Direct Costs

The main cost around producing this project would be gathering marketing data from rural Chinese households. Of course this would be travelling to China and staying in affordable accommodation that is travelling distance away from these households. The price comparison website skyscanner.net is extremely useful for finding the lowest costs of both flights and hotels. I estimate that the research would take 10 days to produce in order to ask a feasible amount of people.

Results show the cost of £363.

The price of hotels varies between the affordable costs of £263-£393. Anything below £400 would be ideal for this kind of research. Then travel and eating costs must be factored into the research trip which I estimate would be around £300 for 10 days worth of research if done on a budget. However this could have a leeway of +20% if needed.

For this project I have used/plan to use the majority of design elements within the Creative Cloud suite. Using the programmes inDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and Muse. To rent the Creative Cloud suite it would be £38.11 a month.

(http://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud/business/teams.html?promoid=NLMHRH83&mv=other)

I estimate that the project would be completed over the course of two months which would bring the software package to £76.22 for 2 months.

Indirect Costs

According to creativereview.co.uk the average UK design daily rates (per 8-hour day) are:

Junior designer: £100
Midweight: £130
Senior: £250
Design director: £275

(http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2013/january/on-the-money/)

Considering the market research and the scope of designing the product and associated services which include two package applications for customers and businesses as well as a website I would charge £18/hr per 8-hour day to sustain the amount of work required to be completed. I may choose to work in a team in which case the workload would be shared but completed in a shorter amount of time. Which could be ideal and they would be on similar wages.

Other Costs

Based on the fact that major social media networking sites are blocked in China due to political ideologies Facebook cannot be used to advertise to users. Therefore other means of promotion and marketing are needed. The Chinese equivalent, Weibo, does not display banner ads but moreso focuses on interactive ads:

“Our aim is to allow advertisers to retain loyal customers through interactive forms of ads and help them to directly drive sales, not just selling advertising space,” Wang told an interviewer from ShanghiDaily.com (http://socialgarden.com.au/social-media-marketing/how-to-advertise-on-weibo/)

Weibo Statistics:

• 600 million users
• 176 million active users per month
• 50.1 percent male users, 49.9 percent female users
• 82 percent of Weibo users shop online
• 70 percent use the mobile app to access Weibo

Setting up advertising and associated costs on Weibo would require contacting them directly.

Barclays Partner Finance

The Barclays Partner Finance homepage drew me to the development of a website that would function for both personal use and business use. Since the intended idea behind this project is to provide for both businesses and customers with an all-in-one package. I thought it would be suitable to develop a collection of operational webpages.

Barclays chose a particularly strong centre image with some key text on their homepage to target certain audiences. Barclays claims to aid business partners to ‘maximise their sales opportunities by helping their customers afford new purchases.’

Barclays Partner Finance Homepage

Using wireframe.cc I started to map out a similar style for a webpage:-

Early Website Design

To fully develop the interface of the website I went along the design of the Barclays website. The menu buttons will prominently feature login screens to track finances as well as work in harmony with the finance lenders that China has to offer.

The main image displayed along the top will primarily be aimed at the bustling farming industry of China, therefore an energetic image of workers and fields will be shown. The remaining icons along the bottom will focus on personal finances as well as implementing the calendar that displays dates at which information comes out.

Early Website Design

Test Mock-Up

To kickstart the development of my website I chose to implement that elements I had researched into. I took a royalty-free image of a Chinese farm and used it as the backdrop for development and growth. The current octagon’s are placeholders for images/icons that will be developed alongside the application design in an Iconography post. At this point I simply wanted to place the key elements in a layout for future reference. At the moment colour choice is influential to its own success. The subtle blue is similar to Barclays and may be changed to a light green in the near future.

Adobe Muse 

Using Adobe Muse and the basic wireframe I had created I developed a basic outline for my website with functioning web pages. Much like Barclays I have divided the navigation system into Business and Personal. This takes you to specialised pages that are accustomed to both the customers and businesses. The colour palette is typically finance based. I chose to use a set of colours that influenced the site [insert site here].

At this point in my design some of the images are placeholders for future development. I plan in changing the blue placeholder images to octagons.

Initial Ideas :-

To kickstart the development of my iOS application I created a mind map to show the development of my ideas:

These elements that I was considering were produced after conducting research into existing UI Finance App design by SmashFreakz. The collection of images I was most interested in were collected on a Pinterest Board (https://uk.pinterest.com/karlsandford/app-inspiration/). In particular I was most interested in the ones that featured calendars. For example:

The use of a calendar can enable for financial tracking as well as microcredit tracking. Using the calendar, the date at which loans are repaid can be put onto the calendar so that those living in rural areas with little income are aware of the date this happens. This makes for no late repayments and therefore no extra chargers that could incur.

Another key area of development is the implementation of graphs and charts for financial tracking of income/expenses. The application would be directly with Chinese bank services to work as an all-in-one package for Mobile Banking as well as Financial Tracking.

Furthermore, the application will transcend beyond the pure inputting of information into a system, but it will also be user-orientated with the creation of a user account. So the user has the ability to login anywhere and everywhere to meet the needs of travelling.

Moodboard of App Designs

In a Moodboard of App Designs I gathered from Pinterest I noticed a pattern in some of the designs. The financial applications featured a strong green-oriented colour palette. According to colour psychology, ‘Green is the color of prosperity and abundance, of finance and material wealth. It relates to the business world, to real estate and property. Prosperity gives a feeling of safety to green.’ (http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/color-green.html)

Furthermore, two of the designs feature hexagonal buttons for navigation. I may choose to incorporate octagons to suit the brand identity of GRND8.

Smartphone Users Demographics

Statistic provides a bar chart that shows the distribution of smartphone users to urban and rural areas in 2012. ‘In 2012, around 30 percent of Chinese smartphone users lived in rural areas.’

To further develop this I will create an application to be used on tablets that NGO MFIs can use with the customers. The reason behind this would be the development of POS services within China similar to Awamo in Africa. This would rely on the increase in technological awareness.

Beginning the Design:

The first page design I created was for the calendar interface that would show daily income/expenses as well as month repayment tracking. Looking at this design it has ease of navigation but lacks detail. For example there is a lack of iconography that could lead to better user experience. The monthly repayment section needs a specific icon that can be placed on the calendar so that the user knows exactly when their month repayment is due.

First Design: Calendar

At this point the colours are mere placeholders and such research needs to be adapted in order to adjust to colour psychology. The one issue I am seeing already is how far I can blur the lines between being a product for the consumer or it being a product for businesses to enable the customer to use their businesses.

Alternatively, I may consider purely focusing on iPad application development so these can realistically be ideally produced at a low cost/large scale according to Xiaoshan. This would enable a fingerprint interface, similar to Awamo.

The main differences between an iPhone and iPad application design would be that the iPad would be used to create financial loans for customers and the iPhone application would be used so customers can track their finances.

Updated Designs

After I developed the first wave of designs for the interface I received some good criticism that gave me a large spectrum of ideas for development:

• Login screen is simple and effective. Can I get rid of the box around login?
• Iconography is needed for ‘monthly repayment.’
• Delete the text associated with the icons along the bottom of the screen. It is too small and unnecessary. Can I changed the interface to a swipe and drag motion. Changes the practicality. More free-flowing.
• Development of a menu screen.

The intended idea behind this project is to increase the infrastructure of micro-finance in parts of the world that would not usually have access to such system.

The output of the project will be a financial infrastructure to aid in the development of Chinese finance lenders, and to bring change/stability to an already existing system that is currently volatile in nature. GRND8 will bring widespread access to rural parts of China that ordinarily would not have access to micro-finance. It would also aid in the corruption of existing finance opportunities to configure poverty within the farming households of the country.

Brand Identity:

A stable infrastructure is essential to any business, country, product, etc. The identity of GRND8 reflects this. ‘GRND’ represents the foundations of the initiative by starting from the ground up to create a solid infrastructure. In Chinese culture, the number 8 (Ba in Chinese) has the similar pronunciation with 发 (Fa, meaning wealth or fortune), which is very welcome in this culture. Therefore the initiative has been named accordingly to emphasise the prospect of wealth with a stable infrastructure.

Working Logo.

As a continuation of the Money Matters EYA Category I have decided to continue my focus on micro-finance. However, rather than focus on assisting businesses and students on financial advisement, I would rather focus on provided micro-finance to areas of the world that ordinarily would not have access to such facilities. AWAMO are very much so focusing on bringing micro-finance options Sub-Saharan Africa full stop. A key consideration is their security policy with fingerprint identification, ‘In many instances, crime and violence act as a significant deterrent to investment and in some cities large areas have become literally ungovernable.’ (Hove, Muchemwa and Ngwerume, 2013).

MicrofinanceGateway provides significant articles and analyses on global micro-finance. In particular, a report from Mr. Du Xiaoshan, Chairman of China Microfinance Association, reflections on Micro Finance and Risk Management. He stated that a major constraint of development is sustainability and the ability of respective finance lenders. Furthermore research by scholars suggests that ‘since NGO MFI services mostly cover remote underdeveloped or sparsely populated areas, it is worth exploring whether they can take advantage of technologies like mobile banking, POS-devices and computerised MIS systems at low cost and large scale.’ Therefore a lack of technological access has significantly reduced the ability of smaller microfinance lenders to be able to access their market.