Divi
The Budget Creation App
Role: Lead UX Designer | Duration: 10 weeks
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.
The Double Diamond Approach
01.
Discover
02.
Define
03.
Develop
04.
Deliver
01. Discover
The Problem Space
Financial insecurity affects thousands of people across America lowering their overall quality of life.
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Psychologists have established that financial distress is associated with adverse health outcomes such as decreased sleep quality, emotional exhaustion, and decreased immune response. Furthermore, financial instability impacts a large portion of young adults, with, “70% of millennials live paycheck to paycheck.” according to United Way.
I wanted to create a digital solution to target some aspect of the large encompassing issue of financial insecurtiy.
Secondary Research
A study conducted by FINRA found that 60% of respondents felt anxious when thinking about their personal finances.
In 2019, more than 41% of young adult households held some type of education installment loan.
The median education loan amount among young borrowers topped $22,000.
Young Americans owe over $1,000,000,000 in debt.
Primary Research
Why collect my own research?
It was clear young adults were struggling but if I wanted to get to the good stuff, to answer the big questions of why they were struggling and how I could help, I needed to collect some research of my own. I interviewed four young adults to gain their perspective.
Research Objectives
Explore what holds young adults from attaining their financial goals in order to create a solution that increases financial stability.
Do young adults think financial stability is attainable?
What are their financial goals?
Where do they get information about personal finance?
What resources do they currently use for financial planning?
What aspects of financial planning do they struggle with the most?
Interview Script
02. Define
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.
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.
Budgeting; Spending, Saving & Debt: Young adults typically follow a loose budget and prioritize savings while struggling with debt and impulse spending.
Primary Theme
Budgeting: Spending, Saving & Debt
Every interviewee reported valuing a budget however no one has been able to stick to one.
How might we address young adults' struggles with budgeting to decrease financial stress and increase financial stability?
Aubrey Wilson
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.
Goals
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A structured budgeting system that she can stick to.
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Increase her savings and lower her debt.
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Learn more about budgeting.
Behaviors
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Spends lots of time working.
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Puts away money in savings after getting paid.
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Checks her account balance to keep track of spending.
Pain Points
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Impulse spending.
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Student loans.
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Budgeting apps she has tried have been unsuccessful.
03. Develop
Aubrey's Experience Map
Potential Interventions
When mapping Aubrey’s experience three opportunities for an intervention revealed themselves.
1. Providing Aubrey with a better system for determining how much to save vs spend.
2. Motivating Aubrey & helping her feel confident that she can take charge of her finances.
3. Providing Aubrey with a realistic discretionary spending limit based on her paycheck & habits.
User Stories
To begin brainstorming specific functions, I created 23 user stories based on my key theme & user persona.
As a user, I want to be prompted to define my financial goals so that I make financial decisions with these goals in mind.
As a user, I want to input large purchases I have to make occasionally so that my budget reflects the extra expenses for that week.
As a user, I want to be reminded of my long-term goals when budgeting so that I feel motivated to stick to my budget.
Primary Feature
Weekly Budget Creation
I chose to design for this feature and more specifically the task of approving the weekly budget.
After linking her bank accounts, the app would detect the Aubrey's spending habits and use this information to create an optimized budget.
This feature best addressed Aubrey’s goal of a creating realistic budget.
Task Flow
START
Approve budget modal
clicks approve budget
Budget screen
checks yes for extra spending
budget screen + additional ?'s
inputs amount & label
recalculated budget screen
Clicks approve budget
Confirmation modal
Clicks ok
Success modal
Clicks ok
Dashboard
END
04. Deliver
Sketches to Mid-Fi Designs
For the dashboard, I opted for a simple layout, outlining the primary functions for the user.
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From my research, I knew personal finance is a source of stress for my users. For this reason, I prioritized creating a straightforward design to avoid overwhelming the users.
For the budget approval modal I wanted to include a statistic that would motivate my users.
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This would serve as a form of positive reinforcement to keep my users on track with their budgeting journey.
On the budget breakdown screen, it was important I portrayed the information in a way that was easy to digest. I focused on text hierarchy to achieve that.
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Further I included an information button to provide the user with Divi's rationale behind the user's personalized budget.
I wanted to include a statistic indicating the user's progress toward their goals on the confirmation modal.
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I knew from my research that seeing progress was one way people will stay consistent with budgeting so it was vital for me to include indication of progress.
User Testing
I conducted two rounds of usability testing with 10 total participants to identify changes that needed to be made.
Key Findings
1. Most confusion stemmed from misinterpreting exactly what the budget screen and confirmation screens were communicating to the user.
2. Users were confused by the automated transfer feature, more specifically there needed to be more clarity in regards to why money was being transferred.
3. Users needed more guidance throughout the budget approval process and clarity surrounding what each of their actions was doing.
4. Users were able to seamlessly move through the task, however, there was some confusion surrounding what exactly the results of the task was.
Key Changes
Adding more screens: My usability testing showed that participants were getting confused along the way while completing the budget approval task. I broke this task into more screens to add clarity for the users.
Expanding on budget explanation: Usability testing participants reported being confused as to how the budget was created. For this reason, I felt it was important to include a screen that expands more on the patterns Divi recognizes and uses to create the user's budget.
Separating overview, wallet, and transfers: To further add clarity for the user when approving their budget I divided these three categories more distinctly.
Adding progress bar: A progress bar was added to reduce confusion and further guide the user as they are completing their task
Summary +
Key Learnings
During this project, I explored the realm of financial insecurity among young adults. Through extensive research and planning, I created a prototype for a mobile app that creates a personalized weekly budget for the user.
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.
Let the design process flow: The design process is not linear and there will always be bumps in the road that you did not plan for. Be patient and do not hesitate to go back and re-evaluate past decisions with a new perspective.
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.