Teen Financial Literacy Toolkit: Empowering Parents to Teach Money Management
Greenlight’s debit card, app and financial literacy game, Level Up, are already helping kids master the basics of smart money management. However, families expressed a need for guidance on more complex topics with higher stakes, such as investing and credit.
Our goal was to develop a toolkit of learning tools that support both kids and parents in mastering these concepts together.
We started by conducting research to understand how teens prefer to learn.
This research lead us to our experience principles.
Learning should be…
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Youtube is king for learning, but not just because of the video format. Learners love being able to choose their topics, their teachers, and follow the videos a their own pace.
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Teens are stressed by everything competing for their attention. We can’t expect them to sit down with our app and spend an afternoon exploring our lessons. We need to surface information they actually care about at the right time.
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Financial literacy is only half the battle. Many young adults know what they are supposed to do – they just don’t actually do it. They need help applying their knowledge.
Next, we conducted stakeholder interviews with 8 key members of the Greenlight team to align on a definition of success for the project.
We found people in different roles had very different ideas of what a successful project looks like.
This project is successful if…
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Marketing: The solution should be easy for media outlets to understand and talk about. It should allow Greenlight to stand out from the competition for our unique educational offerings.
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Product: The solution should be efficient to build because it leverages existing tools. It’s flexible, and other teams across the company are able to adapt it for their own purposes to drive deeper product engagement.
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Design: The solution motivates teens to identify and take action towards their financial goals. Their parents have peace of mind that their kids are on the right track and prepared for the future.
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Greenlight mission: It should ultimately help kids grow up to be healthy and happy in money and life!
With our experience principles defined, we then began working to narrow down a solution.
The first stage was a “Concept Card” activity with the design team to generate a wide range of ideas.
Results of the concept card brainstorm
Grouping ideas into concept categories
Six unique concepts were generated, varying from tactical to abstract.
Tags and Sorting
Develop tags to organize our extensive content library, making it easier for teens to find financial information based on their priorities and interests.
Business opportunities
Boost engagement through tailored content or smart recommendations
Layered Tips
Identify areas in the app where parents may feel confused or unsure about their financial knowledge, then assist them with tooltips offering simple solutions.
Business opportunities
Flexible solution that can be applied by many different development teams for their own purposes.
Up Next
Add a screen after completing a Level Up lesson, encouraging teens to take a next step towards reaching their financial goals, whether that be another lesson or an action within the Greenlight app.
Business opportunities
Boost engagement through cross-pollination between lessons and Greenlight tools
Learning Bites
Embed a module of short learning content in a familiar pattern to offer opportunities for learning throughout the app, not simply in the Learn tab.
Business opportunities
Simple, conversational video content is quick to create (versus agency-produced animations)
Module can be easily re-used by development teams
Quests
Kids take on their goals by selecting and finishing paths made up of lessons and financial good habits in the Greenlight app, earning rewards for success. Parents can participate in their kids’ financial education without having to know all the answers.
Business opportunities
Solution based on existing code architecture, allowing for simple re-use and development efficiency.
Smart Stages
Give users full control with a toggle to adjust the complexity of the app. For example, set your savings features to “Advanced,” but your investing features to “Beginner.”
Business opportunities
Increase the customer lifecycle by allowing the app to grow alongside families.