Roles
UI/UX Design
Product Design
UX Research

Tools
Figma/inVision
Adobe Illustrator

Context
Time: Jun - Aug 2019
Product: currently designed for Android
Position: UI/UX Designer @ Pantsuit Professional

Overview

BUDGET is a mobile app targeted towards college students and young professionals for achieving short-term saving goals and learning to manage everyday expenses.

Entry point
How do people learn to manage their first $1000? Although most young workers recognize that budgeting is an important skill once you start making an income, they don’t know how to start.Therefore, we believe they require assistance to keep track of their money and understand their spending patterns early on to help them learn how to plan their budget effortlessly.

How can we make budgeting easier for the budgeting beginners to have more control over their money?

Research Goals

• Understand the common practices for budgeting and popular tools that people use 

• Identify the pain points of budgeting for the beginner

• Identify the needs and motivation of budgeting through an app

Research Method

Competitive Analysis

We found that Mint, Capital and Charity are the most popular budgeting apps. Their main functions are similar but they have slight differences in minor features. What we learned is that, although all budgeting app have similar functions, their minor features catch different target user groups. As a result, we have to conduct more research to see how we can differentiate our product to our target users.

Online Survey

We conducted 500 surveys to understand people’s attitudes, motivations, behaviors and difficulties towards budgeting. Based on a survey, we recognize several key points on their opinions towards budgeting. 

Highlights

• 55% of respondents consider themselves as a “budgeting beginner.”

• People don’t like budgeting because it’s laborious, time-consuming, and hard to keep track.

• Their goal of budgeting is to track expenses, prevent overspending and gain tips/suggestions on how to use money.

Interview

After collecting results from the survey, we conducted in-depth one-on-one interviews with participants that are selected as our potential users to understand their financial and budgeting situation.

Identify User Groups

The research found that young professionals and college students are more  willing to manage and budget money through an app because their usage of money is relatively simple, and most of their budgeting goals are for short term savings. For those who have higher income and/or multi-usage, they tend to seek guidance directly from financial advisors.

Key Insights

Persona

Brainstorming

Following the design implications we formed during our research phase, we ideated around a set of design prompts to help inspire creative ideas during our brainstorming sessions.

• How can we easily present the current balance for the user?

• How can we motivate them to continue checking the status?

• How can we provide different levels/stages of financial information for users?

We ideate the function based on the user research and design prompts:

Information Architecture

Then based on the functions, I created IA map to helped us understand how the users navigate through the app. 

After ideating the functions, we brainstormed the visuals that could help present different statuses and keep the users motivated.

In the overall status, we use the bubble as the main presentation because it helps the user easily track and visualize how much they’ve spent relatively. In the motivation metrics for saving, we use the piggy bank because it aligns with our brand value “assist as your friend”, and it can offer more interactions with the user through “tips by piggy”. 

Iterations

Based on user testing, the user said that the bubble only informs the status but didn’t tell the exact information clearly. Thus, I updated the bubble in Version 2 to better inform the user about how much they can spend, how much left, and how many days left.

Users said they like the piggy a lot as it creates a more enjoyable user experience. However, it didn't serve as a crucial function so I rearranged the position of these features and put the piggy in the least obvious spot.

Motivation - Goals

Set goals and budgets that help you to visualize your current finance

User Validation

We conducted a semi-structured user testing for 5 testers by giving the user some tasks to test out usability. Here are some feedback as our qualitative data for validation:

“I like the way the bubble informs me of the status of money, it’s very straightforward to inform how much left I can spend and how many days remain. Also, when the bubble turns yellow, it gives me the vibe that I better to keep it up, otherwise I might screw up the bubble. “

“The money breakdown really helps me to understand how I spend and thus adjust my way of spending by that”

“The overall experience is simple and fun, that it’s what I need when it comes to manage money“

Offering the crucial feature is more important than offering everything.

There are many functions that can be offered through a budgeting app such as budgeting calculator, investor calculator, financial forum and so on. Based on user research, some users had used other budgeting apps but only for certain features. Although other features might provide benefits to them, they are not their priorities, and thus become redundant to them. Instead of offering more, we should focus on the right content that fits our target users.

Motivation and Reflection are key in making budgeting a habit.

In order to make budgeting a habit, we have to understand how we use our money first and learn to control our spending.  Then, we have to keep doing it, which is the hardest part. If we don’t have motivations or guides to encourage us, there’s a higher chance we would lose track and give up.