Background; "The naira keeps going down"

It was the later part of the year 2022, and I was hanging with my friends. We were talking about a lot things and then we realized that most of the challenges we had especially in relation to our finances were similar.

The continuous depreciation of the Naira, coupled with soaring inflation rates, had significantly affected all of us. Many Nigerians are resorting to the difficult process of opening accounts for foreign investments. However, others are hesitant to invest abroad, deterred by various challenges.

My friends and I shared the same struggle, We were constantly faced with the value of our salaries dwindling against the global market with no reasonable way to save ourselves. We all agreed this was a problem and decided to work on it.

It's a Big Mess; User Research

As the sole product designer in the group, I sought to understand how young Nigerians were coping with currency depreciation and inflation. 



I conducted interviews with 7 young persons who had been directly impacted by the depreciation in the last year. To further ascertain some of the findings from the interviews, I leveraged my membership online to gather more insights through surveys that were filled by 42 participants.

Key findings

The Problem Statement

To summarise, the problem as we go to find out later on was that of

"Users facing financial hardships with the Naira's depreciation affecting purchasing power and business operations. Additionally, limited financial literacy, mistrust in investment platforms, and challenges in foreign investments due to high costs and complexity, hinder informed decision-making and global investment opportunities."

Ideation

Having identified the problems, I led the team to brainstorm potential solutions that could help solve these problems we uncovered. We asked important "How might we" Questions that enabled us to focus on each challenge.

Providing answers to these how might we questions helped to identify so many feature ideas and solutions these ideas could profer. I went ahead to explore, prioritize, and sketch potential solutions.

Priotizing and Conceptualising

Once we had so many ideas to work with, I started to work through many ideas with the team to see those that were feasible and those that were not. One exercise that also helped in this phase of the project was to sketch many ideas as quickly as possible following the crazy 8s technique. These exercises helped to define key features.

Crafting a Vision: A Journey Towards Seamless Financial Empowerment

Just before we went full on design I crafted a well-defined design strategy that took into account various aspects, including user needs and expectations, market analysis, business goals, and our technological capabilities.

Final Designs and Solutions

In response to the challenges posed by currency depreciation and the diverse needs of our user personas, our design strategy has culminated in a set of innovative solutions designed to empower users in their financial journey. These solutions represent the culmination of our efforts to provide a holistic, user-centered, and effective financial platform.

Octave finance is in Beta

Octave-finance is currently in the second month of it's beta phase and on it's third testing cycle.

What went well

• User interviews uncovered lots of user behaviour that steered the project in a meaningful direction.

• The number of users in Beta phase has increased significantly since the first week

What didn't go so well

• We tend to have too many features for MVP which was a development challenge till we focused on the most important features

• Ignoring rapidly evolving financial regulations significantly hindered our ability to obtain currency exchange licenses.