Finly

Mobile app for personal finance management.

Where

San Diego, CA

Role

UX Designer

What

IOS mobile app

Why

Portfolio project

When

03/23 - 04/23

Why I made this project?

I created this project because I wanted to improve my product design skills and get practice working on a personal finance mobile application. It was a completely new industry for me and I was able to get important experience.

I also wanted to create a mobile app that would make it easy and accessible for people to manage their money, set savings goals, and receive personalized recommendations.

Overview

The Context

The financial management app Finly is designed to help users keep track of their expenses, set up savings goals, and provide personalized recommendations to improve their financial health. The goal was to create a user-friendly and intuitive mobile app that could help users stay on top of their finances and make better decisions about their money.

The Problem

Many people struggle to manage their personal finances effectively due to a lack of financial literacy and budgeting skills. As a result, they often overspend, fail to save money for future goals, and end up in debt. This creates stress and anxiety, making it difficult for them to achieve their financial goals.

User Interviews

I conducted one-on-one interviews with 3 potential users to gather insights into their financial habits, pain points, and desired features in a financial management app.

I asked questions such as:

What is your approach to managing your finances?
How do you currently track your expenses and income?
What do you find frustrating about your current financial management process?
What features would you find most useful in a financial management app?
What are your goals when it comes to managing your money?

Interview highlights:

"I currently use a combination of a budgeting app and a spreadsheet to track our family's expenses and income. It helps us keep track of our spending and make informed financial decisions."

Jane, 27
Freelancer

"My goal is to build up my savings and invest in my business to take it to the next level. I would love to see a feature that alerts me when I'm nearing my budget limit or a savings goal."

Mark, 35
IT Specialist

"I currently use a spreadsheet to track all my expenses and income. It's time-consuming, but it helps me keep a close eye on my spending. My main goal is to pay off my student loans and build up an emergency fund."

John, 29
Business owner

The interviews helped to validate my initial assumptions and confirmed that the final product meets the needs of the target audience.

Empathy Map

After conducting user interviews, I created an empathy map to gain a better understanding of users' pain points, needs, and desires. This enabled me to develop a deeper understanding of the target audience and their financial management requirements.

Empathy maps helped me to improve the user-centered design approach and were crucial for developing a successful product that users will love and refer to.

Persona

After conducting thorough user research and analyzing the empathy map, I was able to create a detailed persona. By keeping Sarah's persona in mind throughout the design process, I was able to create a solution that effectively addresses her specific pain points and helps her achieve her financial goals.

Market Analysis

I conducted extensive research on the current market for financial management apps, with a focus on analyzing app store ratings and user reviews. This research helped me uncover some key findings that would shape my design decisions, including:

Many financial management apps have low ratings due to technical issues and poor customer support.
Users generally prefer apps with a clean, intuitive interface and personalized recommendations.
Although many apps focus on budgeting and expense tracking, there are few apps that provide a comprehensive financial management solution.

Competitive audit

In addition to the market analysis, I also conducted a competitive audit of several financial management apps, including Mint, PocketGuard, and YNAB. Through this audit, I discovered the following insights that would guide my design process:

Many apps offer similar features, such as expense tracking, budgeting, and goal setting.
Some apps provide more personalized recommendations and insights than others.
Technical issues and poor customer support often lead to negative reviews from users.

The User Persona helped humanize the user and make design decisions that align with user's personality.

Utilizing market analysis, I could identify the strengths and weaknesses of my competitors, enabling me to build a minimum viable product (MVP).

Initial research summary

Based on my research, I identified several other crucial steps that I needed to take during the app development process, including:

Developing a clean, intuitive interface with personalized recommendations.
Implementing strong security measures and privacy policies to gain users' trust.
Providing comprehensive financial management tools, including budgeting, expense tracking, and goal setting.
Offering excellent customer support to address technical issues and user questions.

User Journey Map

I created a user journey map to visualize the user's experience and pain points when interacting with the financial management app. This map helped me to identify areas for improvement and develop a user flow that addressed the user's needs and pain points.

Flow Diagram

With Sarah(Persona) in mind, I developed a user flow to outline the steps she would take to achieve her financial management goals using the Finly app. This allowed to identify potential areas of frustration or confusion in the user journey and refine the app's design to minimize these issues.

In order to gain deeper insights into how users approach the problem and identify areas for improvement, I developed a user journey map and flow diagram. It allowed me to visualize the user's experience and discover opportunities for enhancement.

How Might We

I used the "How might we" exercise to generate ideas for features that would address Sarah's pain points and help her achieve her financial goals. I followed best practices by framing statements in a way that was broad enough to encourage ideation, but specific enough to focus our thinking.
For example:

How might we simplify the process of setting financial goals for users like Sarah?
How might we address Sarah's concerns about security and privacy in a way that builds trust?
How might we make it easier for Sarah to track her expenses and identify areas where she can save money?
How might we encourage Sarah to stay motivated and on track with her financial goals over time?

By framing questions in this way, I was able to generate a range of potential solutions that addressed Sarah's needs and pain points. From there, I was able to narrow down ideas and begin the process of wireframing and prototyping.

Low-Fidelity Wireframes

Using the insights gathered during the ideation phase, I started with paper wireframes and converted them into digital low-fidelity wireframes to visualize the layout and functionality of the Finly app. This allowed me to test and refine the app's design before investing too much time and resources into the project.

I started with low-fidelity wireframes and prototypes at the early stage to enable swift experimentations and quickly iterate on potential solutions.

High-fidelity UI Design

Once the low-fidelity design of the initial flow was completed, I proceeded to work on the high-fidelity screens. The first step in this process was to define the colors and fonts that would be used in the design.

Color palette

Primary, accent, secondary, tertiary, background

Font

Dosis- Bold, Semi-Bold, Medium

Titilium Web - Medium, Regular

AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHh

Primary color for CTA's

Interactive Prototype

Using the wireframes as a guide, I created a high-fidelity prototype of the Finly app. This included creating a functional user interface for the initial user flow.

Usability test

For the usability study, I conducted remote sessions via Google Meet with 5 participants who fit our target audience. During these sessions, I observed how the participants interacted with the app and asked for their feedback on various aspects of the design.

Study results

One key finding from the study was that some users struggled to understand the navigation and how to access certain features. This led me to make some changes to the layout and labeling of certain elements in the app. Another finding was that users appreciated the personalized recommendations and insights provided by the app, which confirmed the importance of this feature identified in our earlier research.

Highlighted comments:

"I really like the visual style of the dashboard and how it is easy to find what I want"

Robbie K.

"It is nice that I can see my personal recommendations based on the financial habits."

Peter J.

"The navigation is simple and intuitive and when I don't understand what an icon means I can read a text label."

Jamie W.

Project summary

During this UX design process of developing Finly, I learned the importance of conducting thorough user research to gain a deep understanding of the target audience and their needs. I also learned that creating user personas, journey maps, and user flows can help to guide the design process and ensure that the final product meets user needs.

Additionally, I gained valuable insights from conducting a usability study and incorporating user feedback into the design process. By listening to users' needs and addressing their pain points, I was able to create a user-friendly financial management app that offers comprehensive tools for budgeting, expense tracking, and goal setting.

Overall, this project taught me that UX design is an iterative process that requires continuous feedback and refinement to create a product that truly meets user needs.