O uso de concerns conflitantes em projeto de design para emoção na experiência de economizar recursos financeiros

Abstract

Financial balance is pursued by many Brazilians who became accustomed to living in a country with constant economic crises and astonishing income discrepancies. It is a subject that involves goals, postures and patterns of personal behavior and can have impact on life quality. The understanding of human behavior, in turn, became one of the areas that the Design grows interest in. Considering such context, this work aims at understanding how Design can contribute to arousing emotions, enhancing money savers’ experience, starting from the identification of conflicting concerns and their use as project input. In Appraisal Theory, concern is the term used for describing interests, goals, demands, patterns and individual postures which are frequently out of alignment and even conflicting with one another. First, a direct research was carried out among users (two focus groups, money savers and no money savers) in order to identify their concerns and conflicts. Based on the results, a concerns profile was built, 17 of them were qualified as conflicting and six as meaningful. It was also possible to generate five personas. These data were visually displayed and taken to a workshop, in which four groups of designers and no designers developed concepts that could enhance the experience of saving money. Along the first activity, the groups were asked to define, by themselves, the conflict/problem. Later, the groups created five concepts: i) an app that determines the amount of money one can spend a day; ii) a platform that connects, encourages and help people save money; iii) an investment product associated with one’s credit card bill (a percentage is saved); iv) counseling, so that people could set their money goals, establish the amount of money they want to save; and v) an app that would help families manage their own finances. Some of the ideas directly focused on the enhancement of the experience of saving money, others intended to make the whole act of saving money possible. The activities developed during the research generated learning about the use of conflicting concerns in projects, which are explained in the final considerations of this text.