Beacome

Part of

Life Services

A Roadtrip to Your Goals

MA 2022

Keywords

Personal Financial Management, Social Stress, FOMO, Goals, Peer Support Model, Behaviour Change, Consumer Psychology

Overview

Socialising is an important factor affecting the financial situation of emerging adults, both in real life and virtually on social media, and the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) mentality often leads them to overspend and thus always struggle to balance their social life and personal financial management.

To help emerging adults cope with the financial pressures of FOMO, we have developed Beacome, a goal-based (set-plan-approach-achieve) peer support community. The strategy of Beacome is to counteract negative FOMO by creating positive FOMO.

Beacome combines a service framework with specific behaviour change models and a peer support model, which will not only help to achieve short-term goals, but also help young people to develop better consumption habits and make better decisions in the long term.

Collaboration

Partner: EY Seren

Beacome was developed in partnership with EY Seren. EY Seren is part of EY Design and Engineering, an international collective of companies that drive innovation and transformation around the world. The project started with a challenge from EY Seren: People make decisions against their own best interest. How can we shift the mind-set and behaviours of people to drive better financial decisions that ensure life-long financial safety and stability? Over the following 10 weeks, we held weekly meetings with EY Seren to report on the progress of the project and to adjust the direction based on their suggestions and feedback. EY Seren provided many key inspirations and help throughout the development of the project.

SECTION ONE SECTION TWO STATEMENT SECTION THREE SECTION FOUR

Background & Challenge

Personal Finance & Social Influences of Emerging Adults

Target group: Emerging Adults-"The Inbetweeners"

Our target group is Emerging Adults (aged 19-29). The financial characteristics of this group are relatively low or unstable income, high cost of living and lack of saving habits. Their specific challenges include: high student loans, unstable jobs, needing to save for renting or property, having to plan for a distant career and future...

Direction: Personal Finance & Social influence -"Don’t try to keep up with the Joneses."

Many young people consider relationships with friends to be more important than managing money. Therefore, socialising is one of the most important factors affecting young people's financial situation.

On the one hand, there is the physical social factor, with survey data showing that "Nearly 40 per cent of millennials have spent money they didn’t have and gone into debt to keep up with their peers.” On the other hand, there is the "perfect life" that people share on social media. The data shows that 57% of millennials spent money they hadn’t planned to spend because of what they saw on their social media feeds.

Key issues: FOMO

The FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) mentality caused by social pressure often leads them to overspend.

Receiving social pressure - Fear of Missing Out - Over-consumption - Sharing consumer content - Influencing peers - Generating social pressure. Young people are caught in this "FOMO circle". When the individual is in a group and the group is in a larger environment, each individual is both an influencer and an influencer of FOMO.

Insight

FOMO Twist

Through user interviews, we found the key insight to break the FOMO circle. When we talk about FOMO, we usually default to the idea that the impact of FOMO is negative and ignore the existence of positive FOMO. One user shared a positive FOMO experience with us: he received the impact because he saw his friend's gains in cryptocurrencies and also invested and gained as a result.

People will follow the fear of missing out and spending money, and they will save or invest money because of the fear of missing out. We call this insight - FOMO Twist, where negative FOMO and positive FOMO are intertwined together to influence our behaviour and decisions.

Instagram has created countless negative FOMOs, presenting the results of a "#perfect life" behind the truth of a "#debt life". Instead, can we create a platform that creates positive FOMO, sets the goal of a "perfect life" and provides a path to a better future?

E-commerce platforms that 'Buy Now Pay Later' are an enabler of mindless over-consumption. Instead, can we shift mindsets and behaviours and lead people to build the habit of "Save Now Get Later"?

Service Proposition

How might we create a goal-based (set-plan-achieve-share) peer support community to help emerging adults navigate with negative FOMO by creating positive FOMO？

Solution

Beacome-A roadtrip to your goals

Idea testing - Feature testing - Interaction testing

Our solution was developed in a series of user tests, through interviews and workshops, successively idea testing, feature testing and interaction flow testing.

After generating a large number of ideas together within the team through the provocation workshop. Initially, user interest was tested and then the associated ideas were combined to define a general product framework.
We then further developed the product's features. The tests were used to understand users' expectations and frustrations with the product's features, which led to the identification of the product's core functions.
We then worked on the detailed design of the product's user flow and interface. Testing was also used to adjust the interaction flow and interaction interface.

Final Solution

Beacome, the concept comes from Beacon + Become. Beacome is like a beacon guiding you to become the person you want to be.

Beacome, a goal-based (set-plan-approach-achieve) peer support community where everyone is an influencer and creator of positive FOMO. Beacome's product framework is combined with a specific behaviour change model and a peer support model, which not only helps to achieve short-term goals, but also helps young people to develop better spending habits and make better decisions.

Business

System map

In the current financial system, Beacome is positioned as a personal finance management application developed on the basis of Open Banking.

Beacome-User-Banking

Once a user has downloaded Beacome, the user first needs to associate (bind) their bank account on Beacome, and then Beacome can obtain two permissions, which are the basis of Beacome's operation.

Beacome-user-merchant

We help users save enough money to achieve their goals in the digital world, and then connect them with merchants that can achieve their goals in the real world and offer exclusive discounts. If the user chooses to do that, then we get a commission from the merchant.

Beacome-FCA

Beacome will be developed and all actions will be carried out under the current regulations set by the regulatory bodies.

SPECIAL
THANKS

Thanks to our tutors Neal and Carolyn for their guidance, advice and encouragement along the way.

Thanks to Richard, Will and Caroline at EY Seren for their inspiration, help and guidance throughout the development of the project.

They are also the beacons of the Beacome team.