FinLit
A financial literacy initiative for NYC public schools, built with Eskolta School Research and Design for the NYCPS Office of Student Pathways: a teacher-facing resource hub, a round of user testing, and a curriculum adaptation guide.
One initiative, two deliverables.
FinLit grew out of an existing relationship with Eskolta School Research and Design, working alongside the NYCPS Office of Student Pathways Financial Literacy team. Alicia served as project manager and NYCPS liaison throughout.
The work split into two connected pieces: a public-facing resource hub organized by grade band, and a curriculum adaptation guide, FinLit Fellows, documenting how three teacher cohorts adapted existing financial literacy lessons for their own classrooms.
Both pieces answer the same underlying question: financial literacy curricula exist, but they do not automatically fit a given classroom, grade band, or student population. The work was about closing that gap, in the hub's navigation and in the guide's classroom strategies.
My role
UX strategy and information architecture for the hub, moderated user testing, and design of the FinLit Fellows curriculum guide.
Timeline
2026 · With Eskolta School Research and Design and NYCPS
Primary users
- Teachers across elementary, middle, and high school grade bands
- NYCPS staff verifying state requirements and expectations
- FinLit Fellows adapting curricula for their own classrooms
The sitemap came before a single page did.
Before any page existed in a builder, the full hub was mapped in Octopus.do: a landing page with grade level selection, three grade band hubs, a shared expectations page for state requirements, a professional learning section, a filterable resource glossary, and contact.
Agreeing on that structure first meant the Google Sites build itself was mostly execution, not discovery. It also gave Alicia and the NYCPS team a shared reference to review before any content went live.
- Landing: introduction, how to use the hub, and grade level selection.
- Three grade band hubs: Elementary, Middle, and High School, each with its own resource pages and professional learning links.
- Expectations: state requirements and recommendations for success, shared across all three bands.
- Professional Learning Opportunities: upcoming sessions, linked from every grade band.
- Glossary: a filterable table of every resource on the hub.
The architecture works. The friction is navigation and labels.
Five educators, all comfortable with resource sites but one, were tested over Zoom using a screen share and think-aloud protocol, 20 to 30 minutes each. The one participant with average site comfort, rather than high, struggled the most, and exposed the real floor for this audience.
- Purpose read fast: every participant identified the hub as a financial literacy resource for teachers without clicking anything.
- Grade bands work: the strongest wayfinding pattern in the test. Multiple users went straight to their own grade band.
- Requirements framing resonates: state requirements and expectations were named as useful and worth returning to.
- Contact is findable: once users reached the footer, contact information was easy to locate.
- Navigation fallback breaks down: with the top nav disabled for this round of testing, the homepage became the only way back, so users backtracked repeatedly. Fix: verify the live dropdown nav and add a persistent "Back to Hub" control on every sub-page.
- Resource labels force guessing: vendor names like EVERFI or FutureSmart appeared before teacher intent, so users had to decode what a resource actually taught. Fix: label by topic, grade, and type first, vendor name second.
- The intro needs proof: the page gestures at state requirements without naming enough sources. Two participants directly asked for NYSED and Portrait of a Graduate to be named and linked.
Teacher need first. Vendor name second.
"Save for College" (EVERFI)
Brand name appears before teacher intent. Users had to decode the curriculum from vendor language, resulting in guessing and wrong clicks.
"FutureSmart" Grade 4 · Curriculum Extension (EVERFI)
Topic, grade, and type come first. The vendor name becomes secondary proof, not the label a teacher has to interpret.
A curriculum guide for three classrooms, not a hub for one.
Alongside the hub, I designed a curriculum adaptation guide documenting the 2026 FinLit Fellows pilot, prepared with the NYCPS Office of Student Pathways. Rather than writing new lessons from scratch, the Fellows adapted and strengthened existing financial literacy curricula for their own students, and this guide records what they learned.
Real-World Relevance
- Adapted Next Gen Personal Finance (NGPF) lessons
- Local, community-specific examples increased urgency
- Debates, simulations, and budgeting tasks built practice into the lesson
Multilingual Learner Support
- Visuals, captions, and real-world examples made concepts visible
- Glossaries and frontloaded vocabulary supported comprehension
- Bilingual resources and structured discussion protocols increased participation
Family Engagement
- Structured at-home prompts, like voice-memo questions, increased participation
- Simple, specific prompts outperformed broad questions
- Lessons tied to family and community financial realities landed best
Fix the evidence-backed problems first, then retest.
The information architecture is sound. The roadmap sequences the fixes that testing actually surfaced, rather than treating every issue as equally urgent.
Phase 1, navigation safety (1 week): verify live dropdown navigation, add breadcrumbs, add a persistent "Back to Hub" control on every sub-page.
Phase 2, resource clarity (2 weeks): rename labels by topic, grade, and type, surface the Curriculum Extension tag, move vendor names second.
Phase 3, retest: re-run sessions with live navigation and lower-comfort teachers, logging time on task, clicks, and backtracks.
Current status
Built, tested, and awaiting public launch
The hub is live and the FinLit Fellows guide is complete. Public launch and promotion are pending on the district's own rollout timeline. The roadmap above is written and prioritized, ready whenever that timeline resumes.