The design of future tools and services

Egg wants to maintain its position as the disruptive innovator in UK financial services. IDEO and Egg believe it will do this best by offering great products but also by being perceived as "different to the banks" and "on the consumer's side".

I managed a series of projects to look at UK domestic financial planning and discover some unmet needs. We met people with interesting tactics to avoid spending on their credit cards, this couple kept their card in ice to ensure a warming up period before spending.

Others had clear strategies for managing and organising their money, unfortunately most of these were sub-optimal so we developed ways in which people could discover for themselves how they could either spend less, earn more interest or simply plan for their futures.

One of my favourite techniques was to ask people to simply, "draw your money". This revealed a great deal about the language they used and the mental models that underpinned their observable behaviours.

We started to see the dynamic and time-based nature of people's natural conceptions, which gave us some great ideas for software tools to assist them, and for new service ideas to develop the relationship between Egg and their customers.

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