Service Design for PNC Bank

Project overview

The problem

PNC Bank, one of the largest bank in the US, worked together with our Service Design class (under CMU HCII), tasked us to conceive and design future services that leverage data to help parents and teens have a dialogue about family finances. Explore how to offer bundled services that benefit families by enabling them to save, budget, and realize their financial goals.

The solution

Our team designed an innovative service called Pocket Pals. Pocket Pals is a digital financial service that directly connects PNC with teens. It educates and encourages teens to develop a better understanding of digital currency mechanisms. With Pocket Pals, PNC can enable relationship-building through improved communication and thus create life-long loyal customers.

The methods

Literature review, interview, survey, stakeholder map, value flow model, persona, competitive analysis, brainstorm, speed dating, customer journey map, service blueprint.

My role

primary and secondary research, ideation, brainstorming, prototype, service blueprint, and customer journey map, interaction design

Teammate

Daphne Tan, Selin Insel, Julia Luo, Helen Wu

Advisor

Prof. John Zimmerman, Prof. Jodi Forlizzi

Client

PNC Bank

Timeline

Oct - Dec 2017(7 weeks)

Final mobile design

Pocket Pals focuses on offering teens financial guidance and education in a friendly, personable manner. It is an onboarding program that lasts at a minimum for 2 weeks and finishes within 30 days, teens download the app upon signing up for a new debit card with PNC.

When teens complete the onboarding game, they unlock the full spending capacity of their allowance. Their chosen pet no longer is a prominent aspect of their app, but rather a helpful guide that shares tips, reminders, and non-monetary rewards to the teen. Once the teen turns 16, he/she officially graduates from the app.

Discovery

Literature review

Initially, we conducted a literature review on 7 paper and 20+ articles on the following topics:
(1) How are teenagers learning about finances currently?
(2) How are the money and social habits of teenagers?
(3) What are the roles teachers and parents play in teenagers' financial learning?

Interviews

Then we conducted an interview with local teenagers and their parents. Our interview questions were focused on :
(1) Teenagers’ financial habits.
(2) The conversation between teenagers and their parents about finances.
(3) Teenagers current concerns regarding finance.

Survey

Since we didn't get enough data from parents through our interviews. We decided to conduct a survey as a supplement.

From the survey, we learned that:
(1) Parents give their teenagers cash.
(2) They want to have continuous conversations about money management to prepare them for the future and college.

Synthesis

Current state models

We used Venn and Tree Diagrams to create our value flow and relationships among the 3 stakeholders.

Defining PNC’s true need

Through our analysis, we found that parents acted as the point of entry for PNC to interact with teenagers. We decided that we wanted to create a service that would allow PNC to interact with teenagers directly and provide teenagers with access and exposure to digital currency. It also would allow parents to give their teenagers financial independence while allowing them to intervene when necessary.

Personas

Competitive analysis

Before we began ideation, our team decided it was important to know what products currently exist on the market. We conducted a competitive analysis on teenager programs that other banks currently have against PNC’s Virtual Wallet. We also compared with similar products on the Chinese market to give us more inspiration.

Design

Brainstorm

We brainstormed more than 30 ideas to improve the experience of our main stakeholders: teenagers, parents, local businesses, schools, and PNC Bank. Then we narrowed down 30 ideas to 5 based on business value and teenager appeal. The 5 ideas were:

Speed dating

The findings
(1) Teenagers and parents both loved the idea of a personalized credit card where they were able to determine the rules with their parents.
(2) Teenagers also were excited by our pet idea, feeling as though it would make finance fun and less intimidating.
(3) Ideas that we discarded include the chatbot and meme page since the chatbot got little to no reaction from teenagers.

Choosing an idea

This round of speed dating continued to validate the debit/credit card and pet idea. We decided to commit to the pet idea but expand the concepts and mechanisms so it would appeal to both boys and girls. Other changes include making the service an onboarding game for teens from the ages of 13 to 16. We wanted to serve teenagers who just opened accounts with PNC and needed guidance on how to use their new debit card.

Refine

Customer Journey Map

Service Blueprint

Mobile Design

Service Benefits

For teenagers, Pockets Pals provides:
- A fun and engaging way to learn the mechanics of real life spending.
- A convenient way to have transactions with their parents online.
- A way to track and view their spending.
- A guided path to building familiarity with digital currency.

For parents, Pockets Pals provides:
- A convenient way to have transactions with their teens online.
- A tool to easily monitor their teen’s spending.
- A peace of mind that their teen is practicing financial literacy with more guidance.

With Pocket Pals, PNC gets:
- A way to initiate, establish, and deepen relationships with teens.
- A tool to access to parent and teen transaction activity.
- An opportunity for future conversion with teen during transitioning into adulthood.