ATM for Kids 👦🏻 👧🏻 — A UX Case Study
When I was looking for a new job last year, the following assignment was given to me by one of the employers.
As I was doing 2–3 assignments every week for prospective employers, I did not give it much thought and provided them a standard solution using principles I thought make the ATM experience for kids delightful. You can find the assignment submitted below.
And you have probably guessed it, I did not qualify for the next round. Now looking back, I find my submission kind of shallow and feel that I just presented the existing ATM userflow with a kids friendly UI.
Between the time of writing and today, my mindset has changed a lot on tackling user problems. So I have decided to give it one more try with my new profound knowledge. 😅 😅
I especially learned a lot from couple of books, which are also my favorite now (I always refer back to them when I solve new problems.👍🏻)
To give you a little introduction about JTBD, it focuses on underlying jobs needed to achieve rather than providing features. For example, people don’t want to buy a quarter inch drill. They want a quarter inch hole!
Also, in the book Hooked, the author gives a simple exercise of asking 5 WHYs to unearth the main motivation behind what people do. It can be related to the motivation behind the job they want to be done.
Let’s pin these 2 thoughts and approach our assignment.
First thing that comes to my mind is “Why would someone want to build an ATM for kids?” Parents can always provide them money, as they provide all the other things to kids. Digging deeper, it may be due to the fact that they want to teach importance of money and using them judiciously to their kids.
This reason makes perfect sense. It can be Jobs to be done for product, help kids learn about money.
So now, we know the actual job, we need to answer some more questions:
- Does making only ATM gets the job done?
- Can we think of any other system that will help kids to learn about money with practical exercises?
- Does it need to be in a digital form?
Now we are asking the real questions.
Kids always love to experience objects, be it toys, legos, etc. I would suggest the traditional Jar system to teach kids the importance of money instead of building an entire ATM. This article lists out some good ideas.
As the world is progressing towards more cashless economy, I think designing a digital piggy bank would be more appropriate. A little research and I found a product that just do this.
I am pretty much sure that defining the real objective of a product is far more important just listing out features people believe they want to have. I believe if teaching kids about money is the main objective, may be building a kid friendly ATM is not the solution.
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” — Henry Ford.
I am a UX/UI Designer based in Bangalore, India. You can find out more about me in my website tridipthrizu.com
Originally published at medium.com on April 2, 2017.
