iBudget
Budgeting made easy for postsecondary students.
Strategies
Time
Tools
Type
User Research, Visual Design, UI/UX, Illustration
4 weeks (2020)
Sketch, Procreate, Illustrator, Photoshop
Conceptual Personal Project
Budgeting made easy for postsecondary students.
The Problem
Proper budgeting is a common issue for post-secondary students, often their first experience managing personal finances, students tend to overspend. Current budgeting apps are catered towards working individuals with full-time jobs, usually complex and focused on investing and credit score monitoring, it can prove to be a difficult experience for students beginning their budgeting journey.
Project Goal
iBudget is an efficient and intuitive way for a college student to manage their expenses and adjust future spending accordingly. It’s customizable so that the user can cater the categories to their personal needs and easy to understand and focused on more immediate spending.
Research
I sent out an anonymous user survey with a few questions to learn more about the budgeting habits of post-secondary students. I received 52 responses, here were some questions that I asked:
Research Summary
The majority of users did not track their budgeting using any method due to it being too much of a hassle to calculate everything.
Common causes behind the lack of management in finances in post-secondary students?
- Not differentiating between wants and needs
- Pressure of frequenting social activities
- First experience managing personal expenses
- Lack of money management knowledge
- Neglecting payments due to busy schedule or forgetfulness
- Not keeping track of how much they have spent
- Underestimating the accumulation of small costs
Competitor App Analysis
When breaking down the users that use budgeting apps the main responses I received were: Personal bank app (“Chase”, “Bank of America”) , “Mint”, and “Buddy”. When analyzing them I found several main takeaways.
Good Features: Ability to see upcoming payments (all), previous transactions (all), notifications (Mint and Buddy), the ability to categorize (banking apps and Mint), Simple interface (Buddy).
Can be Improved: Separated by monthly, doesn’t allow a comprehensive overview (Buddy), Category labelling errors (banking apps and Mint), more focused on full-time workers with features such as investing (Mint), inability to see how fees are calculated (all).
Research Conclusions
After analyzing the survey results as well as looking at the competing apps, I narrowed down the main features and issues that I wanted iBudget to address:A simple and easily-understandable interface that breaks down transactions mathematically A few essential features that are catered specifically towards student use Comprehensive overview focused on more immediate and everyday spending instead of longterm investment
Key Features
Ability to connect to bank account
Notifications on when the user is about to go over 25, 50, and 75 percent of their budget
Allocations for different major groups in their lives (Broad categories: Lifestyle, school, and entertainment.)
Ability to plan future spending
School - Textbooks, supplies (pencils, lead, sticky notes, highlighters, paper, notebooks, binders etc), tuition, housing, meal plan
Entertainment - Eating, activities (bowling, karaoke, biking, movie, arcade etc), social organization fees (greek life, clubs, sports etc), subscription fees (Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, Apple Music etc)
Lifestyle - Groceries, clothing, rent, memberships, phone bill, laundry, travel fees, transportation (car, bus, ride-share services etc), furniture, cleaning supplies, personal hygiene, gifts.
User Profiles
I created two potential users and analyzed how their spending and budgeting habits would translate differently through iBudget based off of their personality. Through their interactions we can see how the features on iBudget can be useful regardless of a student’s personal lifestyle.
Design Process: Ideation
A simple interface was key to maximizing user understanding to attempt to stray away from typical apps that involve far too many head scratching buttons.
Initial Screens
After illustrating the on-boarding screens on paper and translating it digitally, I designed the icons in Illustrator. I used designs for the icons that I thought represented the categories clearly in order for it to be intuitive for the user.
User Testing (Redesign)
After the first high-fidelity design I interviewed some users about the overall layout and their interpretation of what each feature and button meant. I received feedback on ways to make the app more understandable and redesigned the layout. First I re-designed the icons to make it more apparent what each was representing, the initial ones had a stroke that was far too thick.
Screen 1: I removed the alert me button because notifications were a key feature of the app and having that button was redundant.
Screen 2: Users were having trouble interpreting the bar charts under each section. I removed the grey bar and readjusted the color one to accurately show money usage. I also adjusted the wording under the mathematic breakdown as “to spend” and “available” was confusing to interpret.
Screen 4: I added an ability to write notes under each transaction as well as a QR code scanner for efficiency.
Final Screens
After analyzing what features were helpful and what could be improved, I redesigned the complete layout of iBudget, making it overall cleaner and more simplistic. I adjusted the color scheme to be more cohesive. Thanks for following me on this journey!
