THE BUD APP - UX CASE STUDY BY ANUJA SINGHAL

Transcription

1 - UX CASE STUDY BY ANUJA SINGHAL

2 What is it? Personal money management is a good habit. We all can safely agree to this statement now that we are all adults with full-time jobs and money-related obligations that we need to fulfill. However, money management doesn t come easy and very few of us are able to achieve their saving goals. Could the journey from being young and careless (about money) to suddenly growing up to be matured and responsible, be made seamless? What if we found a real incentive in developing a habit of managing our funds at an early age? A small user-research conducted on college students, years old, revealed some interesting insights to what their current behavior towards money is. Most students realize the importance of personal money management, but are too busy, lazy or bored to do it regularly. They believe they don t earn enough to save, and hence don t need to have an elaborate written account of their earnings and expenses. Most of them practice a very high-level, even mental budgeting plan. Even after which, they are hardly able to save anything substantial. This project aims at developing an app that can motivate these college students to feel responsible towards developing personal money management skills, despite the lack of time and motivation to do it.

3 Problem Statement College Students think it s really important to manage their personal finances in order to keep up with their lifestyle and save up for their short-term goals. But many of them don t feel motivated enough to find time to do it. They also think it s boring and almost redundant with their limited income.

4 User Persona Thinking about money, in general, causes me a lot of anxiety. Source of income Lorrie Hutchinson Age : 19 yrs Need to manage funds Current money mgt. skills College : Under-grad at NYU Behavior : Scenario : Goals & Needs : She uses her debit card that is linked to her parent s account, for making purchases. She jumps on offers and deals that she can avail without having to spend any money at all. She may be really social, but she doesn t discuss She usually writes down her major upcoming expenses and communicates them to her parents to get funded. and she hasn t thought of using an app before. She checks her bank account almost daily to room. She has a ton of friends and shares almost everything with Summer is around the corner and she wants to plan a hiking trip with her friends. She wants to buy herself some good quality, outdoorsy clothes and gear. She recently spent a lot of her savings in buying clothes that she didn t really need and now is running short on dough. not study related. She knows she has to start saving before summer arrives. room. She has a ton of friends and shares almost everything Summer is around the corner and she wants to plan a hiking trip with her friends. She wants to buy herself some good quality, outdoorsy clothes and gear. She recently spent a lot of her savings in buying clothes that she didn t really need and now is running short on dough. not study related. She knows she has to start saving before summer arrives. Thinking about money, in general, is stressful. without spending for a few days. Spending habits : Coffee, Food, Clothing/Accessories, Events, Study Material Devices : I-Phone 4 (Old and cracked)

5 Understanding USER PAIN POINTS What they say.. user needs Busy Lifestyle Lack of responsibility Based on the pain points, the proposed solution needs to be Engaging, Rewarding, Approachable, Relatable and needs to be integrated seamlessly in the life of the user, giving him limited control over the whole process. These needs can be tackled by making the application Personalized & Approachable - through characterization, customization and avatars Relatable - through language and visuals Rewarding - through initializing some kind of an instant reward system, like brownie points. This needs to be balanced with some kind of a penalizing element too. Also keeping levels of achievement can be quite motivating. mobile app.) And finally, Engaging by creating a virtual, real-time game play that can be integrated with social media. Procrastination Not enough earnings Lazy Forgetfulness No patience for regular inputs No visible savings/outcome Bad Interface USER NEEDS: Seamless integration Rewarding Engaging Limited Automation into lifestyle Approachability Boring

6 Competitive Assessment

7 Card-Sorting This exercise involved making a list of features for the app and having some users sort them under categories they feel sound the most appropriate. This helped me design a more user-friendly flow of information in accordance to what the users feel.

8 User Flow OPEN APP VISUAL SLIDESHOW FAQ S SIGN IN N Are you a new user? Do you want to know how the app works? REVIEWS CREDIBILITY Enter Passcode Y PRIVACY & TERMS OF USE USER PROFILE Define/Edit Limit, Goals & Avatar About Bud Tracker (Visual Slideshow) SIGN UP CONTACT SIGN OUT PATH TRACKER Y N Want to skip the intro? SIGN UP FORM Ready to link your account? N Y ACTION POINTS Verify SIGN OUT SOCIAL HELP SHARE WITH FRIENDS CHECK/EDIT SETTINGS Y

9 Paper Prototype

10 Prototyping-Phase 1 HOME HOW IT WORKS SIGN UP LINK YOUR ACCOUNT DEFINE LIMIT, GOALS AND AVATAR

11 Prototyping-Phase 1 TRACKER FLYOUT MENU USER PROFILE POP-UP REMINDERS/ALERTS COMPLETE SETTINGS

12 User-testing & results The creation of the first prototype was followed by some user testing. This exercise was carried out at Starbucks in the NYU campus. I went around giving away $5 gift cards to students who fit in the demographic and were willing to give me an hour of their "I want to know how physically tangible/ accessible those savings are.. time in return. The response was overwhelming (as opposed to what I expected.) This exercise not only gave me some insight into how the user would interact with my app, but also some ideas "I don t want to share my money related statistics with my friends about how to make this app sticky. Besides tweaking the general user flow of the app as well as the interface, I am now considering integrating certain features which I had not thought of in the beginning on the process. Some of the primary feedback involved the following - It doesn t look like a business like-budgeting tool Why is it asking me for so much information? 1. Make the interface larger with more clickable real-estate. 2. Social media needs to be more about sharing goals rather than sharing actual numbers. 3. The tracker needs to be more of a game, with passive interaction rather than no interaction at all. 4. Integrate trend analysis and recommendation engine.

13 Prototyping-Phase 2 Enter the following link in your browser to see the updated version of the prototype based on the user testing feedback -

14 Next Steps After a conducting one more round of user-testing, I feel confident enough to start the designing process of the app. *Please note that the characters that you see as Bud Avataars in the presentation are not designed for this app and are borrowed from an illustrator. The avataars will be designed in accordance to the app s interface design requirements after the prototyping phase is over. Here are some of the considerations I have for the next round of prototyping - 1. Improvise the tracker interface design to maximise user engagement & real-time rewarding system 2. Incorporate friendly trend analysis and recommendation plug-ins 3. Make the user-flow as seamless and intuitive as possible.

15 Thank you! Please send your feedback to me on - anuja.singhal85@gmail.com