Synthesis
Do you regret unplanned spending?
Design Realm
Speculative Design
Wearable Tech
Critical Design
System Design
MIMO: Bank
MIMO is a banking service that teaches people how to consume responsibly and helps them reduce impulsive shopping by examining how cognitive conditioning or psychological sensations can be used as triggers to prevent impulsive shopping.
Tired of overspending and endless credit card bills?
MIMO is a banking service that teaches people how to consume responsibly by reducing unplanned purchases and saving money for future spending. MIMO comprises a system with different tools, physical and digital, that helps the young generation reduce impulsive shopping. Imagine a bank that has a reward system for keeping your finances in a healthy condition, which also provides a collective community to connect client-to-client.
MIMO aims to make banking mean more than interactions with a regular financial institution but also helping people escape the sinful loop of overspending (leading to credit card debt and moonlight clan.) Consequently, we can also reduce wastage created by unplanned spending.
The Starter Kit
When applying for a MIMO account, the client will receive a debit card and a starter kit box, containing a MIMO uniform, Buynary with the MIMO app download source, and a wearable shopping bag. The starter kit box can also be repurposed into a storage plate or money bank, with instructions given on the bottom of the box.
The Wearable Shopping Bag
It transforms a person into a low-capacity shopping bag. That award moment when your friend has to carry your purchases and follow you around the mall.
Buynary
Sometimes, “retail therapy” makes you feel happy. When you are buying something, you feel a moment of happiness and a sense of entitlement. What would happen if you could enjoy that feeling without spending your money and, instead, helping your friends buy what they need? Buynary enables a win-win situation, allowing you to experience retail therapy and your friends to avoid impulse shopping.
Self-helping Tools?
Unplanned spending can be triggered by sensory marketing – sounds, smells, lighting, and colours are used to affect us cognitively and psychologically. Have you ever gone to the mall with a shopping list and ended up with regretful unplanned spending? MIMO will customize the client’s needs and give them different tools to help with their behaviour.
Sale Sign Filter
A sale sign is often designed with gigantic red font, as colour science indicates that red activates physical reactions that reflect more energy and trigger immediate responses. This stylish MIMO retail therapy accessory will diffuse the visibility of sale signs: see nothing, do nothing.
The Hat
Retail stores are always noisy, with loud and fast music that instantly increases the consumer’s heart rate and triggers the feeling of excitement and sensory overload, leading to an unconscious loss of control. The MIMO hat comes with a blue light that calms and eases the mood and heartbeat of users, thereby maintaining their mood.
Scent Mask
Some stores use scent to trigger consumption by affecting the customer’s mood, like others do with music; a strong scent may cause sensory overload, and other specific smells induce excitement. The MIMO scent mask comes with special scents that effectively calm the user (yokukansan, yuzu and eucalyptus) to avoid shopping impulsiveness. The scented sheet is made with recycled paper.
The Wallet Lock
For clients who are triggered not by sensory marketing but by self-control, the MIMO purse can be locked and unlocked using the MIMOLOCK app. User can choose to self-use the wallet lock by setting a timer or have their friends lock the wallet.
Always Connected: MIMO App
This is an exclusive budgeting app that provides the client one-on-one financial advice, challenges them to start a saving contest, contains financial coaching, uses the Buynary mode for social shopping, and enables connection with other MIMO members.
Digital Help: Techno Plug-ins
MIMO knows it is really difficult to get rid of impulsive shopping behaviours online! Here are some plugin ideas for different needs.
Redefine the currency
Money holds different values for different people. What would happen if you could revalue money on your own? Physical currency makes money more tangible and more manageable. If you like to drink bubble tea, why not use bubble tea as a currency?
Shopping cart eraser
Through a research experiment, MIMO found that people are prone to shopping less when the financial transaction process takes longer than expected.
MIMO provide a plugin for our clients to extend the buying process. Each time you add stuff to a cart, the system will delete the item after 30 seconds.
MIMO AI
MIMO AI is a plugin AI shopping assistant that will pop up every time you enter a shopping site. The AI will make the buying progress longer – it will freeze the browser and ask the user to type in why they need to buy the product.
Afterwards, the user will be asked to follow instructions to complete a questionnaire and finish a math problem to add the product into the cart. The system will save each record so the user can browse their history.