Tracy Gaboyau


Work            About           Contact


ASCENT


UX Research, UX/UI Design 
August  2024 - December 2024


For my masters thesis at NYU, I conducted research and built low-fidelity prototypes for Ascent, a financial literacy application that aims to address the racial wealth gap in the United States through gamification.

With the recent widening of the racial wealth gap following Covid, the aim of this project is to offer an interactive method to learning essential financial concepts. This application uses gamification as a low-stress entryway to financial education in the form of simulations that will enable users to replicate the choices they would face in real-life circumstances.








About 75% of this project was research. I did research on the basics of financial literacy, on the origins of the racial wealth gap, on the use of gamification across learning applications, etc. All of this research is summarized above, in a concept map that was printed and presented as part of my thesis. 












Next, I built user personas to support the creation of a user-centered design. While my research was incredibly helpful in understanding the problem statement, I wanted to have a full picture of my target user’s needs, preferences, and behaviors so that I could build something that directly fell in line with their lifestyles.