OVERVIEW
Our Approach
We followed the Human-Centered Design framework to follow a streamlined approach to UX Design to gain a guided path to design
01
EMPATHIZE
Domain Research
Survey Research
User Interviews
Research Analysis
02
DEFINE
Problem Statement
User Personas
Empathy Maps
User Journey Maps
03
IDEATE
Competitive Analysis
Task Flows
Information Architecture
04
PROTOTYPE
Wireframes
Style Guide
UI Design
Survey Research
The goal was to understand the current model of financial management that users used to manage their expenses. Moreover, we hoped to find out pain points and problem areas that users faced that we could focus on. The survey was floated in metro cities like Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata for a week and a total of 102 responses were recorded.
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Interviews
Once we understood the mode of tracking each age group employed, we wanted to gain insight into the behaviour and habits of these individuals. The goals of the interview were as follows :
Understanding their process of budget tracking and user's experience in using different budget-tracking tools
The advantages and disadvantages of the tool they use
Problems faced with budget-tracking applications
Users’ main motivations and objectives to use the product
We created an affinity map as a group to identify themes from our qualitative interview data.
Insights Identified
01
Users usually track expenses with the help of bank statements and UPI apps
02
Some users have fixed savings and do not track the rest of the money
03
Users have financial goals but they are unsure of its progress and how to track it
04
Users usually find out that their financial resources are depleted by the end of the month
Painpoints
01
People track minor expenses mentally and manually track only major expenses
02
Users use multiple apps and bank accounts to make payments
03
Once users get an idea of their spending patterns, they stop tracking their expenses
04
Users delete budgetting apps once they fall off-track or when it becomes too complicated to use
DEFINING THE PROBLEM
Empathy Maps
We gathered all the data from the interviews and formed aggregated empathy maps to develop the personality of our user persona.
User Personas
Based on the survey results and interviews conducted, we decided to focus on working professionals who required a platform to track their finances consistently. Instead of arbitrarily deciding on a group to focus on, we delineated the different needs for working professionals who have recently begun to track and manage their finances and working professionals who have been managing personal finances for a relatively longer period of time and are soon to be shouldering additional responsibilities and brainstormed ideas for both.
User Journey Maps
Once we had an idea of the users we were designing for, we decided to map out their journeys to focus on the problems they face during the different phases of their journey. The journey was mapped to figure out opportunities that could be included in the app.
IDEATING SOLUTIONS
Competitive Analysis
We explored other personal finance management apps for inspiration and analyzed features and pportunities to include in our solution.
Final Design Considerations
Eventually, we narrowed down our ideas to the four following large themes that addressed our user's concerns from different perspectives. The first two ideas address the needs of working professionals who have been working for some time and are looking to manage their personal finances, while the last two concets address the needs of married working professionals who are looking to attain long-term financial goals.
Tracking finances consistently
Remembering to input expenses
Making it easier for users to input expenses and incorporating the Hook model to reward users to motivate them to use the app.
Organised Space
Financial Planning
Giving users an organized space for planning their personal finances and track upcoming bills.
Financial Goals
Short-term and long-term goals
Providing a tool for users with more responsibilities to create and track financial goals
Emergency Fund
Track Savings
Giving users a way of analyzing and gaining insights of their savings
Task Flows
USER STORY
User Story 1 : As a user I want to input cash transactions manually in an easier way
TASK
Inputting cash transactions manually
TASK DESCRIPTION
The user often forgets to note down cash transactions and later forgets to keep a record of it
TASK LIST
The user purchases something
They receive a receipt for the item purchased
They open the app to manually input the expense
They decide to input the expense by scanning the bill
The user opens the camera and scans the bill
The app automatically records the important details of the bill
Latest transaction gets added under transaction history
USER STORY
User Story 2 : As a forgetful user, I want to make a bill recurring which was detected by the app.
TASK
Recurring bill be automatically detected and be reminded to the user.
TASK DESCRIPTION
The user has made a payment for a bill for eg. subscribing to an OTT platform.
The app detects the payment and asks the user whether they would like to add it as a recurring bill
TASK LIST
User makes a payment for a subscription service through any online platform
App detects the bill and notifies the user
User clicks on the bill to edit it
changes the mode to recurring, confirms date of payment
sets the toggle to receive notification
saves the changes
Mind Mapping
All the features were taken and arranged by us to get an estimate of the categories and higher-level navigation of the app using mind-mapping techniqiue.
Information Architecture
Using the card sorting exercise, we laid out all of the information before test subjects and asked them to arrange items into groups/categories that felt intuitive to them. We then analyzed the results and built our information architecture.
PROTOTYPING
Design Decisions
We first quickly sketched out the ideas on paper and discussed the main functionalities of each with our mentor. With the feedback, we created a usage scenario for each concept, and drew out the final designs that represented the essence of our ideas.
Concept 1
Our first concept focussed on the large and overwhelming task of tracking finances, With the auto-sync feature, users can connect their bank accounts to the app which gives them an organized space with all of their transactions.
Concept 2
Users often complain of their finances not being organized and being all over the place. A separate section has been created for only planning which include budgeting and bills. This will help users separate what they currently have from what they need and compare both as well.
Concept 3
Gamification using Hook’s models to motivate users to return to the app. Users go up a level every time they achieve a financial goal and earn points which they can exchange for rewards. User's ongoing and completed goals are always visible to motivate users.
Concept 4
Users will be able to see how much they are saving and how much they have in their emergency fund and draw insights from the same.
