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Smart Money
Overview:
The goal of Smart Money is to be an all-in-one financial app that not only helps users keep track of their finances but also increase their financial literacy.
Role:
Product Designer
Key Skills:
Secondary Research, User Interviews, Empathy Map, User Personas, How Might We Statements, User Stories, Guerrilla Testing, Wireframes, Prototyping, Usability Testing
Timeline:
December 2022 - June 2023
Managing personal finances can be difficult and overwhelming
When it comes to managing personal finances, many people can feel lost and intimidated - myself included; after all, it isn’t something that was taught in school. As a result, people are forced to go out and learn about money management on their own by scouring article after article on the Internet, encountering terms they may have never even heard of before. This process can feel overwhelming and intimidating and even discourage individuals from being able to take control of their finances.
Now meet Smart Money, your one stop shop for personal finance management
Smart Money is an all-in-one financial app where users can track their spending, set up a flexible budget, and learn about various financial topics (e.g. taxes, investing, credit cards). With these features all in one place and easy to access, Smart Money aims to serve as a trustworthy resource that empowers users to manage their finances.
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But let's rewind, how did I get here?
*Design Thinking*
Empathize
Define
Ideate
Prototype
Test
To start, I conducted secondary research looking into budgeting, a common tool for money management.
We've all heard about budgeting, but how many of us can actually stick to it? With my research, I wanted to find out why, despite being such a popular financial strategy, budgeting can be difficult for individuals. The common reasons I found were:
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Lack of financial literacy
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Difficulty keeping track of spending
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Struggle with self-discipline
Next, I sent out a screener survey to recruit participants for user interviews.
I sent out a screener survey through Slack channels to gauge some preliminary insights into how people approach their finances.
30.8% currently do not have a method of tracking finances but have in the past
23.1% currently do not have a method of tracking finances and haven’t in the past
46.2% currently have a method of tracking finances
With my interview script in hand, I conducted 5 user interviews and found three common themes:
Individuals wanted to keep finance tracking as low effort as possible.
Individuals wanted a method of saving money to achieve long-term financial goals.
Individuals wanted more flexibility when it came to spending and saving money.
Using my findings from my user interviews, I put together an empathy map and created two user personas to represent my target audience.
So what problems did I really want to tackle?
In order to define the problems for which I could brainstorm solutions, I synthesized How Might We questions.
How Might We...
make it easier for people to save money?
make keeping track of personal finances less intimidating?
help people achieve their long-term financial goals?
streamline the process of keeping track of finances?
help increase people's knowledge of finances?
make budgeting more flexible?
After some brainstorming, I narrowed it down to two possible solutions.
One solution was an app solely focused on helping users achieve their long-term goals, such as buying a house or paying for a wedding. The second solution was an all-in-one app that would have all the essential features to help someone manage their money. Ultimately, I decided on the latter and created user stories prioritized features for a minimum viable product.
Next, I created a sitemap to demonstrate how the screens would be connected in hierarchical order.
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From here, I created paper sketches of my solution that I used for guerrilla testing prior to moving onto making higher fidelity designs.
Feedback from my five guerrilla testing sessions included having separate screens for showing linked accounts and successfully connecting accounts as well as including an intermediate screen with no budget set up. With this in mind, I proceeded to start creating my wireframe, which included two main flows, as shown below:
Flow 1: Create an Account
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Flow 2: Set Up Budget
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Before moving onto creating my high-fidelity design, I first created a style guide to help me keep a consistent visual identity.
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Then the time came to create my high-fidelity prototype.
Onboarding
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Track your spending
By connecting your bank account and credit cards, SmartMoney will automatically log every transaction you make without any extra manual effort.
Set up a customizable budget by selecting your own categories and spending limits with the option to easily go back and edit.
Learn
Save time and energy by researching financial topics straight from the app.
Budget
With my prototype completed, I conducted two rounds of moderated usability testing.
My primary objective through these rounds of testing was to evaluate the ease of use of Smart Money. While all given tasks were able to be accomplished by all the participants, I did receive some other minor feedback that helped me improve my solution.
Feedback #1: Offer various view options for the Spending page
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Included the option to switch between month vs. year view
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Feedback #2: Allow users to review and confirm their budget selections
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Added a budget confirmation screen
So what did I learn throughout the process of creating Smart Money?
1. You can’t create a solution without first identifying the problem.
Prior to conducting my user interviews, I hadn’t understood the full picture of challenges that people encounter when managing their personal finances. For example, while it’s a common theme for people to want to have savings set aside for a rainy day, I hadn’t thought about people lacking a strategy to save money for more finite goals, such as paying off a wedding or buying a house. Without understanding the full picture, a product may not be as suitable to meet users’ needs.
2. Be open-minded to any and all feedback.
It’s easy to get accustomed to looking at your own design for hours on end, and as a result, it’s easy to overlook small design flaws. Through various rounds of testing, I was able to receive valuable feedback, both big and small, that helped me reiterate to create a better product.
3. Patience is necessary for quality results.
When first starting this project, it felt very overwhelming to think that I’d have a finished product at the end. However, as I progressed through each step of the design process, I could gradually see everything come together and see how each step contributed to the final outcome, which was SmartMoney.
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