were making progress towards achieving their financial goals.
The next challenge was to design a seamless loan application flow within the app. To guide users through this process, we crafted a clear and intuitive prompt, ensuring that users could easily navigate the loan application process and accomplish this task easily.
Also, we allowed users to auto save their partially completed applications and resume later. This feature proved particularly helpful for users with inconsistent schedules or limited availability.
The gallery shows completed mockups handled to the development team.
Through the refinement process, we combined user feedback with proven design patterns to create an app that balances functionality, usability, and aesthetics, resulting in a more enjoyable and efficient user experience.
After conducting prototype testing with users and gather their feedback, we analyzed the responses and identified areas for improvement.
In the first round of testing, participants expressed difficulty in understanding the purpose of the app and finding the desired features due to excessive information and functions crammed onto the home page. The primary issues observed were:
Overflowing Information: Too much information on the home page overwhelmed users, forcing them to scroll excessively and lose focus.
Feature Overlap: Multiple overlapping functionalities confused users, especially if they served similar purposes.
Unintuitive Navigation: Complex navigation caused frustration among users trying to switch between pages or return to the home screen.
Among the 75% of our participants involved in our evaluation, voiced their preference for the third prototype design. This large percentage of our users we asked for their feedback suggests that the third prototype successfully met the expectations and tastes of a majority of the participants.
The limitations
Throughout the project, we encountered several limitations that tested our abilities. We dealt with challenges like tight budgets, pressing deadlines, and scheduling issues. Making sure everyone had a chance to participate was tough.
We also had to learn a lot on the process since we lacked professional expertise. Despite these hurdles, our flexible approach helped us adapt and improve continuously.
Here's a closer look at the limitations we encountered:
Limited budget
We faced financial constraints, requiring us to carefully allocate funds and prioritize essential expenses to make the most of our resources.
Tight deadlines
With time being of the essence, we had to work efficiently to meet project milestones and deliverables within strict timelines, often requiring late nights and weekends to stay on track.
Male participation
Despite the presence of male VICOBA members, their participation in user interviews was harder to secure compared to their female counterparts, so this led to gender bias.
Engaging users
Contacting and scheduling user interviews for prototype testing was difficult due to varying user availability and geographical distance.
Professional expertise
The absence of specialized expertise within our team posed a significant hurdle, requiring us to rely on self-directed learning to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to address complex challenges effectively.
Our commitment to open dialogue surrounding the limitations we faced reflects our intent to learn, adapt, and grow through challenges, while remaining dedicated to serving the needs of our VICOBA user base.
Overwhelming homepage
The opening prototype bombarded users with lots of info and features, leaving them puzzled and slow to act.
We displayed only necessary data and functions, lightening the burden and enhancing user experience.
Public transaction view
Users protested viewing transaction history on the homepage in the second prototype, fearing privacy.
Transferring transaction history elsewhere, we guarded privacy while answering user wishes.
Confusing features
The second prototype carried plenty of unnecessary functionalities, sidetracking users enjoyment.
Preserving essential features, we scrapped the rest, bringing focus and satisfaction to users.
Users comes first
Making users the centerpiece of the design process generates a friendlier and more interesting experience, leading to greater user satisfaction and acceptance.
Always stay flexible
Choosing an agile mindset and practices promotes adaptability, swift modifications, and constant enhancement, aligning the project with shifting environments and user requests.
Speak up and work together
Good communication and teamwork bring about synergies, compounding individual efforts and speeding up progress.
