UIUX | INTERACTIVE DESIGNER | TECHNOLOGIST
DEAR TOMODACHI
Google UX Design Practice - Financial Planning App Design
Click on image to try out the prototype!
Dear Tomodachi (2023)
Google UX Design Professional Certificate
Financial Planning App Design
During my study of UX Design through Google Professional Certification, one of the asks was to design an app based on a prompt given through Sharpen.
THE ASK:
With the rising costs of living, young adults are increasingly struggling with coping with their expenses. With many of them living from paycheck to paycheck, they are unable to effectively save money for future goals. The goal of this app is to provide young adults a platform where they can easily learn about financial planning and skills without getting intimidated, which will aid them in future money saving goals.
WHY THIS:
I thought that the prompt to design a financial planning app for young adults was an interesting one because of my environment. As a young adult myself, I had many friends who were often highly adverse to MLM Strategies, Insurance or Investment plans. They would turn a blind ear to anything concerning these topics, and never tried to understand how the good ones would potentially benefit them. I admit I was part of the flock of sheep as I almost got scammed by an insurance agent when I was 14.
However, the same group of people would talk to me about how broke they were, and how money was always tight. As someone who took insurance exams and went through financial planning training under a student program in university, I understood the importance of financial planning. As my sister put it- it's a gift to our future selves. This prompt triggered memories in me, and I wondered if I could challenge myself to encourage people similar to my age to get into financial planning and savings- people who were broke, low salaried, and burdened with high future expenses.
This was combined with my love for games such as Tamagotchi and Pokemon. I decided to create a platform where people would be able to feel attached to their personal companions, and strive to work hard to raise them up (which will in exchange help themselves).
Dear Tomodachi (Desktop & Mobile browser)
<Dear Tomodachi>, "your friend without judgement", is a financial planning app which allows you to raise a companion based on how well you are doing on financial planning and savings. As the name goes, your tomodachi ("friend" in Japanese) will be here to support and accompany you on your journey to more healthy expenditures. This app is designed for youths who have problems saving money, struggles with planning their budgets, and a lack of motivation to do better.
As these youths are often adverse to professional help as they are afraid to expose how much their net worth actually is, this app aims to provide a friendly option for youths to seek help from. There are diary entries, trackers, interaction and stories to unlock, which creates depth in the app's interactivity and encourage further regular usage of the app. The desktop/mobile browser version however, serves more as an informational repository providing news, articles and tips on financial planning.
To get started, I came up with 2 personas to understand what kind of audience I would be dealing with.
After that, I also conducted a competitive audit of a few competitor’s platforms provided direction on gaps and opportunities to address with the financial management app. Specifically, I was looking at apps directed towards raising a companion, or those that helped track finances. Hence, I decided to focus on Neopets, Kanahei Account Book, and Pet Paradise (formally Pet Society).
With all the desktop research on hand, I did a quick ideation exercise (Crazy 8) to come up with ideas on how to address gaps identified in the competitive audit. My focus was specifically on pet companion functions and financial tracking features. I also created a rough site map for the features I wanted to include in my app. I came up with several ideas, decided which features were what I liked, before implementing into rough wireframes with a low-fidelity prototype flow to it.
Crazy 8 Exercise
Now I had a first draft. I moved on to speak with multiple friends who tried out my first lo-fi prototype, and I managed to uncover potential task goals, needs and pain points to map out my opportunity space. These consisted of things I didn't realise would end up being a road block, and also the little things I failed to address due to oversight. There were also things I assumed customers would like to have, but ended up becoming useless clutter in the app. I had to kick myself for letting myself go when it came to improving upon my old habits- to include as many features as possible to establish a one-stop solution. Truthfully, this wasn't going to work all the time.
After organising the key findings into themes by affinity clustering, I went into the prototype and came up with an improved prototype alongside a sticker sheet which indicated the colours, typeface and button styles for the app.
Eventually, I had the final cut of my app! I was pretty happy with it, and I also think I made the right decision to split the mobile/web browser functions with the app. This allowed me to reduce clutter and focus on what I wanted to provide customers with through each platform.
Dear Tomodachi (App & Mobile browser)
