Mahima Madhok
About
Mahima is a Service designer with an expertise in Graphic Design and Brand Strategy. She applies the art of design as a compass to navigate the complex contexts of real-world problems. She has a strong foundation of Communication Design from esteemed institutions like the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York and the National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi.
Through her work, she has always made a deliberate attempt to deconstruct complex processes, make information intelligible and services more user-friendly to contribute to improving the human experience. During her time at award-winning design studios and leading branding agencies she discovered her passion for storytelling and crafting powerful visual identities.
With her work experience in the realms of Luxury Retail and Hospitality, she leveraged the value of problem-solving to elevate service encounters. By designing integrated experiences for the F&B Marketing team across diverse touch points, she enabled profound customer engagement and fostered a sense of meaningful connection.
Statement
For Mahima, design is a functional tool that possesses the unparalleled ability to educate, inform and empower individuals.
Through her project work she always aims to deliver purposeful design interventions that spark positive change. She is passionate about crafting compelling experiences and devising transformative solutions in response to the real needs of businesses and users.
Her key focus is on effective articulation, creative concepts and powerful narratives.
With her time at the RCA, her work has revolved around themes like Community engagement, Shared mobility and Future finance. Through this project, she seeks to build on her growing understanding of designing for Financial Services.
Focusing on exploration of GenZ’s relationship with BNPL, investigating the problem though an emotional and behavioural lens to build an holistic picture of this complex issue.
BNPL's Darkside : The Gen Z Debt Spiral
‘Buy Now Pay Later’ is an innovative financial product that has disrupted the traditional credit and lending industry by allowing consumers to spread the cost of their purchases into multiple instalments with no interest.
The pandemic saw a huge uptake in use of BNPL. Today the use is much more complicated and people are using it for more frequent purchases reflecting an increasing reliance on credit to extend their spending power. It currently is a one size fits all solution - from affording luxury to managing expenses with the cost of living crisis.
On one hand, BNPL is becoming an essential choice that consumers are preferring because it gives them a lot of flexibility whether they’re funding takeaways, essentials or experiences.
On the other hand, BNPL gives everyone easy access to credit without any prior checks and takes away the emphasis from the actual cost and terms of use, fuelling impulsive purchases. GenZ happens to be the group most reliant on BNPL services and this may quickly turn into a debt trap for most vulnerable users.
Through this project, we focused on GenZ’s relationship with spending money through an emotional lens to understand how strategies like BNPL or virtual credit can better support them in meeting their present and future needs.
With a focus on the next 10 years, how might we use BNPL and credit as a positive enabling force that supports the long term financial wellbeing of GenZ and advocate for its more ethical and responsible use?