Project Overview
The project responded to a behavioural shift in how children experience money. As payments become increasingly digital, the traditional rituals of pocket money, saving and physically watching money accumulate become less visible.
The concept reimagined the piggy bank as a connected display product. A parent could send money digitally to a child through a physical device, while the child could interact with the display to see savings accumulate and experience a renewed sense of reward.
Denovi’s role was to help turn this concept into a working prototype, bringing together user experience design, interaction design, custom firmware, display integration, battery system development and physical casing design.
The Technical Challenge
The product needed to make an abstract digital transaction feel tangible and emotionally meaningful. This required careful design of the interaction model, display behaviour and physical form.
Technically, the prototype had to integrate a high-quality display, embedded computing layer, battery system and RFID payment concept within a self-contained product. The device needed to feel credible as a future consumer product while still being developed as an R&D prototype.
The interface also had to be appropriate for a child-facing use case. The display experience needed to be clear, rewarding and simple, helping translate financial behaviour into an accessible physical-digital interaction.
Design and Engineering Approach
The design process began with the interaction concept: how a child would receive, see and understand money arriving through a physical device. This informed the display behaviour, product form and prototype functionality.
Denovi developed the product around a micro-operating system and custom display experience. Firmware and interface behaviours were created to support the demonstration of digital saving, while the casing design helped give the concept the presence of a physical object rather than a generic screen.
The project also incorporated an RFID payment concept, connecting the prototype to the wider idea of digital transactions and physical reward. The product form had to balance approachability, modernity and financial credibility.
Rapid development methods were used to bring the concept to life as a functional prototype. The emphasis was on demonstrating the full experience: parent sends money, child receives a visible reward, and the physical product becomes a bridge between digital finance and emotional understanding.
Outcome
The project delivered a working IoT display concept that brought a familiar savings behaviour into a digital context. It demonstrated how financial technology can be made more tangible through physical product design, embedded interaction and thoughtful user experience.
For Denovi, the project demonstrates capability in enterprise R&D prototyping, combining hardware, firmware, display experience and product design to help a complex idea become understandable and testable.