Personal Finance Management APP
Team
Aswathi Thilak
Roshini Ganesh
Youlu Xu
Timeline
6 weeks, Oct - Dec 2024
Chanllenge:
In response to the challenges international students face in managing their finances in the U.S., our team designed a personal finance tool aimed at simplifying budgeting and improving financial literacy. This project tackled a critical issue: helping international students navigate an unfamiliar financial system while fostering sustainable money habits for long-term stability.
By focusing on ease of use, progressive guidance, and contextual education, the solution empowers international students to take control of their finances with confidence, reducing stress and uncertainty about their financial future.
Process
RESEARCH ↓
International students often experience chaotic personal financial management in the United States due to difficulty maintaining a budget, unfamiliarity with the U.S. financial system and limited awareness of available financial options
How might we support international students in adapting to the U.S. financial system and developing sustainable personal finance habits for long-term stability?
Interview
We've conducted 18 interviews both in-person and remote through Zoom and Google Meet. We categorized all the interview transcripts into key themes in FigJam for further research methods: Affinity Mapping, Empathy Mapping, and User Journey Mapping
DEFINE ↓
User Persona
We started with two user personas: Andrew, a college student new to budgeting with little to no financial literacy, and Lyla, a seasoned professional with budgeting experience, basic financial knowledge, and aspirations to invest and grow her wealth. Through the design process, we refined our focus to Andrew as our primary persona while envisioning Lyla as a future user. We aim to guide users like Andrew on their financial journey, enabling them to grow with the app and eventually evolve into more financially savvy individuals like Lyla.
Insights from Our Research
User Journey Map
A user journey map was developed to track how our user persona— Andrew experiences his finance management process, highlighting his distinct motivations, challenges, and emotional response at each stage.
IDEATION ↓
Low-Fidelity
In the early stages of design, we focused on mapping out the core user flows to ensure a seamless and intuitive experience. we created low-fidelity wireframes for the onboarding flow, homepage, transaction flow, budget flow, and educational tips, prioritizing clarity, ease of navigation, and financial literacy support.
• Onboarding Flow – Designed to introduce users to key features while simplifying account setup.
• Homepage – Provides a personalized financial snapshot, displaying spending insights and budgeting progress.
• Transaction Flow – Streamlines expense tracking, making it easy to log and categorize transactions.
• Budget Flow – Helps users set and adjust budgets, offering clear visualizations of spending habits.
• Educational Tips – Contextual financial guidance integrated throughout the app to improve literacy and decision-making.
These wireframes served as a foundation for usability testing, allowing us to validate assumptions and refine the structure before moving into high-fidelity design.
TESTING ↓
Usability Testing
To evaluate the effectiveness of the design, usability testing was conducted with four international students, focusing on five key tasks. The sessions were moderated through both remote and in-person interviews to gather qualitative insights.
The study aimed to assess the clarity and relevance of information, ensuring users could easily understand terms and content. It also explored the ease of navigation, identifying any steps that felt unclear or caused friction. Additionally, participants provided feedback on the effectiveness of contextual tips, sharing how useful they found them and their preferred format for receiving guidance.
Onboarding
Main Insights
Users felt too many steps
Streamline some questions, group them more systematically by affinity
User did not find the need to upload a photo particularly
Removed unnecessary steps
Homepage
Main Insights
Users want to see their net worth.
Too many detailed numbers feel stressful.
Focus on the most useful information
Users are confused by too many ways to direct to other pages.
Reduce some duplication
Set Up Budget
Main Insights
Set up the total budget upfront without referring to it later makes no sense.
Add up to total budget
Users feel the big circle uninformative.
Better visualization
New users feel stressful to make a realistic budget without knowing the live cost..
Budget templates
Combine Transactions
Main Insights
Users are not informed if the combine feature.
New feature in-app tutorials
Users feel the search and add up steps are repetitive. And the save button is unclear.
Simplify steps and buttons
Contextual Tips
Main Insights
Users prefer pop-up option.
Use popup instead of expand
Users dislike the smallest icon tip.
Continue with popup tips and page-style educational content
Users feel text-heavy.
Use Infographic and keep tips succinct and large enough to read
A Feature Priority Matrix was developed from usability testing insights to identify high-impact, low-effort improvements. This helped prioritize design refinements by balancing user impact and implementation effort, ensuring critical usability issues were addressed first.
