Redefining Personal Finance Management

Most PFMs on the market (like Mint.com) could aggregate your expenses and tell you your spending for a month, but, aside from giving the user a heart attack, there’s not a ton a value in that. We wanted to form a narrative…the story of your finances. And part of that is who spends what, where and when. We called this “contextual PFM.” Transactions, if tagged correctly, can begin to tell a story…not only a breakdown of how you spend your money, but when and where and who. We found most users aggregate accounts for multiple family members, so by linking certain cards to certain people, we could start to carve out spending patterns for Mom, Dad or the kids. Who wouldn’t want to settle the age-old debate amongst couples of who spends more money on frivolous things?

I worked directly with executive leadership to rapidly iterate on the wireframes and visual design. Ultimately, the concept went through several versions, eventually becoming the foundation onto which their next generation application was built. User research became instrumental in shaping the journey and ultimately validated the viability of the application. We presented the concept to clients at the annual company meeting, to great fanfare.

 

Client: Geezeo

Role: Product Designer

Tasks: User research, journey mapping, wireframing, visual design, prototyping, presentation