FINANCIAL EMPOWERMENT COUNSELING

NYC Office of Financial Empowerment

Many New Yorkers are financially vulnerable. Nearly one in every two households lacks sufficient savings to sustain three months at the poverty level if they were to lose their job or have unexpected medical expenses. Financial counseling works to empower clients with behaviors, mindsets and other tools for building long-term financial security. It can play an important part to empower New Yorkers with behaviors, mindsets and other tools for building long-term financial security.

Achieving the goal of long-term behavior change requires sustained engagement by the client, making retention one of the most important factors affecting the success of the service. NYC’s Office of Financial Empowerment shows that between three and five counseling sessions are typically needed to begin achieving results such as debt reduction.

With the goal of client retention in mind, the Financial Counseling Services team asked: How can Financial Empowerment Centers encourage more long-term engagement from their clients? Our designs were aimed at helping New Yorkers engage and stay motivated through the financial counseling process.

Pocket Guide for Retention
This credit card-sized fold-out journey map fits in a client’s wallet and serves as a “membership card” and a reminder of tasks between appointments. Clients and counselors can also use it to take notes about their work together. These prototypes were put into production and tested with clients and counselors.

The "poster" side describes the overall process.

The "form" side allows participants to create a plan for themselves

Wayfinding supported live “open house” events

Facilitators’ Guide for Live Events
In addition to the wayfinding for live events, we also designed a guide to help counselors or facilitators set up events in different kinds of spaces. This was in collaboration with Eric Ho from miLES.

Partner

DESIS Lab, Parsons School of Design

MANY

Andrew Shea

Collaborators

Foossa (service design)
mILES (spatial design)
Corey Chao (video)

Support

NYC Office of Financial Empowerment (OFE), Neighborhood Trust, Citi Community Development

We design physical spaces, printed materials, collaborative experiences, and digital platforms to support creative communities and elevate civic, educational, and environmental initiatives.

2 West 13th Street
New York, NY 
586 306 6323 

© MANY Design