How do you teach kids to care about money? You don't. You make them forget they're learning — and build a bank around that.
GravyStack is a gamified financial platform for children — equal parts banking product, educational tool, and engagement system. The core ambition: teach kids real financial literacy and life skills, while giving parents full visibility, all within the regulatory constraints of an actual banking service.
This wasn't a straightforward design challenge. Every decision had to satisfy four distinct stakeholder groups with conflicting needs — simultaneously. The kids needed entertainment. The parents needed trust. The bank needed compliance. The business needed growth.
In a world of instant gratification, how do you make a 10-year-old care about compound interest? And how do you convince their parents to hand over their banking credentials to a startup to do it?
Each stakeholder group had legitimate — and often competing — priorities. Research had to address all of them before a single screen could be justified.
The end users — but the hardest to design for. Short attention spans, zero intrinsic motivation around finances, and a saturated app market competing for every second of their time.
The actual customers and the gatekeepers. Skeptical of yet another EdTech product — and deeply cautious about anything touching their children and their bank accounts simultaneously.
The silent requirement. Every feature, flow, and data point had to clear federal banking regulations and minor-specific data privacy laws — no exceptions, no workarounds.
GravyStack needed a product that could attract investors, retain users, and generate revenue — while the other three stakeholders were pulling the design in different directions.
Research wasn't a phase — it was a continuous thread woven through every sprint, informing every tradeoff.
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Insert research plan, sprint map, or project timeline hereRan separate research sessions with each stakeholder group. Kids required fundamentally different session design than parents or banking stakeholders — shorter tasks, more visual prompts, gamified protocols.
Applied my 2-week research methodology to keep findings flowing in sync with dev sprints. Used the G/B/D/O framework to communicate findings to leadership in a format they could act on immediately.
Applied the Octalysis framework to map every core user flow against the 8 core drives of motivation. This wasn't cosmetic gamification — it was behavioral design baked into the product's DNA.
More design iterations than any other project in my career. The complexity of balancing four stakeholder groups meant we were continuously learning and rebuilding — always moving forward, never wasted effort.
This project went through more design iterations than anything else I've worked on. That's not a failure — it's what happens when you take user research seriously. Each iteration was directional progress, not backtracking.
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Insert wireframes, mockup screenshots, or Figma embeds hereInitial wireframes were deliberately sterile — low fidelity, no visual noise. Goal: validate information architecture and core flows across all four stakeholder groups before any visual investment.
Added visual direction and began integrating gamification elements. Kept iteration cycles fast to incorporate continuous user feedback. First round of parent-child testing conducted at this stage.
Final visual direction shaped by accumulated research. Distinct visual layers for kids vs. parents, unified by a shared design system. Trust signals surfaced prominently for parent-facing screens.
The Octalysis Framework — developed by Yu-kai Chou — maps human motivation across 8 core drives. Applied correctly, it turns routine tasks into compelling experiences. Most apps only hit 2–3 drives. We designed GravyStack to hit all 8.
The key insight: kids don't need to know they're being educated. They need to want to come back tomorrow. Financial literacy is a byproduct of engagement — not the other way around.
For parents, the strategy was transparency as a trust driver. Full visibility into their child's activity without full control — enough oversight to feel safe, enough autonomy to feel like the product was doing its job.
Kids are part of a mission: becoming financially independent. The narrative frames learning as becoming a "money master."
Clear progression systems, badges, and leveling tied directly to financial milestones and completed modules.
Kids set their own savings goals and customize their financial journey — agency within guardrails.
Real money, real accounts. The psychological weight of actually owning something drives behavior beyond any virtual reward.
Parent visibility creates social accountability. Achievements are shareable. Financial wins become social currency.
Time-limited challenges and daily tasks create urgency without anxiety — designed for healthy motivation loops.
Variable reward structures keep engagement high — not manipulative, but genuinely surprising and delightful.
Streak systems and milestone protection — used carefully to motivate without creating anxiety in young users.
Both parent and child demographics responded positively in beta testing. The dual-audience design problem was solved — kids found it engaging, parents found it trustworthy.
All features shipped within banking regulatory requirements. Compliance wasn't bolted on at the end — it was a design constraint from sprint one.
One of the most comprehensively gamified fintech products in the kids' banking space — all 8 Octalysis core drives addressed in the final design.
Running research in sync with sprints meant we caught problems when they were cheap to fix — not after we'd built around them.
The regulatory constraints pushed us toward clearer, more honest design. Transparency requirements for parents became a trust-building feature.
Adding badges to a bad product doesn't make it sticky. The Octalysis framework worked because it shaped the core UX — not the visual layer on top of it.
Children can't always articulate what they want — they show you. Observational research with parent-child pairs was irreplaceable for this reason.
Open to senior/lead UX roles and director-level engagements.