Designing for Fintech

I never thought I would be designing apps to teach others how to invest, spend, and save their money. When I began working in this role I couldn’t help but think of myself as Becky Bloomwood from the 2009 romcom, Confessions of a Shopaholic. I didn’t know the first thing about investing other than receiving my free stock from Robinhood when my brother sent me an invitation and I didn’t feel that I was in any shape to teach others how to save with my spending habits. What a challenge this would be, but I was excited for it!

I immediately set out to find some books to help me learn more about the wide world of finance. What I quickly learned was that most books and other reading materials are tailored towards adults which makes sense, but I needed to connect with teenagers and learn the way they would learn. I began searching for financial books targeted towards teens and children which turned out to be invaluable for my fintech career. While it may seem to silly for a 30+ year old to be reading Investing for Kids, these books taught me how a child or teen could interpret the information and educational content we were trying to convey in our app. These books also brought everything down to the basics which made learning much easier for me as well.

Some of my favorite books on the subject have been:

• Investing for Kids - Dylan Redling and Allison Tom

• Investing for Teens - J.P. Clarke

• The Modern Guide to Stock Market Investing for Teens (written by a teen) - Alan John

Designing tools in which you are not a subject matter expert is always challenging, but I love being able to learn more about new fields and enjoy the task of designing for these new-to-me complex systems and technologies.