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Design+Code by Adeeb '22

In a nutshell -
The design opportunity How might we create a platform for managing personal finances, enabling young adults to build sustainable spending and saving habits, such that we make it easier for them to achieve financial independence?
The solution moneyowl is a money management platform for young adults that encourages them to monitor their expenses and manage their savings.
Responsibilities User Research, Service Design, UX/UI Design
Duration 24 weeks / Mar ‘20 - Aug ‘20
Tools Sketch, Figma, Principle
“What is adulthood?” - that’s the thought that gave birth to this project. Me and my friends, most of us over at least 1 year into our professional careers, had different takes on this.

Some felt that adulthood is defined by having a job, others - living independently.

I felt like there had to be some sort of consensus on this, and decided to dive deeper.

Early adulthood

According to Early Adulthood: The Pursuit of Financial Independence, finances are at the center of what young adults feel it takes to be an adult.

75% define adulthood as being financially independent from their parents. In second place is the primary means of gaining that independence - having a full-time job. These factors rank far above the other traditional milestones of education, home ownership, marriage and children.

According to the study, young adults consider personal finances as their number one source of stress and feel that the lack of money is the number one barrier to fulfilling their responsibilities.

I visualised insights from the study into a user story diagram, highlighting the different responsibilites that a young adult has to fulfill, while balancing all external temptations, on the road to financial independence.
The road to finiancial independence

Find a focus

Even with all the insights that the study had to offer, it felt a little too broad to me - not every young adult has the exact same responsibilities and temptations.

I decided to create a provisional persona to narrow it down - find a focus.

The assumption I made here was that young adults are more concerned with finances when it comes to long term goals - owning a home, sustaining a family, etc.

This was the direction suggested by the study, and I didn’t have any reason yet to deviate from it. However, I did feel the need to validate these assumptions before commiting to designing the solution around them.

User Research

I reached out to a few friends and engaged them in casual conversation; I felt like a conversational format would work better for as sensitive a topic as personal finance.

I observed that most of the people I spoke with anchored their sentiments around some immediate expense looming over their heads.

Even though it invalidated most of the assumptions I made while developing the provisional persona, I found it to be very interesting.

Excerpts & examples from my conversations with young adults
This is where I started to see a definitive direction in which I could drive this project. Even though I started off looking at financial independence as a long term play, I realised that in most cases, its a daily struggle.

I synthesised all the conversations I had and created quick storyboards by recalling the stories that 3 people had shared with me.

Takeaways

Many young adults have a lot of short term goals that they are unable to fulfill; many candidates expressed their frustration at not being able to fulfill their goals.

This inability is attributed to low income jobs or a lack of personal savings; almost all candidates blamed their low income jobs or their poor savings strategies for not being able to fulfill their goals
I wondered if I could design a way to help young adults manage their money in a smarter way - a sort platform for managing personal finances for short and long term goals

I identify this introspection as a turning point for this project, as it allowed me to define the initial design opportunity.
Design Opportunity v1
How might we create a money management platform for young adults, such that they are able to meet their short and long term goals?

Money management

Now that I had a clear idea in mind, I revisited all the insights I had gathered and highlighted the typical journey of a young adult who is ‘out-of-money’ as opposed to that of a young adult who is not, in the context of an upcoming expense.
I then refined the provisional persona based on actual data from a research candidate and supplemented the persona with POV statements.

These helped me establish empathy with the users, as well as get a deeper insight into their behavior and needs.

Defining the goals

Goal Setting

Users should be able to clearly define their short and long term financial goals

Expense Monitoring

Users should be able to centrally monitor all their expenses to streamline their outflow

Savings Management

Users should be able to manage their savings based on their goals

I now felt I had enough insight into the needs of my research candidates with respect to their struggles with money management to define the final design opportunity for this project.
Design Opportunity v2
How might we create a platform for managing personal finances, enabling young adults to build sustainable spending and saving habits, such that we make it easier for them to achieve financial independence.
After concluding the research phase with a design statement that I was happy with, as well as a set of goals to guide the design of this project, I moved on to the design phase.

Features

I began by listing down all the features that I believed would help meet the goals that I had defined for this project.

The idea here was to create as exhaustive a list as possible, of features related to both spending and saving. This was an open ended exercise, and I didn’t worry about the details of each list item as long as it felt like something of value.
I observed that each item on this list was either a feature that helps manage expenses, or a feature that helps monitor savings.

I wanted to embed this distinction explicitly within the product, and decided to create two modes -

The spender mode, and the saver mode.

Spender Mode

Using this list, I identified all the features related to the goal of expense monitoring, and categorised them into logically coherent groups.

These would inform the navigation for this part of product - the spender mode.
Application Architecture : Spender Mode

On the basis of this navigation structure, I worked on a comprehensive wireframe flow for the spender mode.

The objective here was to figure out, as well as visualise how all of the actions would be carried out by a user.
Wireframe flow : Spender Mode

Saver Mode

I repeated the same exercise with all the features related to the goal of savings management, and categorised them into logically coherent groups.

These would inform the navigation for this part of product - the saver mode.
Application Architecture : Saver Mode

On the basis of this navigation structure, I worked on a comprehensive wireframe flow for the saver mode.

The objective here was to figure out, as well as visualise how all of the actions would be carried out by a user.
Wireframe flow : Saver Mode

Branding & Visual Guidelines

I started calling the solution ‘moneyowl’ quite early into the project. Owls are synonymous with wisdom, and moneyowl aims to be the wise guide for money management.

That’s what moneyowl is all about. It is a platform with a simple agenda - imparting financial wisdom. The visual style for the app aims to capture that simplicity.

moneyowl

moneyowl is a money management platform for young adults - encouraging them to monitor their expenses and manage their savings.

It allows users to set small and long term financial goals and helps fulfill them by encouraging sound spending and saving habits.
Spender Monitor your expenses moneyowl encourages users to monitor their expenses by recording all outgoing transactions as well as providing insights into their overall expenditure habits
Spender Track your bills With moneyowl, users can pay all their bills from one place. This allows them to track all their fulfilled and due bills, and encourages them to be disciplined in their payments
Spender Manage your expenditure Using moneyowl, users can control the amount of money they spend in a month through budgeting. An intuitive summary allows them to monitor the performance of their budgets.
Spender No card? No problem! moneyowl helps users keep track of all expenses, even cash. Simply narrate your cash transaction in a natural format and moneyowl will take care of the rest!
Saver Monitor your savings moneyowl encourages users to monitor their savings by recording all incoming transactions as well as providing insights into their overall saving habits
Saver Purposeful saving With moneyowl, users can set aside money for some short or long term expense, such as a holiday or a new laptop. Assigning reasons to saving helps users be careful with their funds
Saver Automate your savings moneyowl lets users set rules, that trigger the deposition of funds into their savings accounts when some predefined condition is met. This ensures that people are always saving money, even when they aren’t doing it explicitly.
Saver Save together With moneyowl, users can partner up on joint goals and save money together with their friends or families. We often split expenses in real life, so why not collaborate while saving up?