Making every day payday
A sustainable future depends on homes that can not only produce but store their own energy. By storing solar, homes can power themselves through the night, eliminate gas appliances and even feed back to the grid at times of peak demand.
Lunar Energy was founded in 2020 to help move the world towards all-electric homes.
Daylight has been Lunar’s design partner from the beginning.
Paywatch was formed to improve the financial situations of gig workers in Asia. This population of workers tends to lack access to financial services such as deposits, savings, and insurance. Paywatch created a salary advance payment service that allows workers to withdraw their earned wages before payday. This service provides gig workers a safe, credit-building alternative to borrowing cash from informal lenders who charge predatory interest rates and fees. This service made a lot of sense to the United Nations, which recognized Paywatch as one of three winners in the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) Gig Economy Challenge 2020.
Paywatch came to Daylight at a pivot point: their initial pilot app hadn’t gotten the uptake they wanted, and they were in the midst of transitioning to a different financial model. Daylight helped Paywatch navigate that transition and create a more user-friendly app to house their financial service. We designed a comprehensive brand language and digital product that turns a complicated process of financial transactions into an attractive, empowering, and usable experience for all.
The product is now available for download on the App Store and Google Play, and gig workers from APEC economies are accessing their hard-earned wages in a timeframe that works for them.
Visualizing financial freedom
Our branding process operated alongside our UX overhaul, and provided us the building blocks for a compelling final delivery. From talking to Paywatch stakeholders and users, we were able to identify a set of brand attributes that drove our visual design.
The attributes “easy,” “revolutionary,” and “flexible” led us to a visual breakthrough that informed the final logo concept. At first, the logo looks like a flag, symbolizing financial freedom and the start of a revolutionary payment system. At second glance, the image appears as cash emerging from the wall, which more concretely represents the real financial power of this platform. Paywatch connects previously unbanked populations to credible financial institutions, helps users generate credit, and encourages healthier saving and spending habits. The emerging money represents that symbiotic relationship between user and financial institution.
Using the logo as our foundation, we established a playful illustration system, composed of colorful line drawings. These illustrations (depicting a mix of personal and professional elements) communicate how working a bit every day can elevate and energize a person’s financial standing. We chose a color palette that is encouraging but not overwhelming, and used comic style accent features to create an energetic narrative of daily life.
Prior to our rebrand work, the San Francisco Health Network's messaging placed emphasis on the providers and the system. The Network described itself as the City’s “only complete system of care.” The Network logo was an icon of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Through our work, we wanted to shift focus from describing the system to communicating the value added for the patient. We sought to:
- Publicly reaffirm San Francisco’s commitment to accessible health care for all of its residents, regardless of immigration status or insurance;
- Create a unifying brand that resonated deeply with patients and staff; and
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
Complication, made simple
After conducting interviews with our target audience to understand the nuances around borrowing money, interacting with a boss, and affording everyday expenses, we undertook an in-depth workflow renewal of the Paywatch service. By testing prototypes with our user group and completing multiple cycles of iteration, we simplified burdensome user requirements while amplifying the benefits of the platform.
We designed a comprehensive mobile interface and established interaction patterns that reinforced a consistent, efficient, and friendly experience. A key challenge of this project was balancing approval and legal requirements with ease of use and task completion. We eliminated features that didn’t directly help a user access their paycheck, minimized approval requirements between managers and managees, added strategic onboarding and orienting elements to help educate the user on the complexities of the process, and simplified the home screen to highlight the main Instant Pay feature.
All of these adjustments coalesced in a radical overhaul, elevating Paywatch into a significantly more usable and desirable product.
Prior to our rebrand work, the San Francisco Health Network's messaging placed emphasis on the providers and the system. The Network described itself as the City’s “only complete system of care.” The Network logo was an icon of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Through our work, we wanted to shift focus from describing the system to communicating the value added for the patient. We sought to:
- Publicly reaffirm San Francisco’s commitment to accessible health care for all of its residents, regardless of immigration status or insurance;
- Create a unifying brand that resonated deeply with patients and staff; and
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
Paywatch, in its own words
Once we identified the brand and designed the key flows for the experience, we took a deep dive into content structure. Using the brand attributes as a starting point, we established three product principles. These principles distill the central goals of the business and serve as guideposts for the voice of the product.
The three overarching product principles we crafted were to:
- Create a seamless, intuitive connection between hours worked and wages earned
- Empower members to access money as needed and develop healthy spending habits
- Facilitate relationships that help employees get credit access from legitimate financial institutions
Using these principles, we were then able to make tactical decisions around voice and UX writing. We use terms like “wages earned” instead of “money paid,” referred to our users as “employees,” and leveraged short action verbs like “withdraw,” “continue,” “pay,” etc. that help employees quickly progress through the process. We also elevated terms like “connect with,” “trusted,” and “help,” to paint a stark contrast between our friendly, legitimate lending process and the predatory loan shark alternative.
Prior to our rebrand work, the San Francisco Health Network's messaging placed emphasis on the providers and the system. The Network described itself as the City’s “only complete system of care.” The Network logo was an icon of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Through our work, we wanted to shift focus from describing the system to communicating the value added for the patient. We sought to:
- Publicly reaffirm San Francisco’s commitment to accessible health care for all of its residents, regardless of immigration status or insurance;
- Create a unifying brand that resonated deeply with patients and staff; and
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
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Successfully streamlined and supported
At the conclusion of the project, Daylight assisted Paywatch in hiring full-time staff to carry the design vision forward after Daylight’s engagement ended. Armed with an effective design and the right team to support it, Paywatch saw immediate benefits. The new app’s uptake and retention improved, and the testimonials from users confirmed that it was simple to understand and easy to use.
