Money Experience

Money Experience develops innovative software and curriculum to teach personal finance and quality of life concepts to high school and college aged students. As a founding member of the team, I led UX design and development of the company’s product porftfolio, including a highly sophisticated interactive “life simulator” and accompanying administrator portal. In total I brought three platforms to market from research through ideation, concept, design, development and market acceptance. I hired and managed the marketing, curriculum development and product development teams.

The Money Experience life simulator allows students to live a simulated lifetime, and make many of the major choices they'll eventually have to face. Students choose their college path, career, region and locality, even picking spouses, cars, vacations, and much more. Every decision they make has a consequence for their quality of life and financial health. If a student is financially healthy while making decisions that are true to their own stated priorities, they are successful!

A key component of the platform was the use or storytelling to foster empathy for a student's future selves. We created a graphic novel format, with highly relatable characters who started out around the same age as our students, and then aged alongside every phase of life that we simulated. Our goal was to give the emotional context of life's big decisions, lifting the choices out of a soulless spreadsheet and into real-world scenarios the students could imagine themselves in. Students would find something in these characters to identify with, and then watch as they encountered unexpected life challenges. This format encouraged a student user to understand how they might feel when faced with a major life decision, in ways they may have never considered before. In practice, we found this to be a highly engaging method that helped students form strong opinions about their choices.