Overview
The Challenge:
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A survey by Ameritrade found that 74% of Gen Z and 66% of Millennials are worried about their ability to pay for college and day-to-day living expenses. This financial stress often results from a lack of proper budgeting skills.
Students often face unique financial challenges, including managing limited income from stipends or part-time work, handling student loans, and covering living expenses and tuition fees.
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Failing to manage this can significantly impact their academic performance, mental health, and future financial stability according to the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education.
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The Design Solution:
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To provide students with resources to help manage finances through features like expense logging, income tracking, and goal setting.
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Providing students with financial tips from their community would allow students to be further educated on managing finances, rather than using the app solely as a crutch.
Discovery
We asked university students...
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"What are your top 3 monthly expenses?"
And...
KEY SURVEY FINDINGS -
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Students spend the most on rent, tuition, and living expenses.
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Students want to see graphs and visual representation of their budgeting
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Students lack financial responsibility and are eager to learn about investing
Synthesis
The key findings led us to conceptualize the user's journey across various touchpoints...
Click to access the FigJam
And finally, the information architecture...
Click to access the full FigJam
Ideation
From the findings, it was clear the design needed to:
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provide users with a visual representation of their budget​
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give users a space to fulfill their eagerness to learn
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allow student to log expenses and income to manage monthly needs
click on a screen to follow its flow ↑ ↑ ↑
And after some iterative testing of the mid-fidelity design, we finally created...
The Product
Introducing
← click to follow a flow →
SaveSavvy assists students with difficulty managing their budget through various features like: ​
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Goal setting
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Expense logging
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Income tracking
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Community interaction
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Dashboard visuals
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Personalized tips
Future Scope
Our survey found that the most common 5 year plans for students were to learn how to invest, to pay off student loans, and to shift towards paying a mortgage. Incorporating information and features related to ETF, IRA, general stock investments, and presenting possible future trends would pave the way for SaveSavvy's user retention and longevity on the market post-college.
In addition, we would explore linking SaveSavvy to investment apps like Robinhood or Webull to allow for easier integration of information and avoid the need for additional manual input.
Lastly, although we were able to conduct user testing with the Mid-Fidelity prototype, we were on a time constraint that prevented us from doing so with our finished product. It would be helpful to gather further user insights and to continue making iterations of this app.