Augmented reality (AR) game inspires millennials to seek professional investment guidance

Overview

Bank of America is in the midst of a personal banking revolution, finding new ways to reach its millennial demographic. As technology increases and banking becomes more mobile, the traditional in lobby experience has become less relevant. Having already rolled out personnel-free banking kiosks, they reached out to us to develop an Augmented Reality financial education tool to encourage personal financial awareness and drive those seeking more information to investment advisors.

• Millennials spend on average close to 6 hours per day on their phones
• They also are more likely to conduct transactions online versus in person
• Our goal was to make personal finance education, an often avoided topic, engaging and easy to understand
• We built a calculator that allowed users to input their desired amounts of savings based on chosen variables, and then edit those variables as necessary to achieve their financial goal
• Tactile input makes users feel more involved as an active participant to take ownership of shaping a better financial outcome for themselves
• Augmented Reality piles of money visually represented their initial savings amount and whether their current savings plan would result in a surplus or shortcoming
• Visualizing the heights of the initial investment pile of money compared with the height of the investment goal pile of money can drive home the effort and time needed to reach one’s financial goals
• By gamifying exploration and assessment of their current financial status and goals, users are more likely to face difficult truths and engage in hard to understand topics
• Other benefits of gamification include increased likelihood of completing the financial assessment tasks, repeat use of the education experience, increased rates of sharing, and increased financial investment customers for Bank of America
• We provided testing via approaching potential users at random in the public
• Feedback provided was initial wow factor, engaging due to variability of investment factors that effect outcome, ease of use, and a desire to have more experiences