Contents

  1. Background
  2. Personas
  3. Comparative Analysis
  4. Application Pathways
  5. Designs
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    • Citrus: An expense management app for young professionals

    The Problem

    I freelanced for some time during the Fall of 2020 and my past work helped me land a 3-month contract with a multinational personal finance company (think WalletHub, NerdWallet etc.).

    The client had a credit monitoring app that would help you track your credit score, total debt, insurance money etc. The insights generated from these were very limited and the client wished to explore the idea of introducing a personal money management app to their existing line of products.

    The goal was to track consumers' saving and spending habits to generate more actionable insights that'd help them get to their financial goals faster.

    The Audience

    Analytics showed 73% of the client's user base were millenials (born between 1980-2000). And since my research goal was more exploratory than conclusion-driven, I surfaced the idea to restrict the research audience to just millenials, to the client. We were in agreement.

    The client's existing product line was mobile-only but they were open to the idea of exploring other messaging channels to communicate with their customers.

    Note:There are some administrative hoops one has to jump across, before collecting users' data, in-app or otherwise. Having owned a credit-monitoring app, the client had already gained approval for some of it and asked me to assume the rest would eventually be granted, for the project, should we move forward with a money management app.

    Personas

    I interviewed 8 people, (5 men, 3 women, 2 of whom were students and 5, early career professionals) and asked them questions related to their money management behaviors.

    Students include anyone pursuing a full-time undergraduate or graduate degree and they may or may not have a part-time job. Working professionals include people having a full-time job and they may or may not be pursuing a degree. The findings derived from these were, to a large extent, influenced by the person's economic background, culture and family upbringing.

    Findings -

    Comparative Analysis

    There were some common themes between responses from savers and spenders -



    New process

    Prioritizing Ideas

    I invited my participants for a group dot-voting exercise using Mural. We followed a divergent-convergent brainstorming technique where we initially thought of all possible ideas a money-management app could have and then converged on a few for the minimum-viable product (MVP).

    App Brainstroming on Mural Board
    Grouping ideas with most votes




    The shortlisted categories were then used in a closed card sorting exercise to develop the information architecture of the application.

    Grouping ideas with most votes

    Application Pathways

    As part of the ideation process, I started storyboarding with my participants on what the user journey would look like. The idea was to see how the feedback and data we had so far, could manifest in an app.

    After we had visualized some ideas, the next step was to translate the low-fidelity storyboard into a concreate application pathway. After hours of brainstroming, sketching and noodling with a group of participants, we all agreed this is how the pathways should be designed.

    Application Pathways

    Mockups

    Low-fidelity mocks
    Low-fidelity mocks
    dashboard wireframes

    1. Potential for tagging
      If the app is successful in building a community of loyal, engaging users, there's tremendous potential in using this information (safely) to hel users make more data-informed spending/saving choices. For example, users can tag certain payments as a luxury or necessity. These tags can be shared and picked up by their friends who can user them as-is or set their own definitions which are later pulled in, to create cash flow visualizations.
    2. Increasing engagement through a network of friends
      For millenials, buy-in for signing-up comes easily when their friends are already on the app. The interviews were testament to this. The person is also more likely to engage with the app frequently if their friends are active on the app. Additionally, good saving and spending habits of friends translate more easily onto them - which is why the app has a 'Friends' UI which enables users to track their friends' activity (of course with the said friend's consent).
    3. Designing for smartwatches
      A large proportion of the audience I interviewed used their phones and smartwatches heavily. Most participants said they'd use their phones to monitor their expenses as that's also where they had their other banking apps. 5/8 participants did however say, they'd be interested in a smartwatch app that could link to their Apple/Google pay accounts and would alert them whenever they crossed their budget.

    User Testing

    I tested the concept and the prototype with 6 new participants, also consumers of the client's product. The participants were asked to try out the prototype, and then asked to comment on their experience. Here are some common themes I observed -

    About the concept -

    • Participants found the idea refreshingly new, but were however, concerned about the data-sharing aspect of the app.

    • Participants said they would be reluctant to enter their Social and Credit Card Information on a third-party app, unless it came from a trusted brand or had established itself through positive reviews and word of mouth.

    • Most participants said they used multiple cards for purchases depending on the points/rewards they offered. This idea has already been factored in, in the app

    • Necessities and Luxuries are subjective, so participated recommended crowdsourcing this information from a person's friends' network. This is also a good opportunity for gamification and making people compete and save more.

    About the design -

    • Participants liked the look and feel, and found the app easy-to-use.

    • The additional options shown after tapping on the '+' button seemed a little confusing as partipants weren't sure of what the icons meant.

    • 5/6 participants could complete the tasks given to them. Add and track a loan, Add a new expense and Modify an expense.

    • Participants said they would like to see coupons based on their spending, more opportunities to save on insurance, paying off loan faster etc.




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