Mega Project Update 0.2

Context:

Please read the first update of Mega Project at this link to know about the context of this blog. I hope you’ll enjoy reading our story.

Progress of Project

Great progress this week! We worked on the final setup for our online learning system. We designed different wireframes and prototypes for our online Ludo game app based on the concept of Financial Literacy (spend, save, share and invest). After deep analysis, we started to work on the development process. It was a time taking process but finally, we developed an app at the end of this week. After the designing and development process, now there was a testing phase to analyze it thoroughly so we spent 3 to 4 days on that! Now, just looking forward to getting feedback from a few of the potential users!

Other than this, physical activities with kids within the community have already been done where we reached out to kids of age 6 to 14 and taught them the concept of financial literacy with the help of different kinds of stories and activities including the Ludo game as well that was specially designed for this project to enhance children’s interest. It goes really well! Children were so interested in learning new concepts about Money Management and Financial Literacy. Our team is working into 2 different areas (Design/Development Part and Social Media Marketing) to complete the project more effectively within the time range.

Design and Development

• Designed board Ludo Game for Physical sessions
• For online engagement, an online Ludo Game (according to Financial literacy concepts) has been designed. We have already checked its functionality through the testing phase and now it’s good to go! Just waiting for final feedback from the end-users then we’ll launch that into Google Play Store in the upcoming week.
• The content team has designed courses for the basic understanding of Financial Literacy for our target age group. For that purpose, we decided to go for an online platform so we purchased domain and hosting in the last week. Now, the website having the content regarding courses and quizzes are also almost done. We have already published our website and a few of the children have completed the first course.

Social Media Marketing

• Setup Social media accounts to develop awareness among the target audience regarding the knowledge of Financial Literacy and money management
• Organized different campaigns by showing social activities and their impact
• Reached out to more than 500 people through social media from which 200 people were interested to join our platform for their kids’ learning.

Challenges and their Solutions

In-Person Sessions

We had planned in the group that together we would conduct physical activity inside the school to teach children about financial literacy by providing worksheets to each student and with the use of whiteboards we would teach them FL concepts. But we all belong to different cities So all the members couldn’t come together and do a joint activity. Then we came up with another idea: that some of us will print out financial ludo and conduct these physical activities in their neighborhood and Surroundings and we did this.

Lack of technical expertise

And the second challenge for us was that the members of our group do not have technical expertise. For this purpose members of the development team have done various courses from different sites to develop the website. By putting in effort and time we were successfully able to create our Website.

Audience Engagement

As we developed a website for the age group of 6 to 14 years old children. It was challenging to bring them to the website. We created our social media pages on Linked In and Facebook. Through these social media platforms, we connected with youngsters and Introduced them to Our Financial empire website So that children can be brought to the website through them.

Significant Changes in Mega Project

Teaching children about finance is our main goal. We want to give exposure to kids about finance from a younger age so that they start thinking about money management. We want them to start thinking differently about money.

You can see in our last blog that we planned to teach kids by using a structured ludo game including saving, investment, capital, and liability. The plan was to make a digital game so that children would learn through it. Then we would measure the impact of the game on kids by taking responses from them at the end. The plan is still pretty much the same but there are just some minor changes. We built the Gant chart of our plan and posted it on our last blog too. We are following the same chart to complete the project on time.

Physical Game Session

The first change can be considered as the physical financial literacy ludo game. As the game development was going on, we decided why not make a physical ludo board game which will help us measure the impact of the game on kids for the time being. We made our ludo design and printed it on a board and let some children play the board game. They happened to learn a lot from the game and it pushed us further to make the game digitally.

Web Development

Initially, the plan was to make a mobile game only, later after discussion we decided to make a website of our own which will, of course, have our ludo board game FINANCIAL EMPIRE in it but also some materials such as small video courses which children can watch for better understanding the aspects of financial literacy.

Online Courses Introduction

We are adding sections on video courses which are: Save, Spend, and Invest.

These courses will have descriptions of their own in simple words which will be easier to understand for the target age group we are aiming for. By the course of playing the game, children will see the terms coming in front of them which will be in modified form for save, spend and invest. We are trying to give exposure to these aspects of finance to children through this game.

Online Assessment

We are also planning to add small quizzes at the end of courses which will test them and give us an idea of whether the content we are providing is helpful or not. We will also try to take short feedback after the course if anything can be improved.

There will be a page that will be leading to the game, which is our financial literacy ludo game. It will also have the same aspects which were taught to children in video courses: Save, Spend and Invest.

The overall plan is to make children learn clearly about finance through a digital game and short video courses which will be on our website www.financialsempire.com which is under development now.

Measuring Impact of Efforts

Physical Sessions

We started with the physical activity in which we let some children play financial literacy ludo for generating the impact. Our circle members conducted a game with the presence of 20+ children and let them learn on their own through the game. They saw some terms that they were interested in and those were terms related to financial literacy. They understood the meaning by asking us and we also guided them that they can better understand these using the online platform which we created.

Social Media

We made pages and groups on Facebook and LinkedIn where we were able to engage more than 200 people with our product. We know that people of a bigger age group are present on LinkedIn but the idea is that they should also know that these kinds of platforms are available where they can guide their children to use them for learning. The reach of our online posts is increasing and we are being able to grow faster.

Website

We had gone through 10+ online courses ourselves to make content focused on children. We have added courses on the website and our FINANCIAL EMPIRE ludo game which is already being reached by some number since the website is new only a few visitors are seen but it’s expected to reach more people as time passes.

Sustainability of Project

Now coming to an important part of the project, the sustainability of this program, we are hoping to continue this program for a long time. What we started and planned, in the beginning, did not go well, and still, there are many goals we have to achieve and chase in the coming days. Apart from that, we can clearly see a bright future in this domain and that is one of the reasons we are going to continue this program in the long run.

We have planned several things for the sustainability of this project. Let me explain them one by one.

Android Application Updates

The first idea was to develop a Phone application for this project and we were able to make it but with time and after passing from the requirement analysis phase we can see that several features are missing from the application. So to make this application more interactive for the children of our target age group we have to add several interactive things and other features that are usually liked by the children. So far our application is based on a game and if you’re learning concepts only we have to add some other games as well in this application.

iOS Application

Another important aspect of our project is that we have not yet developed an iPhone-based application and we are hoping to develop its own. The purpose of developing an iOS application is that there is a large and wide market for iPhone applications and we have to enter that area as well.

So very soon we expect to launch an iPhone-based application.

Integration of Phone and Website

Our application and website are not connected. We plan to integrate both of them so that we can make changes to both of these places at the same time by changing the codebase from one place. This way users will be able to access their accounts from an application or website and vice versa.

Google Play Store Publication

Last but not least we have not yet published an application to Google Play Store and it is in the process of review from Play Store very soon we expect that it gets published and the audience will be able to download it from Play Store as well. It’s a part of the process of publishing an application to the Google Play Store you have to enter the review phase by the Google team.

Launch of new Courses

So far, we have lost only one course on our website and we hope to launch a few more courses related to financial management in the next few weeks. The course available on the website is related to financial savings. but that is not the only thing we can teach to children, there are several other things that children can learn anything and do in their daily lives. So to make them more productive, at least three new courses based on the topics of investments, stocks, and cryptocurrencies. These courses will be available very soon on our website and Android application.

Concluding Remarks

It is rightly said that if you think you can do it you are right.

At the very beginning of our idea, it seemed that we wouldn’t be able to make it or have that expertise but when we started working on it as a group project things seemed easier. With time, there were issues, challenges, and problems we faced and they are pretty common in teamwork. As we learned from Amal academy that whenever there is a conflict among the team members, there is a chance for improvement and we took it literally and learned several things from each other.

So at the end of the day, we can surely say that whatever we have achieved so far is the result of a collaborative team effort.