Budget Buddy
Empowering Financial Literacy for College Students
Background
Lack of Financial Literacy: Many college students struggle with budgeting, saving, investing, and managing debt.
Technology Integration in Student Life: College students are tech-savvy and heavily rely on digital tools for academics, socializing, and entertainment.
Long-Term Financial Impact: The financial habits and behaviors established during college can have long-term consequences for students' financial well-being.
Budget Buddy is a user-friendly mobile first responsive website designed to enhance financial literacy among college students.
Goal: To develop an intuitive and engaging responsive website that educates and assists college students in managing their finances effectively.
The Design Process
Discover
Define
I’d like to explore ways to help college students with multiple expenses to customize their budget goals and notifications to stay on track and avoid overspending.
Ideate
Rachel, 21-year-old college student.
Goals: wants a simple, intuitive expense tracking website to manage her limited budget, visually appealing interface with charts and graphs
Pain Points: challenged in keeping track of her expenses across different categories, forgets to log cash expenses, current website used is too complex
Used MoSCow Method to categorize list of features into essential must-do low effort, essential should-do high effort, nice to have could-do low effort, and nice to have won’t-do high effort.
Prototype
Test
Research Objective
identify the common challenges students face when managing their expenses and to understand the specific features and functions they desire in a budgeting website. This will help create a tool that effectively addresses their needs and enhances their financial literacy.
Methodologies
Competitive Analysis: Looked at three competitor’s products and strategies, identifying gaps, opportunities, patterns, and trends.
User Interviews: Qualitative insight to user experiences, challenges, and expectations of expense tracking websites. Participants interviewed one-on-one and remotely through Facetime.
Surveys: Conducted an online survey to reach bigger pool of candidates with quantitative data, to understand user’s expense tracking habits and feature preferences.
Competitive Analysis
Insights: A free subscription is preferred over programs with monthly fees. users prioritize a simple and intuitive interface, customizable financial reports, and alerts for unusual account activity, bill reminders, and low balances.
User Interviews
Conducted 1:1 interviews with 8 participants.
Insights:
Category of Spending: Participants want their expenses organized into relevant categories, such as, entertainment, food, clothing, etc.
Budgeting: Participants would like to ability to set and manage budgets to maintain financial control.
Expense Amounts: Users would like clear visibility of their spending to effectively monitor their finances
Affinity Mapping
Learning and Guesses: participants are comfortable with technology and are willing to use expense tracking programs, given that the interface is well-designed, secures their information, and addresses their concerns.
POV’s and HMW’s
Point Of View’s
’d like to explore ways to help college students to efficiently manage their finances because they have busy schedules and would not want to spend a lot of time on data entry.
I’d like to explore ways to help college students on a tight budget to automatically categorize their spending because they can find areas to save and make better financial decisions.
User Persona
Research Findings
Discoveries from User Interviews: Majority of participants actively use expense tracking programs and are genuinely curious about their spending habits. The interview process served as an opportunity for me to listen to user insights and their pain points.
Challenges: Reviewing the test post-interview was most challenging. I focuses on key questions and responses from the participants which helped me identify important aspects that will guide my development of an expense tracking website
Storyboarding
Moscow Method
Sitemapping
User Flow
Created flows based off the emphasized needs from user persona: add account, log in, and set budget.
Used the findings from card sorting to place certain topics under each category.
Task Flow
How Might We’s
Based off storyboarding from user persona, aiding in visualization of the users journey and was an interactive approach to quickly sketch and revise different design concepts.
Created tasks flows to show steps that users need to take to complete the simple tasks.
Wireframing
How might we build a customizable expense tracking website for college students with multiple expense, providing personalizes budget goals and notifications to help them stay on track and avoid overspending?
How might we create a user-friendly app that allows college students to efficiently manage their finances while minimizing the time spent on data entry considering their busy schedules?
How might we design an expense tracking app that automatically categorizes spending for college students on tight budgets, allowing them to identify savings opportunities and make better financial decisions?
Low Fidelity
low fidelity
Mid Fidelity
High Fidelity
Usability Testing Results
Overall Usability: Participants generally found the platform intuitive and easy to navigate. Majority of tasks were completed successfully with minimal difficulties.
Task Flow Performance
Account Set Up: Participants found it straightforward but desired clearer instructions for certain inputs, such as using emoji’s/picticons for category selection.
Adding Spending Category in Trends: Some confusion arose regarding emoji/picticon representations and category selection.
Interface Feedback
Positive: Intuitive buttons and overall interface.
Negative: Confusion with certain icons and lack of clarity in instructions.
User Satisfaction: Most participants expressed satisfaction with the usability of the platform. Suggestions for improvements were mainly focused on clarity and customization options.
Recommendations 💡
Implement clearer instructions and labeling, for novice and proficient users.
Enhance customization options and provide more control over selections.
Further refine interface elements based on user feedback to improve overall usability.
Results
Definitions of Success and Performance Metrics
Task Completion Rate: 5/5
Average Time to Task Completion: 5 minutes for each task
Average User Satisfaction Rating: 3.5/5
Average Error Rates: 3 errors per task
What Worked 👍
Intuitive Interfaces: Participants generally found the interfaces easy to understand and interact with, indicating successful design choices in terms of layout and visual cues.
Smooth Task Flows: Despite some issues, most participants were able to complete tasks without major obstacles, suggesting effective task flow design.
Positive User Feedback: Overall, participants expressed satisfaction with the platform’s usability, highlighting successful aspects such as clear buttons and straightforward interactions.
What Needs To Be Changed 🔧
Clarification of Instructions: Participants noted confusion regarding certain instructions, indicating a need for clearer guidance, both in novice and proficient users.
Improvement in Icon Representation: Some participants found certain icons confusing or ambiguous, suggesting the need for clearer visual representations or labels.
Enhancement of Customization Options: Participants desired more control and customization options, particularly in areas such as budget settings and category selection.
Revisions ✏️
Clarifying the labels in the interactive icon category selection to help users better understand the categories they are creating
Changed the input method for the budget in ‘New User Tutorial’, Flow 1 to manual entry, as I received feedback that the bar could be finicky.
Added more guidance in ‘Add New Expense Category’ in Flow 2 to add keywords to create a specific budget
Final Revisions ✅
