Pillar 1
Human-centered design (HCD) to build tailored financial inclusion strategies, programs, and curriculum.
IF Consulting uses HCD to identify the current financial behaviors, capacities, insights, needs and preferences of the target groups and key stakeholders as it relates to the use of financial and digital financial services as well as opportunities and constraints within the market and enabling environment. This helps define the most appropriate content and delivery methods for the programs and strategies.
IF Consulting uses a 5-step sequential HCD process
IF Consulting uses mainly qualitative methods during this process including in-depth interviews (IDIs) key informant interviews (KIIs), focus group discussions (FGDs) and co-creation sessions. These methods are used to produce key HCD outputs such as design principles, insight statements, personas, client journey maps, digital storyboards, and business model canvases.
IF Consulting applies the insights gathered during the HCD process to design customized financial inclusion strategies, programs, and curriculum in close collaboration with its clients. IF Consulting also ensures the design of the strategies and programs align with global best practices and current trends identified through landscape analyses.
To design national strategies, IF Consulting identifies the enabling environment which includes existing initiatives, stakeholder capacity, existing governance structures and policy context. IF Consulting also conducts SWOT analyses based on recent demand side surveys to assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for the different target groups as it relates to financial inclusion or financial capabilities.
To design curriculum, IF Consulting LLC identifies the current behaviors and desired behaviors of the target group based on the HCD. Then it uses ‘The 8 Elements of Design’, a framework developed by Global Learning Partners to outline the characteristics of the target group (e.g., socioeconomic, type of business, literacy levels and use of technology, social media, and financial services), the current situation or need, the anticipated change after the learning, the desired duration of the training, the place and space (in-person or virtual). Most importantly, the framework identifies the main learning objectives and IF Consulting builds the content, training methods and learning tasks so that the learning objectives are achieved. Lastly IF Consulting identifies the learning competencies required to achieve the desired behaviors (e.g., knowledge, skills, and attitudes) to ensure a mix of different learning domains across the sessions. This design process ensures that the training is grounded in the local context and is appropriate and relevant for the different target groups.
