On Show

Daniel McCloskey

I am a multi-disciplinary designer with over a decade of industry experience working as a designer and art director. My research project incorporated age-progressed avatars of users within a pension app to encourage customers to save more for retirement. Previous research has shown that by aiding users in imagining their future, they feel greater empathy towards their future self and this is reflected in how much they are willing to save towards their pension.

Irish people are going to have to save more if they are to achieve a comfortable lifestyle in retirement. Currently, there is an over reliance on the flat rate-state pension which is aimed to prevent pension poverty and is not designed to ensure a high level of adequacy. Less than half the population on the state pension have any access to an additional pension scheme to make up any shortfall. Encouraging young workers to contribute more at an earlier age makes adequacy goals more achievable. However even those that are members of a pension scheme, often don’t realise that the contribution rate at which they are saving will not provide a comfortable level of income when they retire.

Although the benefits seem clear, in practice it is often difficult to encourage people to forgo short term gains for long term rewards. Take for example the person smoking a cigarette, who is placing greater value on the immediate nicotine hit as opposed to the long-term health consequences which could appear years into their future. Multiple researchers have noted that one of the reasons that this is difficult is because we feel psychologically disconnected from our future self . This psychological disconnection can occur when we perceive little commonality in our interests and motivations between our present and future selves. At its most extreme, we can view our future self as a completely different person. In this instance, saving for retirement can feel like giving money away to someone else instead of investing it for one’s own future.

This research looked at introducing a series of aids to help participants visualise their future self within a pension app in an effort to encourage greater pension contributions.

The project was created using the design thinking framework developed by David Kelly and Tim Brown at IDEO. The project was broken down into three phases. 1. Understand, 2. Explore & 3. Materialise.

Previous research conducted at Stanford had participants interact with an avatar of their current self or an aged version of themselves within a 3d environment. They found those exposed to their aged avatar felt closer to their future self and saved twice as much for retirement. The lead researcher was interviewed to incorporate the latest findings into the project. A further three interviews were conducted with subject matter experts. A survey was distributed to get people's thoughts on pensions, before conducting a competitor and task analysis of current products.

A persona of our target user was developed using our primary research. An empathy map was created to visualise their current thoughts and feelings about pensions. The persona was used as a guide throughout the design process to make sure user needs were met. Below is a visualisation of their current customer journey. This information was synthesised in to Jobs-to-be-done statements for the final product.

Photos were aged using the FaceApp program with volunteers being sent a personalised email to their online test.

To help users better understand how much they should be saving, Loughborough University’s research into retirement living standards was incorporated to show what their lifestyle could be like in retirement at three different income levels.

A final between groups user test was conducted, using a mixed method approach that gathered both quantitative and qualitative data.

Pay it forward: Using age progressed avatars within a digital savings app to encourage young people in Ireland to save more for retirement.

Research has shown that interventions that help volunteers visualise their future, either by creating an age-progressed image of their future appearance or through exercises which help participants imagine their future lifestyle, increases volunteers' connection to their future-self and in turn increases how much they are willing to contribute towards their pension. This study furthers this research by fully integrating a future-self avatar within a pension app. This avatar allows participants to see what they could look like in the future and provides prompts and feedback on their saving decisions.

User Experience Design

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