Wisely

A self-finance tool that focuses on a simplified and enjoyable money management process that helps young adults who have little to no experience in handling money achieve financial wellness

3 months

Timeline

UX Researcher

Role

UX/UI Designer

Figma

Tools

Final Design

After Multiple
Iterations

Figma Prototype

Quick Insights

Keep track of your expenses, savings, active subscriptions, and even keep tabs on what your friends owe you.

Quick Insights provides numbers that drive actions.

Stay on track with budgeting

Scan receipts. Use AI to identify and categorize expenses.

Cash usage is a common pain point that makes staying on track with budgeting and keeping all expenses in sync very difficult.

Receipt scanning is here to save the day.

Saving Planner

A personal planner creates strategic saving plans catered to your spending and saving behaviors.

Goals

Empower users to make informed decisions with a simplified personal banking experience while fostering sustainable healthy financial habits.

There’s an opportunity to make the checkout experience quicker and easier, less distracting, and thus improve customer-satisfaction, increase conversion rates and minimize cart abandonment.

Context

When was the last time we lost track of your spending while having so much fun over a weekend jam-packed with plans after plans? Probably last week. Let’s admit it - staying with a budget is neither fun nor easy. Who has time to calculate how much I can afford for this brunch or count how much have been spent on coffee and tea this week?

There’s an opportunity to make the checkout experience quicker and easier, less distracting, and thus improve customer-satisfaction, increase conversion rates and minimize cart abandonment.

Consumers are more likely to prefer:

A fun and engaging experience (vs. a simple and functional one)
An app that does things for them (vs. one that helps them do things for themselves)

The Increasing Importance of UX - Alkami

“Users are seeking a holistic view of their financial lives…”

“They want it all delivered via modernized financial tools in an accessible mobile-first experience. Add an element of financial coaching, and you have a detailed picture of what financial wellness users find most necessary and useful.”
“Offer micro-savings solutions that promote auto-saving behaviors and drive deposits” for financial wellness - going beyond built-in data management."

Providing Financial Wellness to Users who Suddenly Need It - Alkami

“To build a habit-forming product, makers need to understand which user emotions may be tied to internal triggers and know how to leverage external triggers to drive the user to action.”

Hooked - Nir Eyal

Discoveries

Emphathize

Foundational

Interviews

100%
of participants have difficulty with budgeting and saving due to lack of routine and forget to constantly update transactions.
55%
of participants have trouble with money lending and the lack of connectivity among multiple finance apps.
64%
of participants have a formal method of budgeting and not just spend intuitively.
73%
of participants have problems with tracking expenses.
I inquired about people's introspection habits within their work and living environments when it comes to managing money on the daily basis as well as their long-term vision of financial wellness.

In assessing their responses, I identified the challenges and concerns they encountered on the path to achieving their financial goals. Before delving into the ideation process, I noted the most prevalent challenges participants faced and the disparity between their intended actions and their overarching financial objectives.
I created a research plan to conduct 1:1 interviews elaborating on the 3 main questions:

How are you managing your finances?

How do you save for the future plans?

How do you manage debts?

Literature

Research

The Increasing Importance of UX

- Alkami

Consumers are more likely to prefer:

A fun and engaging experience (vs. a simple and functional one)
An app that does things for them (vs. one that helps them do things for themselves)

Providing Financial Wellness to Users Who Suddenly Need It

- Alkami

“Users are seeking a holistic view of their financial lives…”
“They want it all delivered via modernized financial tools in an accessible mobile-first experience. Add an element of financial coaching, and you have a detailed picture of what financial wellness users find most necessary and useful.”
“Offer micro-savings solutions that promote auto-saving behaviors and drive deposits” for financial wellness - going beyond built-in data management."

Hooked - Nir Eyal

“To build a habit-forming product, makers need to understand which user emotions may be tied to internal triggers and know how to leverage external triggers to drive the user to action.”

User Journey

The Problem

Define

The process of managing monthly expenses and savings is tedious and confusing, and it is not action-driven. There’s an opportunity to make the decision-making quicker and easier, and thus create long-term habits of saving and managing expenses for young adults.

Problem Statement

If we simplify everything to the core and give users all the calculated statistics,

then the users will feel more inclined to use the app due to how easy it is, which helps them build a good long-term habit to keep track of their finance.

Users need a quick and convenient way to check their budgets.

Users can make a purchase decision in as little as 5 seconds, emphasizing the need for a swift and convenient method to assess their budgets. In order to help users achieve financial wellness, I aim to help users create new habits, reform their lifestyle rather than helplessly try to maintain a short-lived high of budget-saving. Creating a habit that closely aligns with their lifestyle and device preference (such as a phone) increases the app’s success rate.

Competitive Analysis

Each app has its own unique method of helping the users manage their finances: from stock accounts and digital currency to day-to-day budgeting. However, most of them fail to meet users at the most basic needs - a self-finance 101 lesson. Apps overload information and features to reach a mass of users so much that they become a one-size-fits-most platform.

Finance apps utilize a lot of a graphs to showcase trends and tendencies. Data visualization is helpful when it can help people understand numbers easily, however, overusing it makes the whole experience confusing and reduces the stickiness of the information (how much a user is able to retain, absorb, remember, and utilize information).

“If data can be communicated clearly and concisely with a statistic, it should be. If a text description proves insightful and showing the shape of data provides little impact, visualization isn’t needed.”
- Micah Bowers

Ideate

Brainstorming
& Affinity Mapping

Testing

Usability

Test

Gain feedback early on low-fidelity wireframes

Most users found the quick insights helpful because of the bird eye view of spending patterns.
Most users like how they can manage different bank accounts as well as money transfer apps.
Cards info should include card types: debit, credit.
Most features have intuitive flows, except for some such as the personalized saving planner or fund reallocation.
Key takeaways
In response to hypothesis
Users are confused by the “invisible” math.

They are skeptical about how certain numbers and insights come about.
The users actually crave getting educated than being “spoon-fed” with statistics and insights. They want to learn by doing and actually understand the logic behind the math instead of having the AI do all the work for them.

"I want to see what all this app takes into account to come up with the Available for spending."

"I would rather listen to real experienced people like my parents about managing something so personal such as finance."
I conducted the usability testing early right after the low fidelity wireframes to see whether each task flow was smooth and intuitive. I was also able to assess whether each feature would actually be useful before moving forward with higher level wireframes.

Virtual moderated test

Duration: 45 minutes - 1 hour

UI Components

Design

System

Iteration

The Evolution

Saving Planner

Retrospection

Next Steps

More usability tests

Wisely is an app by the users and for the users. I’m interested to see how users may use this app while doing their daily routines, such as going grocery shopping or going to a brunch.

Keep Accessibility in Mind

Besides color usability, I want to implement more accessibility tools, such as voice control.

Security

Data breach, compromised or exposed data sharing, is one of the reasons people refrain from using third-party apps. Having a secondary security checkpoint will give users reassurance and they’re more likely to invest into the app, which can help yield more insightful data.