Case Study
AIG HACKATHON WINNER
Cream application preview
AIG Winter Hackathon: Sponsored by Slalom Consulting, powered by Amazon Web Services
Objective: Work together in teams to create a solution that effectively engages consumers at AIG Retirement Services
Timeframe: 2 days work time, 1 day for presentations
My team: 4 developers (Front end & back end), 1 Business Analyst, and 1 Designer (me!)
What I did: UX/UI Design, Information Architecture, Wireframing, Prototyping, Lead Presenter
Tools used: Sketch, affinity mapping, user flow brainstorming, visual hardening + development collaboration
Jump to any part of my design process:
The Challenge
“Problem statement: How might we effectively engage our consumers?”
AIG Retirement Services (AIG RS) organized a hackathon sponsored by Slolam Consulting and powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Organizers of the hackathon grouped individuals into teams of 6. Executive leaders wanted to explore alternate ways AIG RS could more effectively engage with consumers, and challenged teams to come up with solutions.
We were presented with some How Might We’s (HMWs) to help our focus, including:
HMW effectively engage with participants?
HMW illustrate everyday saving for retirement important to our customers?
HMW illustrate results of taking loans to retirement goals to our customers?
HMW engage millennials to start saving for retirement?
HMW engage baby boomers/beneficiaries to plan for their retirement years?
Discovery & Preparation
Team listings were released the week prior to the hackathon, with participants coming from various departments across AIG Retirement Services. As some members were meeting for the first time, teams were allowed minimal time to sync and game plan ahead of the scheduled Hackathon work time. Our team named ourselves “Ctrl+Alt+Create”.
Limited in the amount of background information we could find it such a short time, we had to rely on working knowledge of our participants during the competition.
The team discovered that younger generations have a difficult time thinking about saving, especially those with lower incomes who may be living paycheck to paycheck. Retirement can be abstract and difficult to think about. It’s often mocked by younger generations fearful and uncertain of what it might look like, or put off in favor of paying rent, buying groceries, or other activities that take precedent.
Sampling of tweets focused on millennials and retirement
How might we encourage millennials to save for retirement when cash rules everything around us?
Target User
We chose to focus on how we might engage millennials to start saving for retirement, targeting our primary user as someone who may have had minimal time investing or contributing to a typical 401k retirement account.
For younger generations retirement can seem far away and too abstract to consider how much you might need to retire comfortably. We chose 3 key points to focus on during the competition:
Focus
Easy to understand jargon
Gamification, how might we make saving fun
Encourage gradual saving, no heavy lifts to buy-in or get started
Design
The team created a working version that audience members could navigate to on their own personal devices, utilizing AWS for on-demand service. Check out some example screens below:
Cream app: sample screens
Cream app: Badge screens
Conclusions
Team 'Ctrl+Alt+Create’ wins first place
Team Ctrl+Alt+Create placed 1st out of 13 teams participating!
The team came up with a solution designed to boost saving habits, make retirement and investing easy to understand and fun to use by encouraging friendly competition between peers.
The leadership team was receptive to our ideas and the fresh take on finance. Ca$h you on Cream!