Yasmine Khan
Product Strategist
Research -> Core Product Stragegy
Challenge
Even provided Walmart retail associates with a financial services app connected to the payroll system. The mission was to help people living paycheck to paycheck achieve financial stability. Savings account tracking data found that instead of steadily increasing, savings accounts repeatedly grew then depleted.
With the aim of seeing savings accounts grow without big depletions, we planned on building a high powered budget coaching tool. To this end, we had invested 10 months in the process of becoming a bank. Offering a bank card would provide us with the real time transaction data we needed to build an effective budgeting service.
Expertise provided
Longitudinal diary study with core users.
Creating frameworks that make sense of complex social and logistical money issues.
Contextualizing quantitative data.
Mobilizing cross-functional stakeholders across Product, Engineering & Operations.
Delivered in 3 months
Clear stories about core users’ financial circumstances, budgeting habits and core needs.
Assets that helped the organization make sense of these stories.
Facilitated two weeklong design sprints for teams working on core initiatives.
Mobilized shift in core product strategy to meet more relevant user needs.
Emily Bram, Engineering
"I feel an improved & more informed intuition on what I think we should work on. How. And why. As well as motivation to advocate for it and make it happen.”
Core Insights
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I came to Even having identified 3 key money behaviors that are more impactful than income when it comes to affecting one’s financial health. We hypothesized that if we encouraged these behaviors, people’s financial health would improve.
We knew that there was a point where one’s income was so low, behavior change couldn’t make a difference. One can’t manage money that’s not there.
I conducted in-depth contextual interviews and diary studies with our core user base. And examined paystubs, bank records, bills, and personal budgets. I learned that, despite working fulltime or nearly fulltime, people working at Walmart stores and warehouses are not paid a living wage. Meaning, no amount of budgeting will reconcile the cost of living against their wages.(Emphasis on “nearly full time.” We found that in some states it’s common practice to keep people's hours just below fulltime in order to avoid paying benefits.)
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When a $3 overdraft can cause a cascade of disasters, you pay attention to your money.We found that, on average, this group spends 1-4 hours per week performing budgeting activities. Often meticulously. And they constantly consider what they need vs what they want.
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We found that volatile income is often the nature of working retail. Hours are not guaranteed. Each week one’s schedule is different, depending on business needs and staff availability.
Compounding the issue, when the store is slow Walmart sends employees home. Despite Walmart’s messaging about “work family”, they are first and foremost a business. At the end of the day they see employees as overhead. Not people with children to feed and bills to pay.
Paychecks are unpredictable in a way that’s out of the employees control.
On top of that, getting sick or temporarily losing access to transportation routinely threatens one’s livelihood in these circumstances.–
Expenses
When you’re living in the red, or razor thin margins, unexpected expenses upend one’s day to day life.
A failing transmission, a broken washing machine, a partner that gets laid off. If one had excess time, one could take the bus to work, hand wash clothes or take on extra hours. Excess time is a luxury this group does not have. Folks are often working 2-3 jobs, juggling childcare and/or school.
Expense volatility is a part of life. This group is deeply impacted by big bill shockwaves.
mobilizing the organization
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energizing sprints
Colleagues were eager to dive into insights and rapidly respond. I exercised my expertise as a creative facilitator to organize a weeklong deep dive for the banking team. It was a hit with colleagues. So the loans team asked me to tailor one for them. Both teams ended their week with a solid, evidence based, strategy.
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making an impact
The week was designed to methodically immerse cross-functional teams in insight then extract new strategies based on those insights. We determined that budgeting tools would probably not help this group save money. And quickly pivoted to sketch new strategies.
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strategic pivot
Within 10 days, our COO announced at town hall that we would cease efforts to become a bank in order to build a budgeting tool. We immediately pivoted toward strategies that would get more cash in the hands of users. Including an employer matched student loan repayment program. Which Walmart soon adopted. Other concepts included ways to help employees get consistent hours and share childcare.
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contextualizing quant data with qual stories
Prior to the sprints, most colleagues viewed savings account data from their own perspective & experiences. Within that framework, big dips in savings were viewed as failures. Their goal was to get everyone’s savings growing without major dips.
Even’s core users don’t have the luxury of saving beyond a rainy day fund. When those rainy days come, they use that fund instead of taking out costly payday loans, charging to credit cards or going into collections. With this new context about living on an extremely limited income, it became clear that the continual rise and fall in savings was actually a signal that they had an effective rainy day fund.
What Colleagues Said
“(During the sprint) I was able to get direct insight into the shape of this problem from our members' perspective. I was also guided to think more deeply about the observations I had, and coax them into more actionable insights.”
— anon, Product
“The design sprint allowed our team to think about member issues in a structured way and start designing potential solutions that will positively affect members. We came away with a good framework for thinking about member problems, and can pin solutions to specific parts of the problem.”
— Mike Parsons, Engineering Leader
“The design sprint helped us realize that there are more fundamental issues that we need to solve if we want to make a real dent in the paycheck to paycheck cycle. This has had a major impact on both our mindset and our direction. ”
— Julia, Engineering
Sharing with the community
My experience at Even cropped up an observation I had made over the years: when it comes to financially vulnerable groups, decision makers tend to over-index on individual responsibility rather than institutional responsibility.
The experience also deepened my research & design practice. To be more consciously inclusive of financially vulnerable groups.
In March of 2020 Rosenfeld Media invited me to speak about my findings and practice at the Advancing Research conference. Due to the pandemic, we went virtual, so there’s a video to share!