Saving Under the Mattress
Designing a culturally grounded savings experience for financial inclusion
.png)
The Mattress
CONTEXT and CHALLENGE
.png)
In Colombia, saving money is not only a financial behavior, it is a cultural one. Despite the growth of digital banking, most households continue to rely on informal methods such as hiding cash at home, often under mattresses, to protect themselves against emergencies. From a financial-inclusion perspective, this creates a paradox: People do want to save, but they don’t trust formal systems and lack tools that align with their lived realities.
Why This Mattered
Only 2 out of 10 households in Colombia maintain consistent saving habits.
Families without savings are the most vulnerable during emergencies. 60% lack enough money to face unexpected events.
Informal savings methods persist due to distrust of financial institutions, low perceived benefits, and fear of losing money (“it is safer at home”)
The challenge
Designing for trust, restraint, and emotional safety in a context where formal financial systems are often perceived as risky or inaccessible.
SOLUTION
A feature that digitally translates the cultural practice of saving under the mattress, respecting these familiar behaviors while gently guiding users toward healthier, more effective saving habits.
Key components
.png)
A virtual “mattress” for hiding money securely on a digital device (familiar metaphor, modern execution)
.png)
Savings fueled by leftovers or emergency funds
.png)
Impulse protection through time-based locks, cultural trivia challenges & trusted social accountability (a friend safeguarding access)
I led the end-to-end UX work for this savings feature.
My role spanned research, validation, and design, with a strong focus on aligning emotional safety, behavioral insight, and feasibility within an existing financial product.
RESPONSABILITIES
.png)
Led quantitative and qualitative research to understand real saving and protection behaviors.
Defined experience principles and interaction patterns grounded in cultural insights.
Designed and validated the full savings feature, including language, flows, and protection mechanis.
Collaborated closely with designers and developers to ensure feasibility and delivery readiness.
Quantitative Discovery
A behavioral baseline was established through a large-scale survey focused on how users protect and manage their savings in everyday life.
What this validated:
-
High engagement signaled relevance of the problem space
-
Response volume provided a reliable quantitative baseline
-
Clear preferences emerged early, reducing solution ambiguity Results
Designed and analyzed a survey with 554 completed responses
Achieved a 56.9% completion rate with an average time of 1:58
Evaluated three distinct savings-protection approaches to identify clear user preference.
Results
46.6%
(258 users)
preferred a solution inspired by hiding money
36.5%
(202 users)
selected a secondary protection method
17%
(94 users)
favored the least restrictive option
Outcome
The strongest preference aligned with how people already hide money at home, confirming that cultural metaphors were critical to adoption.
"People don’t want to stop hiding money — they want to hide it better"
BENCHMARKING
To contextualize findings, I analyzed existing financial tools across a spectrum of complexity and behavioral intent. This helped clarify where current products succeed and where they fail.
Monzo
Basic expense visibility
Automated saving nudges
Digit
Mint
Complex financial overview
Accounting-oriented
Money Lovers
Expense tracking
Monify
Insights
KEY CHALLENGES
Most tools focus on financial optimization, not emotional safety.
Most products optimize for visibility and control.
Higher complexity correlated with lower accessibility for non–financially literate users.
Design for trust, protection, and restraint, not just efficiency.
Framing the Value
Using survey data, past internal research, and social-channel insights, I synthesized a Value Proposition Canvas to align user needs with product intent.
This helped clarify
Design criteria established
User anxieties around spending.
Emotional drivers behind “hiding” money.
The role of friction as a positive behavioral mechanism.
Savings must feel protected, not just stored.
Friction can be beneficial if it increases confidence and protects from impulsive spending.
Education should be embedded, not instructional and feel without judgment.
Brainstorming
Co Design AND Ideation
I ran internal co-design sessions with designers and developers where we:
I
Mapped end-to-end saving user journeys
Explored protection mechanisms and interaction models
Mapped emotional friction points
Evaluated metaphors and concepts against cultural alignment and technical constraints
Emotional tone
Qualitative Validation
To validate and refine the feature, I designed and conducted focus groups to surface both reported feedback and observed behavior.
Participants tested multiple flows and helped refine:
Interaction timing and behavior
Language
Phases
Open conversation
Deep exploration
First impression
What we measured
User performance (what participants did)
Perceived clarity and trust (what they said)
Confusion and friction points (what we observed)
Some Key insights
Users feel safer when saved money is intentionally difficult to access due to a declared lack willpower.
Delayed access helped users reflect and self-regulate, reducing impulsive spending
Embedded learning increases confidence and perceived control. "The way to protect your money is by learning and getting some education"
Explicit instructions for retrieving savings increase anxiety. "That affects my mind" ... "if I have a piggy bank and I make a hollow, it will never be the same".
Financial language caused confusion and emotional reactions. Onomatopoeias helped reduce confusion and increased confidence in communication.
.png)
Below is the system diagram outlining how the feature operates end-to-end. It maps core processes, connected components, and the relationships between them.
The visualization also highlights cross-functional involvement — including key departments and stakeholders — alongside the critical data inputs that informed implementation decisions.
The Mattress Blueprint
impact and results
Increased adoption after introducing interactive protection blocks that made savings feel intentionally secure rather than simply stored.
20%
Feature Adoption
Post-launch enhancements led to higher balances within the mattress pocket, indicating stronger saving behavior and reduced impulsive withdrawals.
+7–10%
Average Balance Growth
_edited.png)
Stronger Behavioral Engagement
Aligning the feature with culturally familiar saving practices increased user confidence and sustained interaction with protected savings mechanisms.
Strategic Product Influence
Validated intentional friction as a growth lever and demonstrated measurable impact from research-led feature development within the product ecosystem.
reflections and learnings
Sometimes the best innovation is listening deeply, honoring what already exists, and designing around it—not against it.
Not all friction is bad — and not all simplification builds trust. When designed purposefully, it can strengthen confidence and reduce impulsive behavior.
Even small wording changes can significantly impact clarity and perceived safety within a feature.
In a high-scale ecosystem, even a small % increase in metrics represents meaningful improvement in financial resilience.
_edited.png)
_edited.png)
