InvestiNuts is an easy-to-use financial education website that helps beginners build a strong foundation in different financial pathways ranging from basic budgeting to creating an investment profile!
The inspiration for this project was to create an interactive but fun and engaging learning environment for financial literacy. Likewise to the main inspiration Duolingo, there are different lessons and levels for the user to build their knowledge as they go along in their chosen path in InvestiNuts. We also made sure to make the lessons condensed but still containing a sufficient amount of information to keep users engaged. Nutty, our mascot and chat-box, is the bridge between the past and the future, reminiscent of playful nostalgia to guiding us into a better, more informed financial future. Overall, this makes the learning experience for the user more fun and memorable as their is a fun little mascot to interact with.
InvestiNuts is an educational, interactive website to improve financial literacy by providing different lessons with two main pathway courses: personal financial planning and individual portfolio management. In these courses, different lessons are provided to help educate users on how to achieve their goals, from basic financial skills like budgeting to learning about how to create their own investment profile. In addition, questions are at the end of each lesson to quiz the user on their understanding of the lesson. There is also a mascot that makes this learning environment more attentive and fun, Nutty. Nutty is a chat-box that clarifies understanding of what the user got right or wrong and allows the user to expand on their understanding of the lesson. Nutty is also accessible outside the lessons to help advise users on their financial ventures, such as advising on what stocks to buy according to the user’s preferences. For every question the user answers correctly, a reward is given, represented by “nuts”, which the user can utilize at the virtual shop to customize the chat-box Nutty with accessories. In this way, a reward system is implemented for the user to encourage learning experience.
We built it using the languages HTML, Python, JavaScript, Gemini, and GitHub. All of the designs such as the chat-box mascot and hats were hand drawn through IbisPaint X. We also used VSCode as well.
Challenges that we ran to were using Gemini on asking help on how to connect front-end and back-end, discussing different ideas on how to implement a chat-box in lessons, and how this can benefit the user in learning experience, and drawing the designs from scratch.
Hand drawn designs, the interface, features that the learning website offers for users, and the overall concept of this project.
Using HTML , how to use VS code, understanding how to use GitHub, and using JavaScript to code the front and back end.
What’s next is to polish the overall website design. Additionally, the custom domain we have doesn’t use python for code, therefore making it unable for the website to be accessed globally, so we will have to figure that out. Finally, we’d like to take this project off the ground and enhance user experience by turning the website into an app format.