Designing an ATM for kids (2024)

What would it look like if a child needed to deposit, withdrawal, or manage their money?

What is an ATM (both functionally and metaphorically)?

An ATM is used to withdraw (cash) or deposit (checks or cash) money
An ATM is part of a user’s financial management system, alongside the rest of your banking system (teller, mobile/online apps)

Who would use an ATM for kids?

5–12 years old (able to read, preteen)
Child of parent(s) who have an account with the ATM’s bank

Why would a child use an ATM?

To deposit money from their allowance, job, birthday or holiday gift, etc.
To withdraw money for activities, purchases not covered by parents (toys, electronics, etc — AKA fun spending)
To manage their finances

How would a child use an ATM?

Bank card: Children are unlikely to keep track of a bank card, so access to the ATM would have to be granted with something like fingerprint/eye scan, a numerical pin, or only when a parent is present.
Height: Most ATMs stand around 4 1/2 feet tall, which would be difficult for a child to reach. Considering most banks probably wouldn’t build totally separate physical ATMS, current ATMs could be used with a separate child-friendly interface and step-stools could be available at ATM locations.

What are the possibilities or features a kid may need for using an ATM?

Deposit + withdraw money
Review spending + balance
Ask for money from parent
Donate money to a cause
Savings gamification

Is there an educational aspect at play?

Financial management
Learning math — addition and subtraction from deposits and withdrawals
Viewing spending categories
Saving money

User Persona

After working through the Empathize exercises, I wanted to create a persona for the child user. I ended up created Sofia to better help guide the rest of the exercise.

Define

Physical Requirements

To accomodate all heights of children and adults, ATM would look similarly to a full-length mirror. There would be a CTA towards the bottom, at a child’s height, for them to access the KidATM interface.

Digital Requirements + Functionality

Withdrawal
Deposit
View balance and balance history
Categorize transactions
Goal-setting

Ideate

Based on my user persona, Sofia, and the requirements listed, I started to sketch out a few different ideas for how the ATM could look physically, as well as digitally.

In sketching the two ideas, I realized that having a full length ATM screen with two cameras and two sets of deposit slots could propose a business problem for the bank behind the ATM. The doubling up on hardware like that would mean unnecessary costs for the bank. Realizing this, I decided to pivot a bit as I moved into wireframes.

Prototype

Following my sketches, I built out the wireframes for a few key screens, as well as the deposit flow for KidATM. I kept the overall design simple, yet tried to update the communications and copy on the KidATM screens to be more kid-friendly.

The wireframes also show the updated version of the camera and deposit slips hardware. I envisioned this piece as a box that would automatically move based on who was using it (kid or adult). This way, there is no duplicate camera or deposit slots.

Conclusion

This was a fun exercise because it challenged me to think differently, yet simply. Children don’t need all of the same functionalities as adults, so my features and requirements had to still meet the goals for my personas and lean into the educational aspect of using an ATM as a child, yet not be overly complex.

I also felt myself wanting to treat the ATM as more of a money management system for a child, rather than assuming they’d be doing that from their smartphone, like adults too. I think the inclusion of “Piggy Banks,” a potential feature that allows kids to create and manage financial goals (AKA buying a new robotics set or soccer cleats) treads the line between useful and too complex for children. It would be very interesting to start doing user research and learning more about children’s habits from here!