First of all, I have decided the topic of my final major project is "The future of money". I am curious to explore the relationship between people and digital money.
Aim 🎯
Design a new way for people to experience finance in the future. Let people get the awareness of their digital money.
Search Terms, Key Words 📌
Fintech, Digital Money, Credit Card, Open Banking, Privacy, Emotion, Personality
What Is Digital Money?
"Any means of payment that exists purely in electronic form. Digital money is not tangible like a banknote or a coin. It is accounted for and transferred using computers. Digital money is exchanged using technologies such as smartphones, credit cards, and online platforms. In some cases, it can be transferred into physical cash, for example by withdrawing cash from an ATM."
Why? 🧐
Nowadays, Fintech is changing the way people interact with their money. The problem is people feel and sense little with their money when all payments become purely digital. When I am using physical money, like coins or banknotes to pay, I can feel that I spent and lost that money. However, using digital money will make us feel little about spending and losing our money. Credit cards, Contactless payments, QR code payments make us feel more convenient to pay. But it also increased the frequency of spending. Even bank apps and some fintech apps give us spending breakdowns and a lot of different saving options. We still feel we spend much more than we expect at the end of each month. So it comes out too many banking and Fintech apps, with boring statistics makes us hard to manage and learn from our finances. It is time to take a critical perspective on the future of money and the interactions that we will have with it.
How will I make it? 🔨
Below are the research methods that I planned I will use for this project.
Speculative Design Approach 🔮
Overall, I am interested in both the digital and physical aspects of money. Especially, finding out what are we missing when the world becomes cashless in the future. Therefore, I want to create a project that is not exactly to solve a problem but is to build awareness of using digital money and let people experience digital money in a different way. Using a speculative design approach to concretize digital money in a creative way will be my focus.
"The future belongs to those who can imagine it, design it, and execute it...It isn't something you await, but rather create." - His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum
Project feedback & Reflection 🙌
After the first week's effort, I think it is a good start for my final major project. At least, I found out a topic I really interested in. I know "Money" is somehow a broad topic. The concept of future money is also quite abstract. However, I believe it will be a valuable topic to explore. Nothing is perfect. I am sure that there is a lot of room to critically evaluate the experience of using digital money. Next week, I will start doing more plannings for both research methods and literature review.
Please have a look at the next blog for further progress.
References 📖
Adrian, T. and Mancini Griffoli, T., 2019. The Rise of Digital Money. FinTech Notes, 19(01).
Dunne, A. and Raby, F., 2013. Speculative everything: design, fiction, and social dreaming. MIT press.
Norman, D., 2013. The Design Of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books.