I came up with a list of competitors by researching which banks and Fintech companies were doing innovative things to help manage customers’ finances. I then read their customer reviews to see what people liked and disliked about these apps, and downloaded and reviewed them for myself.

From my interviews, I found that there were two types of users:

• Millennials who want a simple app to tell them how they are doing financially at a glance and that will help them set savings goals
• Older “power” users who like to have access to all the details on their finances.

I developed two personas — Ariana and Sarah — to help me develop the app, but I focused on Ariana’s needs since they couldn’t be easily met with a budgeting tool like Mint.

To help me empathize and understand the needs of my main persona, Ariana, I created a journey map for her. I knew that Ariana likes to travel, has certain savings goals, and that she has trouble saving because she likes to eat out. With that in mind, I came up with a scenario for the journey map that would involve these aspects.

While the journey map helped me better understand Ariana’s needs, I decided to create a series of “How Might We” (HMW) questions to help me later brainstorm possible design solutions for the app. I came up with 15 HMW questions and decided to focus on these three questions:

• How might we give Ariana financial advice without it seeming heavy-handed?
• How might we help Ariana develop better spending habits?
• How might we keep things simple and not end up with an app that’s “too involved?”

After reviewing my findings from the user interviews and competitive analysis, I created a product roadmap, which detailed the features that I thought users would find helpful, and then prioritized the list. The top three features I wanted to focus on were:

At a Glance: Money that’s Free to Spend

My main persona, Ariana, likes to spend money on eating out, but at the same time, wants to be saving more money. She wants her mobile app to tell her at a glance if she has the funds to eat out with her friends at any given time. For this reason, I wanted to come up with a simple way for her to tell how much money she is free to spend.

Savings Goals
Users told me that they want to feel motivated to save more, and getting notification on their progress would feel motivating. I wanted to give users a way to set their own savings goals and determine a date by which they’d like their goals to be completed. The app would then notify users on their progress.

“Broad View” Budget Categories
Based on my interview findings, users would like to easily see where they are spending their money. Apps like Mint.com have been popular because they allow users to categorize their spending. Capital One already allows users to filter their purchases by category such as groceries, but I wanted to give users a quick way to see their aggregate spending within a category.

There were three flows I wanted users to take:

• Set up a flexible spending budget, so that they can easily tell how much money they are free to spend
• Add a savings goal for a trip
• Check spending on eating out.

After creating my wireframes for the app, I put together an application map that shows the three user flows.

My personal finance management feature needed to be able to embed well with the rest of Capital One’s app. As a next step, I collected visual elements such as color swatches and icons from screenshots of the app, and put together a UI kit. With the UI kit, I was able to apply Capital One’s look and feel on all my application screens.

Shown here are several key application screens.

With my wireframes, I created a low-fidelity prototype in InVision and tested it with six people.

Test Objectives

1. Test if users can set up a flexible spending budget.
2. Test if users can add a savings goal for a trip.
3. Test if users can check their spending in a specific category.
4. Test the flow and simplicity of the interaction.
5. Locate where users have difficulty navigating or understanding the experience.

Test Results

Overall, the testers had a positive experience. The tester I based my Ariana persona on told me she thought the app was “very cool.” She liked that she was able to get a lot of information at a glance that she found useful.

A few of my testers, however, had some trouble understanding the Flexible Spending section. Specifically, they weren’t sure what “Flexible Spending” meant and needed more clarification.

By far, the most popular feature was the ability to set up savings goals and be able to chart your progress. They especially liked that they were given a few different options for how they can meet their savings goal.

With the results, I drafted up an Affinity Map and charted out what my next steps would be.

The final step for this project was creating a high-fidelity prototype. You are welcome to explore the prototype on your own!