Abstract
Financial technologies are often credited with empowering the consumer-citizen. The discourse that surrounds them is overwhelmingly positive, emphasising their contribution to speed, efficiency, availability, competition, quality and affordability. These very same technologies, however, also clash against the meanings that we attach to money, and against the things we value in our interactions with it. Through a review of the design literature on moneywork, and our own research with people experiencing both mental illness and financial difficulty, we discuss a list of dissonances that result from digitising our personal finances. We hope this discussion will encourage designers to reflect and think critically about financial technologies, and to look beyond the hype currently built around them.
Keywords
financial technologies, digital money, mental health, financial difficulty
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.302
Citation
Pena, B.B., Kursar, B., Clarke, R., and Vines, J. (2022) Curb your enthusiasm: The dissonances of digitising personal finance, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.302
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Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Curb your enthusiasm: The dissonances of digitising personal finance
Financial technologies are often credited with empowering the consumer-citizen. The discourse that surrounds them is overwhelmingly positive, emphasising their contribution to speed, efficiency, availability, competition, quality and affordability. These very same technologies, however, also clash against the meanings that we attach to money, and against the things we value in our interactions with it. Through a review of the design literature on moneywork, and our own research with people experiencing both mental illness and financial difficulty, we discuss a list of dissonances that result from digitising our personal finances. We hope this discussion will encourage designers to reflect and think critically about financial technologies, and to look beyond the hype currently built around them.