Sam’s Club UX Design Challenge
Design Exercise : Design a Budgeting App (Passed)
Timeline : One week
Role : Research, UX, Visual design
It is a passed design exercise for a 2023 Summer User Experience Design internship at Sam’s Club. I designed budgeting app focusing on customized budget support for smart spending.
About
How might a user setup budget?
How might we visualize going over budget or remaining under the set budget?
How might we visualize a period of spending in correlation to the budget?
How might a user see details of the spending?
Key factors to consider (MVP)
Prompt
How might we promote sponsors within the experience?
How might we provide financial expert advice through the experience?
How might we design a report to provide key insights (via email or desktop) to the user?
Additional factors to consider (Post MVP)
Research
Existing budgeting apps
MoneyNote
Pros: Easy input function and history view
Cons: Short of setting specific budget function
DailyPocket
Pros: Deliver clear consumption percentage and balance amount
Cons: Absence of specific category expense details
Buddy: Budget & Save Money
Pros: Provides specific budget setting function
Cons: Users need to invest time to understand the functions
Key insights based on data
Monthly budgeting user could be someone who lives alone or who is a worker with regular income.
Weekly budgeting user could be someone who lives with family or who is a freelancer with irregular income.
1-1. Income type
1. Budgeting Period
Monthly budget feels too long and hard to manage.
Weekly budget is flexible and easy to control.
Daily budget is challenging since it lacks flexibility.
1-2. Expense control type
They did not prefer to be included in budgets because
it is money they could not flexibly manage.
2. Fixed Expenses
The donut and pie charts take too much space, and text gets
clipped frequently if there are a lot of categories.
3. Visuals Reports
Set personas for budgeting app
Persona
User Flow
Initial Version (before user test)
01. Separating budget setting in the “Step 01” caused user confusion, because they expect different screen flow for each setting budget.
02. Arranging “Step 05(deduct setting)” caused confusion to users, because it is more alined feature with “Step 03(fixed expense).
Final Version (after user test)
01. Eliminate the budget period type and give monthly & weekly view function to improve difficulties user experienced before.
02. Combined “Step 05(deduct setting)” with “Step 03(fixed expense) to clear up confusion.
Iterating Design
Wireframe modification based on user test
01
I have changed the first step of setting the budget to give a consistence experience via budget setting.
02
I designed to provide both monthly, weekly budget function by switching the view type.
03
I rearranged the deduct function (check box) in the “Fixed Expense” screen to minimize and reduce the confusion of the steps.
Final Deliverables 01
Key factors to consider (MVP)
MVP 01 : Budget setup process in the app
MVP 02 & 03 : Visualizing(visualize going over budget or remaining under the set budget & visualize a period of spending in correlation to the budget) the budget in the app
MVP 04 : Design spending details
Final Deliverables 02
Additional factors to consider (Post MVP)
Post MVP 01 : Promoting sponsors in app
Post MVP 02 : Providing financial advice in app
Post MVP 03 : Providing Key insights via email
I designed the email contents in card layout for compact information.
I also tried to deliver key insights in a witty way so that insights on consumption can be remembered for a long time.
Takeways
01. What I have learned and enjoyed in design exercise
I realized providing lots of step in budget setting might cause low accessibility to users end up leaving the app.
I have discovered needs for weekly budget setting from different income type and status (single or married).
I enjoyed designing and making improvements of this project since I am a user of the budgeting app.
02. What I would do more if I have more time
I would work on different user flow screen for monthly and weekly budget setting (conduct A/B testing).
I would provide user-friendly onboarding process for better understanding based budget setting process.
I would like to add a “budget carry over” function when user remained under the weekly and monthly budgets.
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