Paysona

Make every spend worth it.

Comment 1

1. Prototype link (Please submit a link to a playable prototype, not a link to your design file)

Link - Make sure to click on the purple "Paysona" app!

2. Describe your project (max 150 words)

Paysona is a mobile app crafted for college undergraduates, aiming to make financial management accessible through AI-driven insights and social connectivity. Distinct from traditional finance trackers, Paysona engages users in reshaping their spending habits by combining personalized advice with a community feel. It addresses the common issue of impulsive spending among young adults, promoting informed decision-making and enhancing accountability. Our approach leverages peer comparisons and communal interactions to elevate budgeting from a solitary task to a shared, value-driven experience. Paysona's mission is to foster a culture of smart spending, ensuring daily financial decisions align with broader life goals, thus empowering students to confidently and wisely navigate their financial futures.

3. Describe your research process and findings. If you conducted any surveys or interviews, please include the survey form and/or interview questions here. (Max 500 words)

In response to the prompt, our team identified financial management as a critical area of need from brainstorming sessions. From there we started off with a rough question: “How can we as college undergrads spend money in a smarter way?”

Desk Research

Our exploration into the financial behaviors of undergraduates through literature review revealed a surprising disconnect: increased financial literacy did not equate to smarter spending habits. Instead, accountability stood out as a key factor in promoting financial prudence. Specifically, research showed that peer comparisons and self-review of spending history could effectively reduce impulsive purchases and enhance savings. (Robb, 2011 s10834-011-9259-y.pdf (harvard.edu))

Market Analysis

A deep dive into the functionality and limitations of leading financial apps, such as Mint, highlighted a significant gap. These apps excelled in tracking and categorizing spending but lacked elements that motivate users to change their financial habits fundamentally. This lack of engagement and habit-forming features often led to user disengagement and a return to previous spending patterns.

Validating Assumptions through User Interview

(Questions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N5kNXJBNXpHl-mhPDn5zZwX92eRYQS52Zwoc-8CqQOE/edit?usp=sharing)

To ensure our solution resonated with the actual needs of college undergraduates, we conducted semi-casual interviews. Twelve students shared their experiences, highlighting the low motivation and tedium associated with traditional finance tracking. These initial insights led to semi-structured interviews with a broader user base to delve deeper into spending behaviors and challenges.

Then, affinity mapping of our research data brought to light a central issue: a lack of accountability in financial management. Many expressed a willingness to share financial goals and habits with friends but found it awkward to initiate such conversations. This insight was crucial in shaping our app's focus on facilitating comfortable, meaningful financial collaboration among peers.

Key Insights

  • Personalized Spending: Users crave tailored advice that aligns with their unique financial goals and lifestyles.

  • Tediousness: Many find current financial tracking apps to be monotonous and disengaging.

  • Lack of Motivation: There's a significant gap in apps that actively motivate users to maintain or adjust their financial habits.

  • No Sense of Urgency: Without immediate consequences, users often postpone financial decision-making.

Identifying Pain Points

User journey mapping helped us further empathize with our target audience, pinpointing specific moments of frustration and opportunity within their financial management experience.

This led us to our guiding HMW question: How might we empower college undergraduates to enhance their financial literacy and spending habits, transforming common regrets into opportunities for personal and financial growth?

Feature Prioritization

We engaged in a collaborative process to prioritize features that directly address the identified pain points, ensuring that our solution remains user-centric and impactful.

System Architecture

The system architecture was designed to support these prioritized features, ensuring a seamless and engaging user experience that encourages regular interaction and long-term commitment to better financial habits.

Through this comprehensive process, from validating assumptions to defining the system architecture, we've laid the groundwork for Paysona - a mobile app that goes beyond tracking to truly transform how undergraduates interact with their finances.

4. Describe your most important design decisions. What research findings and/or user testing results led you to make these decisions? (Max 500 words)

In developing Paysona, our design decisions were driven by a deep understanding of our users' needs and behaviors, underpinned by rigorous research and user testing. Our focus was on three key areas: visual engagement, efficiency, and simplicity, each chosen to address specific challenges identified through our research.

Visual Engagement

Our research revealed a major barrier to effective financial management was a lack of motivation and accountability. Users often found it hard to maintain discipline in their spending habits due to the abstract nature of digital transactions. To counter this, we prioritized clear visualizations of financial progress within Paysona. This decision was influenced by user feedback indicating that seeing tangible progress significantly boosted their motivation and sense of achievement. We implemented progress bars, spending trend graphs, and milestone notifications to make financial discipline more visually rewarding and engaging. Introducing Paysonas brings a gamified twist to the app, fueling user engagement by offering the incentive to unlock new paysona updates each month through diligent financial tracking.

Efficiency

Efficiency emerged as a critical factor during our user interviews, where participants expressed frustration with the complexity and time-consuming nature of existing financial apps. To address this, we streamlined Paysona's user journey to support the development of financial habits in an intuitive and enjoyable manner. Features like automated transaction categorization and personalized spending insights were designed to reduce the cognitive load on users, making the process of tracking and managing finances less daunting and more efficient.

Simplicity

The need for simplicity was a recurring theme throughout our research. Our target users, busy college undergraduates, emphasized the importance of quick and effortless interactions with the app. They wanted to avoid any additional burdens in their already hectic schedules. This insight led us to design Paysona with a minimalist interface, ensuring that users could access key features within a few taps.

Our choice of purple as the primary action and accent color was not just a stylistic decision but a strategic one based on accessibility considerations. Purple was selected for its compatibility with various forms of color blindness, ensuring that our app is inclusive and user-friendly for a broader audience. This decision was reinforced by our commitment to making financial management accessible to all users, regardless of visual impairments.

In summary, our design decisions for Paysona were deeply rooted in our research findings and user testing results. We aimed to create an app that not only addresses the functional needs of managing finances but also engages users on a visual and emotional level, making financial management a rewarding part of their daily routine.

Built With

  • figma
Share this project:

Updates