Project partner: Akademie Deutscher Genossenschaften (ADG)

Challenge: “Design an financial planning experience for children that helps them to manage money responsibly“

The project partner Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken inititally posed a design challenge targeted towards young people aged 15-18. The bank was looking for ideas to support young people in financially planning their training and further education.

During the research phase in the Design Thinking process, the student team realized that there was a lack of interest in banking and financial issues among teenagers of this age group. Instead, several interviewees mentioned that their younger siblings might be interested in the prototype that the team had developed for the interviews.

Following the insight that financial education needs to start earlier in life, the student team decided to reformulate the challenge and to focus on children aged 6 to 10.

The student team developed a personalized Piggy Bank that is complemented by an app. Together the physical object of the piggy bank and the digital component constitute the Piggy World.

The Piggy Bank is a tangible object which helps children to get a feeling for money and for its translation into the digital world. It includes a coin count function and a digital display showing their savings inside the Piggy Bank as well as on their bank account. Once the child is old enough, it can download the Piggy Go App and add personal saving goals. The App is connected with a personalized web-shop where users can buy their desired objects after approval of their parents.

By making children in primary school age comfortable with digital money using a physical object that they can personally bond with, the Piggy World seeks to facilitate the transition between the cash money world and the currently growing online banking culture. The digital Piggy Bank is designed to become a financial companion for the growing generations which will accompany them into financial independence.

A Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken startup is currently further developing myPiggy to the refined concept “myFamilyFinance”. Now, the closed beta phase is running.

Photo: HPI School of Design Thinking / Franz Grünewald