UX Design
Our team built Open Door, a financial literacy app designed to help young adults, particularly first-generation Americans, navigate personal finance. First-generation Americans often face additional linguistic, cultural, and support-related barriers that contribute to lower financial understanding and poorer financial outcomes. Open Door was created to bridge that gap by making financial education more accessible, approachable, and fun.
The Problem
How do you create a personalized onboarding experience that draws in first-generation adults and simplifies key financial literacy concepts in a way that actually sticks?
Our Priorities
With only 72 hours on the clock, we focused on what would set our product apart. We prioritized three things: an engaging onboarding experience that builds excitement around learning, a personalized feel that tailors lessons to each user's individual needs, and bite-sized lesson plans that deliver one concept at a time so users can actually absorb the material.
Design Inspiration
We drew inspiration from Duolingo's onboarding process, studying how it combines hands-on quizzes with immediate rewards to make learning feel effortless and fun. We applied the same thinking to finance, using gamified design elements to keep users motivated and coming back.
The Outcome
The judges were impressed with the visual design and thoughtful user experience. They noted that as first-time users, they would feel genuinely delighted and motivated to explore the platform further.
