Time Frame
Role
Involvement
2023.3-2023.5
UI/UX Designer, Usability Researcher
User Research, Wireframing, Prototyping, UI Design, User Testing
BudgetSave is a financial app to help young people increase their savings, create a financial plan, build credit, stop impulse buying, and build financial wellness-all of which will help them prepare for their financial future.
Overview
Introduction
Problem
Young adults struggle to reach financial goals due to various financial challenges.
1, Impulse buying
Many young adults can’t stop impulse buying, because shopping makes them feel better.
2, Financial Anxiety
Financial anxiety is common among young adults because they are striving to attain financial independence.
3, Worries of low credit scores
low credit scores can make it harder to borrow, which could stop people to achieve their financial goals whether it's a car loan, mortgage, or credit card account.
4, Lack of literacy
Young adults generally lack financial and economic literacy.
The scope of work
I developed the product through the following five phases
How Might We…
How might we design a mobile app experience that encourages young adults to increase their savings, create a financial plan, build credit, and stop impulse buying for them to achieve their financial goals?
Solutions
I propose to design a highly customized, convenient, and delightful mobile experience for users where the users can build personal financial plans, develop healthy financial habits, and share financial and economic knowledge with the community.
Avoid Impulsive Spending
The spending alert will notify the users when the budget is low, which is to remind them to stop impulse buying.
Users could check details of the daily budget, weekly budget, and monthly budget. They can also create a repeating alert for the low budget to remind themselves.
Developing Healthy Financial Habits
Tracking your card balance gives you awareness of how much you're spending.
Tracking card balance is important because spending more than people can afford to pay every month can lead to interest charges, debt problems, and credit score damage. Users can link their own multiple cards in the “Wallet Balance” section.
Long-term financial goals require a good credit score
High credit scores can make it easier to borrow, which could help people achieve their financial goals whether it's a car loan, mortgage, or credit card account.
The system will give the user unique suggestions based on their financial situation to improve their credit score fast.
Personalization
Provide personalized financial solutions based on the user's regular income and recurring expenses
Users need to enter their regular income and recurring expenses when registering an account. This is to allow the system to automatically calculate the amount of money that the user can spend every day.
Sense of Accomplishment
Feeling a sense of accomplishment is an important element in users developing positive well-being over time.
In the “Achievements” section, users can know how much money they have saved since using BudgetSave, and they can also view the savings statistics for each week, month, and year. In addition to this, a list of completed objects will appear at the bottom of the screen. All of these features can encourage them to continue to complete their next financial goal.
Creating financial goals provide purpose and energy
Financial goals make it easier for you to make sacrifices or stick to a budget because you know what outcome you're striving for.
The system can help users to make plans based on their regular income and expenses for the period. Saving progress is visible.
Improving your financial literacy
Sharing financial literacy can help individuals reach their goals.
Create a sense of belonging by sharing financial experience and literacy with the community.
01.
Understand
Design Background
Users’ Pain Points
User Persona
Consolidating my key insights into one goal-oriented persona.
Personal Statement
Young adults struggle to reach financial goals due to various financial challenges.
01. Many young adults can’t stop impulse buying, because shopping makes them feel better.
02. Financial anxiety is common among young adults because they are striving to attain financial independence.
03. low credit scores can make it harder to borrow, which could stop people to achieve their financial goals whether it's a car loan, mortgage, or credit card account.
04. Young adults generally lack financial and economic literacy.
Interview
Financial stress and anxiety are incredibly common feelings among young adults, many of whom are facing new challenges in light of the pandemic, and we’re seeing firsthand that this group is interested in taking the steps needed to alleviate stressors and strengthen their finances and mental health, 3 in 4 young adults say finances are their biggest mental health issue.
As primary qualitative research, I conducted eight semi-structured interviews with young adults aged 22-30 and bank representatives to validate my initial findings and further understand how people currently form financial habits, their motivations, and challenges.
Survey
I conducted a survey on financial stress to see how often they feel financial stress and how they cope. The 32 respondents were all young adults aged 22-30.
Three-quarters of Respondents Experience Financial Stress and anxiety.
The biggest problem I found was a lack of motivation. As a financial habit journey goes on, people often feel super drained, and it keeps people from reaching financial goals.
Many young adults have ambitious financial goals but face challenges such as impulsive spending, lack of goal discipline, limited financial literacy, poor goal-setting skills, and a low credit score, making it difficult for them to achieve their short & long-term financial goals.
02.
DEFINE
03.
IDEATE
Brainstorming
The design requirements and users’ needs have been reframed into key, actionable statements to guide the generation phase. These statements are broad enough to provide multiple solutions while also narrowly focused to set a clear direction.
Information Architecture
I outlined key path scenarios to guide users to their most crucial use cases with minimal steps. As users may be using the app while also tracking their goals, I deliberately concealed secondary functions to minimize user interaction and focus on essential features.
04.
DESIGN & ITERATE
3 Major Improvements in my design
The 6 rounds of user tests in the app design process provided valuable insights and feedback that helped in making necessary iterations to refocus the hierarchy and navigation of the design.
Original design: The original design incorporated a lot of horizontal progress bars to visualize the amount of money spent and goal progress.
Feedback received: Based on user feedback, it was found that having too many horizontal progress bars resulted in difficulty in distinguishing primary and secondary information and caused aesthetic fatigue.
Revised design: The design was divided into smaller modules, allowing users to see their real-time economic status and goal progress at a glance on the main interface.
2. Prioritization Features
Original design: The original design had the balance function as the main function placed on the Navigation Bar at the bottom, with the link to the bank card placed on the top.
Feedback received: Income and expenditure statistics could help users have a better understanding of financial situation.
Revised design: I prioritized the display of daily income and expenditure statistics and transactions classification, and the "Wallet Balance" function was moved to the main interface, making it more accessible.
1. Modular Design
3. User-friendly Goal Creation
Original design: The original design allowed the user to change the color of the goal's Icon.
Feedback received: I found that too many color options would lead to a lack of unity in the page design.
Revised design: I prioritized the addition of the goal start date, making it more practical and in line with user needs, and I also removed the color editing of the goal.
Sign Up Page
Enter your recurring expenses
Credit Scores
Profile
Wallet Balance
Profile Photo Creating
Acknowledge your daily budget
Personalized financial plans & credit improvement suggestions & goal creation
Community
Create your goal
Tracking financial situation, goals & low budget alerts
Lock Screen Notification
05.
FINAL PRODUCT
Design Concept
Onboarding & Sign Up
Onboarding Pages
Enter your income
Daily Budget
Onboarding Pages
Enter your income
Homepage Dashboard
Notifications
Achievements
Reflections and Takeaway
Ideas are better understood in context, not in isolation. Emphasizing user needs, goals, and context is crucial for effective and user-friendly design.
The project initially relied on behavioral science research, but user testing showed it was not relevant to the MVP. I shifted to contextual inquiry and user interviews for a user-centered design approach, resulting in identifying opportunities to meet user needs and goals.