As we are approaching an era where our homes are constantly getting “smarter” and we tend to have greater control over the operation of our home devices, it seems that we forget to control and keep track of the underlying cause that all these devices keep working, the energy provision. I have been using personal finance apps for a long time but I couldn’t remember any feature that could give me a satisfying solution to the problem. My method to check if I overpay a service or if any bill is gradually rising without my awareness could be described as old-fashioned, as I check one by one my past bills and highlight them with a marker if there is something strange.
I am using Money Lover and I’m generally happy with the friendly interface and the sense of control that it gives me. I decided to make it even better by adding some features and testing if those correspond to the users’ pain points. So, the problem statement could be formulated as:
How could we help people reduce household bills within a personal finance app?
Note: I do not work for Money Lover. This is an entirely personal side project I made to sharpen my product design skills and explore different solutions.
I decided to follow the Design Thinking process to validate my thinking and go through the project with as few assumptions as I could.
I created two personas that best depict the target audience. I made them to better understand the users’ needs and pain points and to help me choose appropriately the participants for the user interviews. The common theme between them was the need to compare and find more affordable deals, not just track expenses
As a father of 3 children, I want to take full advantage of the money I spent on utilities, so I can provide for my family the best I can.
As a busy working single, I want to control my fixed utility bills, so I can save money for travel and outdoor activities.
To check the validity of my assumptions on personas and users’ needs, I decided to conduct a few user interviews. I approached people close to me (friends and family) that have experience with personal finance apps and have used one for a while. Eventually, I found 5 that matched the criteria. The interviews were conducted in person at my home office and lasted an average of 35–40 minutes.
I composed a script as detailed as possible to gain all the necessary insights from the users and help me determine some crucial pain points.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H1aSzPqjCWfg_nqTnoaWFT_Tt4hamV55MxzKrgK76Oc/edit?usp=sharing
Note-Taking
Because I was the only interviewer, I had to facilitate and keep notes. So, I accomplished that by taking quick notes on paper during the interview and by audio recording each session. I then transcribed the user interview audio recordings into one single document shown below.
I gathered the most relevant answers in a diagram and tried to organize and categorize them into sections to see what patterns emerge and what are some of the pain points the users face.
I want to have a sense of control over my monthly expenses & gain fast insights about my finances.
I want to figure out what I can do to save money
I think that I can save some money by tracking my expenses.
I want to easily add expenses and income and categorize them & Compare them with my past months.
To gain a broad sense of the current market state, I looked at other similar apps and searched for possible solutions they suggested to their users to save money. None of them had a specific feature to track your utility bills and compare them with deals from other companies
With my affinity diagram and user personas in hand, I prioritized the users’ pain points in a 2-dimensional matrix with two variables:
1. the potential impact on the users of the app
2. the potential benefit for the app itself
My assumptions of the importance to the users were based on the actual user interviews and as for the importance to Money Lover, I assumed that, based on my competitive analysis, there are some competitive advantages to be exploited.
Users can’t easily recognize patterns on their utility bills. They can’t keep track of their bill’s history and be aware if some bill is constantly rising. So, they tend to use a pen, paper envelopes, etc, namely an inefficient way of trying to hold their expenses under control.
Users aren’t aware of alternative offers for their utilities so they stick to one provider by habit and fear of getting out of their comfort zone
To visualize the user flow and think about how it could be done, I decided to make a user journey map that included the proposed solutions. It helped me design the task flow and empathize more deeply with the user.
I changed the existing task flow (the flow the actual app uses) having in mind the two major pain points. The user can see fast (in 3 actions) the charges of his bill and the history of his utility bills. If he is unhappy with his current charges he can easily navigate to a comparison screen with all the available providers and then to a 1 to 1 comparison screen with the provider he selects.
You can check the prototype on your own here
After having my interactive prototype set, I recruited 5 probable users of the app and conducted usability tests.
The tests were conducted between 19/12/2021 and 2/1/2022 and lasted an average of 15 minutes. After the introductory dialogue, I described 3 plausible scenarios and handed 3 tasks for each one. I designed the tasks with the pain points and my possible solutions in mind. The goal was to test the amount of intuitiveness during the user flow and if the solutions made any sense.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DAwpSh6QNDjWR_M1kPNxL_IkJ8yPnSfi/edit
Just like the user interviews, I utilized again a pen and paper when I conducted the user testing as I was the only facilitator. Simultaneously, I recorded, via video this time, each session as long as the screen of the phone where the test was conducted. I then transcribed the sessions on the spreadsheet shown below.
I handed the participants 3 scenarios and 3 tasks respectively to complete. The tasks were the following:
For each task, I noted:
The results, as seen below, were rather satisfying as almost every user managed to complete the tasks with ease. The average completion time was fine — not great — , and the misclicks were rare.
Then it was time to get my hands again on Figma and fix some things. I realized that the UI was problematic in some aspects particularly on spacing, alignment, and contrast. Also, the users felt very overwhelmed with the amount of information on some screens so I had to figure out a way to make them more focused on the most important information and to exclude the unnecessary. I also realized that the icon I used for the bills was inconsistent with the rest so I tweaked it to match with them.
You can check the prototype on your own here
By maintaining good spending habits and keeping track of our major expenses, we can provide the best we can for ourselves and our beloved ones. When families cannot afford to keep their lights on or heat or cool their homes to comfortable temperatures, they suffer physically and mentally. That’s why it is so important to design and develop personal finance apps that provide the right tools and features. By designing and testing these features within the Money Lover app, I discovered that this solution could alleviate some of the pain I described above.
● I’ve realized that a product development cycle can’t be linear, as once in a while you discover something that needs re-evaluation and iteration.
● I understand that the actual development of the product can have multiple technical and financial constraints that may change the designer’s ideal flow or solution.
● As a product designer, I have to deliver actual, problem-solving products and not just beautiful mockups.
● I think that my workflow would be much faster and efficient, if I worked with a team, but sometimes I think that it’s better to learn something the “hard” way, as this is more memorable.
