Budget App

Create a brand new budget mobile app to help people create and stick to a budget. The app will put all aspects of their budgets just a few taps away.

The primary audience is young adults and young professionals who have never used a budget before. The secondary audience is young adults who have tried budget apps but found them too complex.

I used Google Docs questionnaires to remote interviews for a wide range of ages. While [user journaling or diary studies](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/which-ux-research-methods/) aren’t as robust as other forms of research, it was the only way I could get the initial research done with my timeline and participants’ schedules. The key challenges were to limit the features to just those features which will educate first-time budgeters about budget concepts. The participants said that the budget app they tried were too complex so I kept the feature set limited.

First I drew many hand sketches to capture my initial design ideas, using the [Crazy 8s method](https://designsprintkit.withgoogle.com/methodology/phase3-sketch/crazy-8s). The best ideas from my initial design concepts were translated into digital wireframes in Figma.

Participants reviewed the digital wireframes and answered questions about navigation and asked further questions about budget concepts. Their feedback became usability testing data and recorded in a spreadsheet for each participants. The responses were transformed into affinity groups to find themes.

The budget app design’s is neutral. I decided not to make it “fun” or “serious” because the apps tried by my participants fell into one or the other style and it didn’t help them. The app has a light and day mode which don’t conform to either “white” or “black” themes. I wanted the themes to be warm and approachable to offset the app’s neutrality.