🏦 Community Design Challenge, Q2 2025
🚩 Challenge Context & Background
Imagine you're part of a cutting-edge fintech startup that's launching a brand-new mobile banking app targeted at young adults and professionals. While visually appealing designs matter, your users are primarily concerned about trust, clarity, and seamless functionality—especially during onboarding. Your task as a design team is to rethink the onboarding journey to create a frictionless experience that instills confidence from the first interaction.
Before diving into visuals and polished UI, you'll spend time deeply understanding your audience, developing empathy, and exploring practical, innovative solutions to address real user pain points. You'll collaborate closely across multiple disciplines—from brand designers and illustrators to UX writers—and importantly, you'll partner with developers to ensure technical feasibility and effective design handoffs.
This challenge isn't about creating just another beautiful fintech app—it's about strengthening your foundational design skills in research, strategy, collaboration, communication, and delivering solutions that truly enhance users' financial lives.
Are you ready to shape the future of fintech—starting from fundamentals? Let's dive in!
🎯 Objectives
Build foundational design skills through practical application.
Enhance soft skills like teamwork, collaboration, communication, stakeholder management, and presentation skills.
Experience realistic collaboration and handoff processes with developers.
📅 Timeline & Phases
Each phase spans 7 full days, allowing deep learning and thorough collaboration.
🔎 Phase 1: Discovery & Research (April 1–7)
Objective: Understand fintech onboarding challenges, market trends, and genuine user needs.
Tasks by Role:
UI/UX Designers: Conduct user research, define personas, map detailed user journeys, articulate onboarding pain points.
Writers/UX Copywriters: Content audits, research fintech communication strategies and trust-building practices.
Brand/Graphic Designers: Competitor brand analysis, identify unique visual communication opportunities.
Illustrators/Motion Designers: Research emotional impacts of visuals and animations on user trust.
Developers: Provide insights on technical feasibility, platform constraints, security, and performance considerations.
Soft Skills: Empathy, stakeholder interviewing, analytical thinking, clear communication.
Deliverable:
Comprehensive research documentation (user insights, competitor analysis, technical feasibility notes).
💡 Phase 2: Ideation & Problem-Solving (April 8–14)
Objective: Generate innovative, informed solutions based on Phase 1 insights.
Tasks by Role:
UI/UX Designers: Low-fidelity sketches, wireframes, and onboarding flow concepts.
Writers/UX Copywriters: Draft onboarding scripts, engaging microcopy, and narratives.
Brand Designers: Initial brand tone, messaging, trust strategies.
Graphic Designers: Conceptual visual assets and UI element sketches.
Illustrators/Motion Designers: Preliminary visual storytelling concepts (storyboards, initial animations).
Developers: Participate in ideation discussions, provide feedback on technical feasibility of proposed concepts.
Soft Skills: Collaborative ideation, feedback loops, constructive critique, teamwork.
Deliverable:
Collaborative concept deck (wireframes, narrative drafts, visual asset concepts, technical notes from developers).
🛠 Phase 3: Prototyping & Iterative Testing (April 15–21)
Objective: Prototype, test, and refine solutions based on iterative feedback.
Tasks by Role:
UI/UX Designers: Interactive mid-fidelity prototypes, conduct usability tests.
Writers/UX Copywriters: Refine onboarding copy, FAQs, chatbot scripts based on user feedback.
Brand/Graphic Designers: Prototype brand elements, refine visual consistency from feedback.
Illustrators/Motion Designers: Interactive storyboards, refined animation testing.
Developers: Technical review of prototypes, feedback on implementation considerations, accessibility, and responsiveness.
Soft Skills: Usability testing, integrating feedback, stakeholder management, cross-functional collaboration.
Deliverables:
Interactive mid-fidelity prototype (Figma or your tool of choice).
User feedback documentation and developer technical recommendations.
🎨 Phase 4: Visual Execution & Presentation (April 22–28)
Objective: Finalize visuals, prepare a comprehensive handoff package, and professionally present your solution.
Tasks by Role:
UI/UX Designers: Polished, high-fidelity designs and interactive prototypes.
Writers/UX Copywriters: Final onboarding content and microcopy.
Brand Designers: Final brand style guide integrated into designs.
Graphic Designers: Finalized UI assets, visuals, and infographics.
Illustrators/Motion Designers: Final illustrations and animations for the onboarding journey.
Developers: Participate in realistic design handoff, critique documentation clarity, and suggest improvements for smoother developer implementation.
Soft Skills: Professional presentation, storytelling, clear documentation, effective communication.
Deliverables:
High-fidelity prototype showcasing the complete onboarding experience.
Case study presentation deck documenting phases, insights, teamwork, outcomes.
Developer feedback report on the handoff documentation.
🏅 Judging Criteria
Quality and depth of research.
Innovation, practicality, and feasibility of solutions.
Effectiveness of cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Usability, accessibility, inclusivity, and brand alignment.
Professionalism and clarity of the final presentation and documentation.
🎖 Rewards & Recognition
Portfolio-enhancing case study.
Chance to get featured on thedsgnjunkies' newsletter.
👥 Team Formation & Submission
Form diverse, interdisciplinary teams for maximum impact.
For team assistance, contact Community Manager, Caleb Agozie, via the WhatsApp group.
Submit your project by April 28 via the button below
🚀 Why Participate?
Deepen fundamental design knowledge.
Strengthen critical soft skills for career advancement.
Experience realistic fintech industry challenges.
Improve design-to-development collaboration skills.
