InfoEmotion Matrix
InfoEmotion Matrix is a tool to aid the co-design and evaluation of visual financial literacy materials. It allows you to assess the presence and strength of design and content elements used in the FLE material.
Who can use it?
Policy Makers
The framework can facilitate large scale impact assessment intersecting with tools such as the OECD INFE Toolkit(2010-2015). The matrix shows the efficacy of visual stories to affect financial behaviors as well as financial knowledge.
Content Designers & Developers
The framework highlights how storytelling (through narrative visualization) models behaviors using visual metaphors and emotive cues.
Educators
The framework invites personal identification of financial concepts and underlying financial behaviors across age groups through relatable stories (narrative visualizations).
How Does It Work?
The matrix identifies relationships among content elements (on the vertical axis) and its design elements (on the horizontal axis). Each axis orders the elements from most rational(Kahneman’s system 2) to most-intuitive (Kahneman’s system 1) elements.
Elements
Financial factors:-
Data and information, such as numbers, budgets, facts
Concepts: time value of money, negotiation, legal information such as policies, loan terms, etc.
Behavioral aspects:-
Consequences: financial and emotional
Negotiation and decision processes: skills, strategies, and methods
Ethics: the right/wrong thing to do
Culture: norms, expectations, and understandings within a community
Emotion: personal and subjective factors (relationships, loyalties, opinions)Visualization Elements
Graphs/maps
Text: on-screen text/data
Dialog: monologue, verbal explication, through characters or voiceover
Setting: staging, including objects and props
Character: including -archetype(s)/metaphor(s)- Body language, expressed by character(s)- Facial expression, expressed by character(s)- Tone of voice, expressed by voiceover and/or by character(s)
Case Studies
The Ant Bank
The Ant Bank is sponsored by the NGO Financial Literacy for All through their “Teach Children to Save” initiative, which has introduced the character of Zak: an ant-like cartoon superhero who encourages children to save. The program distributes the “Ant Bank” to children as a modern replacement for the traditional “kolo”: an earthenware pot in which money is kept. The “ant” metaphor was substituted for a “piggy” bank for cultural reasons: because of religious proscriptions against pigs, and because of the ant’s positive cultural meanings. Ants are considered to be hard workers that save for the future, and they represent abundance; they are disciplined, strong for their size, good managers of resources, environmentally friendly and willing to sacrifice for the common good. An African folk saying asserts that “a nest of ants near your door means you will grow rich.”
Scandal - Soap Opera
Scandal is a popular television soap opera in South Africa. In 2011-12 a three-month storyline addressed indebtedness incurred by a religious and moral woman (Maletsatsi) who bought furniture to please her family and to impress her friends. As interest compounded her debt, she fraudulently “borrowed” from a community fund and eventually had to confess and construct a plan for repayment.
On The Money
The “On the Money” financial education program was developed by Old Mutual PLC (South Africa), a financial services firm. The program primarily explains financial concepts through text, reinforcing the information with images of the “Big Five” game animals as metaphors for desirable financial behaviors.
Contact Us
Interested in using the InfoEmotion Matrix in your work? Let's connect.
