Strategy & Digital Prototyping
IDEO.org

Client: IDEAN and Mara Foundation

Cashless University
Lagos, Nigeria

How might we give young entrepreneurs a trusted way to pay for their needs and help them grow, directly through their phones?

For this project, SOSHL worked with interaction design firm Idean (now part of Frog/Capgemini Invent), and Mara Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Atlas Mara Bank, to provide strategy for a new mobile money offering aimed at young entrepreneurs and students in Nigeria.

The project began with a two-week intensive research phase, meeting with students and entrepreneurs to understand their spending habits, as well as merchants and other organizations in the Lagos area, to build a portrait of the landscape of buying and spending. Out of the research insights we developed a set of design principles to guide the development of the mobile money offering, responding to the things we knew to be true about the behavior change and spending patterns of young students in Lagos.

We also rapidly prototyped and tested two different interactive wireframes. Through video documentation we were able to capture initial reactions from students and local merchants to two different possible options for the structure of the mobile app itself, as well as guiding them through in-depth feedback and validation.

This process was invaluable in quickly giving us insight into the ease of understanding on how to navigate the app, which areas were working and where additional revisions were needed.

Credit: Idean (now Frog/Capgemini Invent)