MoneyBee

Inspiration

Our goal was to design an app to help educate youth and teenage girls about finance. In our personal experience, we as a team felt there was a lack of accessible resources to learn how to navigate the stock market. We hope that MoneyBee can provide users with the tools to manage their own money once they begin earning incomes of their own.

What it does

MoneyBee provides a simulation of the stock market, where each company is represented by a bee. Using the seeds currency, users can choose which bees to invest in and decide when to sell them in order to collect more seeds. Users can also earn seeds by playing educational mini-games. Seeds can be used to redeem coupons for real store purchases from our sponsored companies or to invest in more bee stocks.

How I built it

The UI Library and wireframes were designed in Adobe Illustrator, Figma, and Sketch, and the app was built in Android Studio using Java and XML.

Challenges I ran into

We initially started with a different idea but realized it was not technically viable. We also began using unfamiliar technologies.

Designers: Trying to determine an intuitive user flow for a game that involved many different aspects was difficult. The process of learning a new tool was challenging and time-consuming, but it was fulfilling to learn something new.

Developers: For one of the developers, this was the first time they had used Android Studio. Learning how to create the different views and transition between them was challenging, as was debugging.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

After abandoning our previous idea, we brainstormed a new one relatively quickly and with ease. We are very happy with the bee motif because the bee line fits with the idea of the stock trends rising and falling, while also creating a fun and enjoyable educational experience.

What I learned

Designers: We learned how to design using a new tool (Adobe Illustrator), as well as mini-game creation. We also learned how to design collaboratively.

Developers: We learned a new platform (Android Studio).

What's next for MoneyBee

Some ideas we have include more incentives for the user such as buying accessories for your bee using your seeds. We would also like to include more educational mini-games. Another useful feature would be to have a news section that affects the bee stocks, to simulate the way in which current events can influence the stock market.