Olivia.AI 
Conversational Design In Personal Finance

Olivia.AI is a personal financial assistant app for iOS powered by behavioral economics and artificial intelligence to help advise users to make smarter decisions with their money. Let's go over the design process behind Olivia in the context of grocery shopping. 

My Role On The Team

• Consulted literature in behavioral economics and cognitive psychology to influence the design of Olivia
• Designed the prototype persona, journey maps, and conversation maps
• Conducted secondary research on all the tips and advice on how to save money in various spend categories
• Designed the conversations between Olivia and the user

Problem

Money Is A Behavioral Problem, Not A Math Problem

There's a cognitive dissonance in how people view money -  people are aware that it is really important to save money for the future, yet the data on how much people save shows otherwise:

• 44% of Americans are either in debt or have little to no savings
• Quarter of Middle Class saves about 15% on retirement or emergency savings 
• 50% of people that 401(k) plans, only 33% actually save and only 11% save enough

On the other hand, grocery shopping spending especially among the Millennial Generation is higher compared to previous generations as some data suggests: 

• Average annual spending on groceries for Millennials is $9,568
• 34% of Millennials make 2-3 trips a month
• For each trip, 37% spend $50-99, while 35% spend $100-200

To illustrate the mindset of this issue, we have a story of a Millennial named Bill Billings who has trouble saving money on groceries.

Story Of Bill Billings 

Bill Billings Persona

Design Challenge

How can we help Bill make the best financial choices that will lower his grocery bill?  

Research Process

Understanding Bill's Spending Behavior 

The first step in solving Bill's problem was to understand the steps he takes when goes grocery shopping. I created a customer journey map to illustrate his actions and thoughts involved with going grocery shopping.  

Journey Map Of Grocery Shopping

After charting his grocery shopping journey, I discovered potential pitfalls Bill has during his grocery shopping trips as follows:

• Goes Grocery Shopping At Random Days - Bill doesn't have a consistent day or time for going grocery shopping.
• Goes Into The Grocery Store With No Plan - Bill tends to not write down the items he needs to purchase in a list.
• Gets Tempted Really Easily - He tends to go to the grocery store when he's hungry and as a result gets tempted by snacks.
• Trouble Deciding Between Items - He has trouble deciding between two similar items, such as organic vs. regular.
• Hesitant About Removing Items At The End - He has trouble deciding whether to remove items from his cart or not.​

​With all these behavioral gaps in mind, we decided to address his issues in the form of a conversational user interface that would allow him the ability to receive advice on how to save money during the whole grocery shopping journey. 

Conversational Design Process

Secondary Research - Tips For Saving Money On Grocery Shopping 

The first step in designing the conversations was to do some secondary research on all the grocery shopping tips ranging from the basic to special pro tips. After I found a general consensus of all the tips online from various credible articles, I aggregated them into a spreadsheet and divided them into the type of tip it is followed by the considerations to be made for more specifics. 

Aggregated tips found from secondary research

​Designing The Conversational Flow

As soon as all the tips were aggregated into the spreadsheet, I started creating a conversation map to illustrate the flow of how Olivia would interact with Bill. The conversation map served as an outline for how Olivia would introduce each tip ranging from high-level tips early in the map to pro tips later in the map. 

Snapshot Of Olivia Conversation Map Part 1

Snapshot Of Olivia Conversation Map Part 2

Structuring The Content Of The Conversations

​Once the flow of the conversation map was settled, I started designing the content of the conversations. The goal was to make sure Olivia provided succinct, actionable tips within the constraints for iPhone screen real estate.  Some physical design guidelines were made as follows: 

• No more than 3 chat bubbles from Olivia per tip
• No more than 140 characters per chat bubble from Olivia
• No more than three choices for the user to select​

Content Strategy For Olivia's Personality

Money is a topic that many people are really uncomfortable talking about, so we really had to keep that in mind when designing Olivia's personality. Our goal was to make Olivia's personality friendly, encouraging, and persuasive. To accomplish this we took some inspiration from Robert Cialdini's work on the psychology of persuasion and applied some of his principles:
​

• Liking - Olivia's tone and diction should be friendly and relatable to user's in their 20s and 30s
• Social Proof - Using numerical data as a frame of reference for how much the average person spends
• Authority - Using credible sources to convince the user to follow the tip(s)

 
Finally, to help nudge the user to follow through on the tip(s) we made sure to add a link to whatever app or site we suggested to the user to make it easier for them to perform the action.​

Sample Conversation About Having Wednesday Be A Shopping Day

Sample Conversation About Organic vs. Nonorganic Fruits And Vegetables

Results

Since the apps release for iOS back in July 2017, there have been positive signs of the effectiveness of the app:

• Consistently growing week over week
• Retention Rate - 90th Percentile among financial apps
• Typical user saves 6-7% of their income

Final visual design of Olivia by Chris Meeks

Reflections

Conversational User Interfaces have been getting a lot of buzz lately in the world of technology, with the potential of supplanting the GUI for certain applications whether it be eCommerce, booking a flight, or receiving advice. The design of the app wouldn't have been possible without understanding the cognitive biases people have with money as well as applying persuasive psychology to improve spending behavior. 

References

Ariely, Dan. Predictably Irrational. New York: Harper Perenial, 2010. Paperback. • On Amir, Dan Ariely and Ziv Carmon (2008), “The Dissociation Between Monetary Assessment and Predicted Utility.” Marketing Science. Vol. 27, No. 6: 1055- 1064.
H.K. Baker, V. Ricciardi(2015), "Understanding Behavioral Aspects Of Financial Planning and Investing." Journal Of Financial Planning. Vol. 28, Issue 3, pp. 22-26. 
Cialdini, Robert. Influence, The Psychology Of Persuasion. New York: Harper Business, 2006. Paperback. 
Eyal, Nir. Hooked, How To Build Habit Forming Products. New York: Portfolio, 2014. Hardcover. 
Frankel, R.S.(2017, July 20th). Millennials Are Spending A Ton On Basics. Are They Using Credit Cards Enough? Retrieved From: https://www.bankrate.com/credit-cards/spending-index-0717/
Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011. Hardcover. 
Leonard Lee and Dan Ariely (2006), “Shopping Goals, Goal Concreteness, and Conditional Promotions.” Journal of Consumer Research Vol. 33: 60-70.
G. Lowenstein and J.S. Lerner(2003), "Role Of Affect In Decision Making." Handbook Of Affective Sciences, Vol. 31: 619-641. 
K.L. Milkman, T. Rogers, and M.H. Bazerman(2008), "Harnessing Our Inner Angels And Demons: What We Have Learned From Want/Should Conflicts And How That Knowledge Can Help Us Reduce Short-Sighted Decision Making." Perspectives on Psychological Science, Vol. 3, No. 4, 324-338.
K.L. Milkman and J. Beshears (2009), "Mental Accounting and Small Windfalls: Evidence From An Online Grocer." Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Vol. 71, No. 2, 384-394.
Stanton et. al. (2014), "Effects Of Induced Moods On Economic Choices." Judgement And Decision Making, Vol. 9, No. 2: 167-175. 
R.H. Thaler, S. Benartzi(2004), "Save More Tomorrow: Using Behavioral Economics To Increase Employee Saving." Journal Of Political Economy, Vol. 112, No. 1, pp. S164-S187. 
Study Probes Spending Habits Of Millennial Grocery Shoppers(2016, May 24th). Retrieved From: https://progressivegrocer.com/study-probes-spending-habits-millennial-grocery-shoppers