COLLAB
Joint Finance Feature
Joint financial tools for couples. families and shared households- so they can build on dreams together through finance journey.
Project
Personal Project
for Adding Feature
Role
Product Designer
User Researcher
Tools
Figma
Adobe CC
Maze
Year
June-July
2023
BACKGROUND
Last two years were a roller coaster for many people. Uncertainty for economic recession, rising interest rates and shortage of supplies.
Financial complexities lead to debt, uncertainty, and hindering people's dreams of stability and success.
With rapidly changing world fueled by technology, there are rise of financial products to help individuals from investment to payment, banking, digital wallet and budgeting.
ISSUE
Despite availability of financial apps, there is critical gap for joint financial tools that address the complexities of modern life.
Understanding these evolving landscape trends is important. Fin-tech availability can not only help people manage money, but also open doors to new opportunities for future and dreams.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Based on rocket money app, I have designed added feature of collaboration for couples and families to bridging current market gap to support people start their aspirations together.
MARKET RESEARCH
Understanding Experience
6 interview participants and friends helped in sharing their experience of individual and joint finance journey. This helped me understand and discover interesting perspective of "money" and relationships in people's experience.
Key Insights
When I first approached project, I thought it would be some kind of collaborative game add on. Then I had learned people weren’t looking for fun gimmicks or educational tools.
Instead, users wanted to practice on healthier money habits and gain confidences to make growth in their finance journey.
Intimidating
Learning curve
Beginner users were curious to learn more about finance tools to help their finance journey but learning curves were intimidating with excel like apps which were more advanced.
Discouraged
By progress
Many of budgeting app users said they stopped checking on the app once they started to feel guilty about not making progress.
Early Finance
Education
Participants who shared their learning experience of budgeting in their childhood, still kept their financial discipline into adulthood while others had more difficulty.
Having Money
Conversations
Discussing about money is often a challenge but many interviewees shared having financial transparency is important - so they can plan for joint goals or future together.
Manage Alone
or Together?
It was common for one person to solely manage and responsible for all financial planning in household - Interestingly, all household often shared they wants to be more involved and open to manage together.
Lack of Joint
Finance Tools
Many couples informed me that due to lack of joint features in general finance apps. They share their logins or manually track finances which highlights there is a need for secure shared access and automation.
Design Implications
Clear Saving Goals
Having clear saving goals that are short term can help users stay motivated in their personal finanace journey.
Build Familarity
Interviewees who had been exposed to finance in young age felt less intimidated by looking into personal finance, setting budgets and goals.
Open Conversation
With lack of sense of belonging in new environment. People desire to find familiar community and wants to discover regular spots they can go.
Persona
Design Process
I chose 3 main key tools that would provide users to practice everyday situations while building better financial habit towards to bigger goals together.
Overall Tracking | Insights | Bucket (saving goal)
Then moving on to building design system for cohesive experience of onboarding journey and executes to simplify collaborating features through usability testing and iterations.
Quick design review (dashboard only)
Let's evolve financial tools for joint finance and create ways to build wishes and dream together?
Introducing Rocket money’s
Collaborative feature to boost
shared dream and journey together
Collab feature invite
made easier for users.
Joint finance doesn't have to be intimidating and you don't have to share everything :)
With customization of data sharing options,
user can set specific sharing dates or Monitor only options to keep privacy.
Start somewhere,
Build habits together
Collab Dashboard is designed to help users manage their bills and budget without visual stressors.
Have you heard of Latte Factor?
Check out our rainy day Fund!
Rainy Day Fund
Small amount saved can go
long way when added up!
Try out Rainy day fund for
extra savings towards to your goal
Lets skip boozy
brunch this weekend
Anything for
my future dog
Want something?
Make it happen!
Get recommandation from your friends, neighbors and community.
I've been dream to
have a dog one day
Lets make it happen!
Preparation Is
Half The Battle
Bucket is designed to provide simple and fun way for users to collaborate on specific goal together by providing tool for planning and saving with realistic expectations.
Track your spending
better than ever -
Discover a better way to spend your money with Insight feature - You can really track money with customizable category and dates if you want to get into it.
Behind Scene - Iterations after Usability testing
Outcome
Though there are many budgeting app to help individuals- Most of apps had stiff learning curve and made user feel bad about spending money which led to a high bounce rate and low engagement.
By re-designing a visual language to reduce stress upon viewing financial data and adding a collaborative feature can create significant impact on joint finance journey for users. Collab Feature can increase in engagement, with users spending more time building on their dreams and goals together.
Things I've learn
I had lot of fun talking to people to discover insight on bit of a personal topic- "money" where I became more curious and learned importance of sharing ideas, communication and re-imagine people’s experience with open mind.
I also learned a lot from building extension of brand style to develop new component assets that’d fit within Rocket money app without loosing it’s brand visual and voice.