5 min read
Improving financial literacy through education and expense tracking.
YEAR
2024
TIMELINE
5 months
TOOLS
Figma
Trello
Maze
PLATFORM
Web
INDUSTRY
Fintech
TEAM
1 Designer, 2 Engineers, 1 Product Manager
Overview.
BudgetBuddy is a desktop platform for improving financial literacy through daily trivia and visualized expense budgeting.
I worked on this 0-1 project with a Product Manager and Software Developers, increasing SUS and NPS by 15% and 20% respectively.
The End-Product.
Challenges
Form design isn't glamorous, but it's a skill that required deeper thinking regarding interaction cost and intent.
We also wanted to verify bank account information with the API from Plaid, but were unable to do so given the time constraint.
How I Overcame Them
Design is a team effort. Weighing tradeoffs and balancing pushback were huge topics during team meetings.
VIDEO
Creating an account and syncing payment information.
THE PROBLEM
Financial illiteracy is an issue that affects millions.
Laying the foundation.
Why are we designing this?
In the U.S., the average adult spends ~$1,497/month on nonessential items, totaling roughly $18,000 annually.
What are some ideas?
How might we make finances feel more approachable? Trivia, social proof and AI-based features were considered.
Prioritizing
In discussion with my PM and engineers, the criteria for prioritizing solutions were: feasibility and value for customer.
Gauging Success
How confident would users feel with their finances before and after using the product? How effective and usable is it?
With this in mind,
How might we relieve friction and intimidation in managing finances?
RESEARCH
People find finances confusing and overwhelming.
Where were people struggling?
I worked with Product to survey 25 people and interview 10 on their personal pain points in seeking to become more financially literate.
I took a look at a few competitors on the marketplace, and learned that:
There's a lack of Fintech products that merge financial education with expense budgeting.
Rationale
Merging banking information will provide a clearer snapshot of expenses. This can also be expanded to 3rd-party spending fintech apps like Venmo.
Opportunity
Adding onto the idea of the main site being a resource-heavy forum, expense tracking helps to fill an empty market opportunity.
Rationale
We wanted the homepage to have resources front and center. For example, dedicating a subpage to learning about best practices for retirement.
The Opportunity
On the subpage, a user would be able to browse info. such as common terms, informational videos, and next-steps to take.
GENERATING IDEAS
Aligning product goals and constraints.
Leveraging thought partners.
I led design workshops with engineering and product to ensure that we'd be goal and constraint-aligned in brainstorming ideas.
Communicating design work
I explained to development the initial wireframes and interactions so that they could code the layout.
Thinking about next steps
But we wanted to find more interactive ways to address the pain points that users mentioned. How might we solve the "human problem"?
REDUCING USER FRICTION
Daily Trivia and Badges.
Each topic would contain two daily trivia questions to test fundamental knowledge, with a chance to earn badges.
Trivia is meant to be a low-friction way of addressing the themes of intimidation and overwhelm for users.
Simplistic layouts and next steps.
It's one thing to be given the resources, it's another to know what to do next. For investing, I decided to include different brokerage accounts as next steps.
The basics, made basic.
People learn things differently, that's why it was important to design for different use cases. Whether it's text or videos, I wanted to design inclusively.
CHALLENGE 1: SECURING PLAID'S API
But how would we connect banking data?
TESTING
Figuring how usable the product was.
Defining Success.
80 was the initial SUS score.
In discussion with my Product Manager, we wanted to ensure that the process of managing personal banking information would be seamless.
8.2 was the initial NPS score.
I chose NPS as a metric to track as it could be a good indicator of how a new product may grow and perform if continued.
Form design is a lost art.
While discussing design rationale with engineering, they asked me how users were going to make clear their type of account. Were users going to type it in? What if they misspelled the type or were unsure? As constructed, users had to go through additional clicks and effort, increasing the interaction cost, a negative for the UX.
Users had to type what their specific account type was. What if they misspelled their account type? This would lead them to have to try again.
Two simplified options save on interaction cost, reducing the room for error and reducing the physical input from the user.
A frictionless, birds-eye-view of your finances.
I wanted the dashboard to clearly show a user's spending habits, both visually (progress bar) and with numbers.
Manage subscriptions and synced accounts with ease.
Part of excess spending stems from staying subscribed to services that are no longer serve us. Increasing visibility of this was a must.
MEASURING IMPACT
Second time's a charm.
Defining Success.
After making visual tweaks and logistical iterations with the team, I tested for SUS and NPS again:
+15% SUS Score
My PM and I wanted to ensure that the process of merging personal banking information would be intuitive and not present any critical isssues.
+20% NPS Score
Net promoter score was aggregated through a survey administered to the test participants twice during the project.
Confidence over intimidation.
The theme of intimidation was core to our initial user research interviews.
To measure BudgetBuddy's impact on overall confidence, I put together a survey to gather some qualitative data on how they felt after using the product.
One person said:
“I'm more at ease being able to see everything.”
and another:
“The barrier to learning the basics is low.”
One more for good measure:
“Finances have always felt unapproachable, until now.”
TAKEAWAYS
Advocate, but speak the same product language as your teammates.
Form design is key.
Form design isn't glamorous, but it's a skill that required deeper thinking regarding interaction cost and intent.
Think like an engineer.
Go through every interaction design with the thought of, "What happens if a user does something unexpected?"
"Is this solution valuable?"
Checkpoints to help maintain intentionality are vital to product success.
