Ignacio Mas is Executive Director at the Digital Frontiers Institute.
The need for intuition rather than simplicity around account features
“We usually talk about the need for formal financial services to be simple. But what we need is for services to be intuitive.” The author applies it to account features.
Jul 8, 2013
Jul 8, 2013
Replicating Behaviours of Planning Physical Money through Digital Money
As we move from defining and storing value in physical commodities (cash, chickens, jewellery etc.) to digital money, how do we help poor people understand and use the brave new world of e-money? How do poor people manage their money? Why are basic No-Frills Accounts so unsuccessful? How might we take the answers to these […]
Jul 7, 2013
Jul 7, 2013
Naming sub-accounts to trigger intuition (and fun) around customer intentions
Along with MicroSave, Ignacio Mas shares his experiences and learnings from MetaMon project – that how difficult it is to create a generalizable metaphor for money management.
Jul 2, 2013
Jul 2, 2013
Understanding complex human financial behaviour: Alternative approaches
What drives the financial decision making of the poor? Here MicroSave team heads out to decipher the inherent thinking process behind these decisions through its research project – MetaMon.
Jun 24, 2013
Jun 24, 2013
Basing product development on mental models and metaphors
This blog delves deep into the whys of financial decisions and how people think of money. The author argues understanding mental models and metaphors are key to product design.
Jun 20, 2013
Jun 20, 2013
The State of Bank-led initiatives for E/M Banking and it’s potential
In 2012 Ignacio Mas worked with MSC to look at the state of digital financial services in India, the type of products that poor people want, and the role of microfinance institutions/SHGs in digital financial services systems. Ignacio also ran a training for all MSC staff, and we then asked him to record some of […]
Jun 7, 2013
Jun 7, 2013
Searching for metaphors of household financial management
This report summarises the intent, activities, outputs and key lessons from an ambitious program of field work which sought to capture vividly and succinctly the essence of how ordinary people think about the management of their money and resources.
May 21, 2013
May 21, 2013