What’s Divi?
Divi is a budget creation app that leverages user’s current spending habits to create an optimized personal budget they can stick to.
Problem: Young adults are intimidated by budgeting and struggle with creating a budget they can stick to.
Solution: Divi, an app that leverages the user's current spending habits and financial goals to create a realistic optimized budget.
Secondary Research
The Story Behind the Numbers
Young adults are struggling.
Young Americans owe over $1,000,000,000 in debt.
In 2019, more than 41% of young adult households held some type of education installment loan.
A study conducted by FINRA found that 60% of respondents felt anxious when thinking about personal finances.
Primary Research
Narrowing In
How can I help?
I conducted my own research via one on one interviews to hone in on pain points amongst young adults and budgeting. This way I could best identify where and how I should intervene.
Key Themes
Knowledge & Education: Young adults want to learn more about personal finance but struggle to find reliable, concise and personalized resources.
Priorities & Goals: Financial security is a top priority for young adults, they have considered what a stable financial future looks like and are confident they will make it there one day.
Budgeting; Spending, Saving & Debt: Young adults typically follow a loose budget and prioritize savings while struggling with debt and impulse spending.
Challenges & Deterrents: The topic of personal finance makes young adults anxious and some common challenges include a lack of time, focused goals, and a sense of direction.
100% of interviewees reported valuing a budget but no one was able to stick to one.
Development
The Plan
Let’s help Aubrey.
Aubrey Wilson
NYC
24
Barista
“I like being able to know I can afford my groceries next week”
Bio
Aubrey is a recent college graduate working towards starting her career. She finds herself stressed about finances quite often and would like some help budgeting.
Behaviors
-Spends lots of time working.
-Puts away money in savings after getting paid.
-Checks her account balance to keep track of spending.
Goals
-A structured budgeting system that she can stick to.
-Increase her savings and lower her debt.
Learn more about budgeting.
Pain Points
-Impulse spending.
-Student loans.
-Budgeting apps she has tried have been unsuccessful.
Development
Defining Key Features
What does Aubrey need?
Personalized Budget
Budget Explanation
Resources
Transfer Initiation
Goal Tracking
Design
Transforming Concepts to Designs
How will it look and feel?
Personalized Budget
Key Design Decisions
Simple Layout
Clear Text Hierarchy
Progress Bar
Cool Toned Color Palette
Rationale
When conducting interviews budgeting was a major pain point for all my interviewees, for this reason I focused Divi around budgeting.
Further, my research showed budgeting was a source of anxiety for my target users.
Simple designs and a clear text hierarchy were imperative to increase scan-ability and avoid overwhelming users with information.
Further, the progress bar helps guide users throughout their task allowing ease of use.
Goal Tracking
& Resources
Key Design Decisions
Data Visualization
Goal/Progress Reminder
Rationale
Goal tracking was a vital feature to keep users motivated throughout their weekly budgeting journey.
I included a graph so users could easily view their progress each time they opened the app.
During my interviews I found that many young adults strive to learn more about financial literacy.
I included a card on the home page that will direct users to more resources including articles, videos, podcasts, books and courses.
Budget Explanation
Key Design Decisions
Quantitative Data
Friendly Copy
Rationale
Divi’s budget explanation breaks down the “why” behind each users budget breakdown.
The app presents the user quantitative data of their spending habits which allows users to objectively view their habits over time.
Moreover, this feature allows another opportunity for learning as it explains where and adjustments have been made to the users budget.
I utilized friendly layman's terms for the copy here to make this portion approachable and spark curiosity for the user.
Transfer Initiation
Key Design Decisions
Simple Layout
Clear Text Hierarchy
Rationale
I included a transfer initiation feature to align with users current behaviors.
When collecting research I learned many young adults transfer money between accounts after each paycheck.
The transfer initiation feature would expedite this process by linking with chosen bank accounts and prompting user to start their scheduled transfers with a click of a button.
High Fidelity Prototype
The Final Solution
Aubrey’s Budgeting Assistant
Approve Budget
Initiate Transfers
Key Learnings & Next Step
Now What?
Teaching Moments & the Future of Divi
Test, Test, TEST
It is impossible to know how users will interact with your product, and working on a project for months will result in blind spots.
Test early and often to gain insight and make meaningful changes.
Embrace Ambiguity
There will be parts of the process where you may feel unsure but this is ok.
Learn to stay curious and keep moving forward even when there is not a clear answer.
What’s next for Divi
Next steps will include designing more flows and completing usability testing throughout the way.
More specifically, an onboarding and adding goal flow are top priority.
Lets keep the conversation going!
linkedin.com/agathamolchanov
agathamolchanov@gmail.com
©2024 by Agatha Molchanov.