Fortuna App - UX Case Study

Hayden Duong

Fortuna Budgeting

A new and carefree way to manage your personal finances and achieve your goals.

Demo Prototype

Industry

FinTech

Role

Researcher, UI & interaction Designer, Prototyping, Marketing Strategy

Tools

Figma, FigJam, Invision

Timeline

10 Weeks

Problem Space

Millennials often find themselves having a difficult time managing their personal finances and plan for their financial future during stressful times.

As I have noticed that well over half of my closest family and peers are aiming to plan their financial journey as early as possible to be well prepped for the future.

Almost 50% young Canadians are emotionally spending on products and experiences as a mean to cope with mental stress.

00 - THe Solution

Primary Features

Personalized Interface

Have all your information in one neat platform.

Once you've connected your online banking account, our algorithm will take all your transactions, subscriptions, as well as other recurring payments and categorize it into comprehensive categories so you don't have to scrounge all over the place.

Own Your Goals

Choose the journey you want to pursue

Select a multitude of goals that are preset in the app that lay the foundation of what you want in the future financially.

Safe & Secured

No need to worry about your account safety

Utilizing the professional 256-bit advance encryption standard to help protect your data from incoming interception by third parties.

01 - How the journey began

Context

Brief

This is project is the final milestone of my UX Design Journey during my bootcamp at BrainStation. The challenge will test my knowledge and application of the fundamentals that I have learned over the course of 10 weeks.

I will have myself taking the reigns of all responsibilities as a product designer; going through research, ideation, user testing, and marketing strategy.

01 - Background

A changing economic and social environment like the Covid-19 pandemic causes stress, anxiety, and uncertainty for everyone especially young individuals.

02 - Target Market

Fortuna is designed around young millennials that are in the early stages of their career and is already living on their own. Fortuna put asides difference such as personal circumstances and mainly focus developing and optimize financial health.

“How might we help create an accessible yet intuitive environment for young millennials to manage their personal finances with ease?"

Challenges & Obstacles

While working on my capstone project there were many constraints that directly affect it and keeping it back from being an ideal product.

Design Constraints

Time

As per the scope of the project above, I have only 10 weeks to finish this project before the start of "Demo Day" commence as I will be showcasing my capstone to my peers and companies.

Financial

As this was a solo project, I am missing a team of my own to help further develop and increase workflow efficiency.

Legal

Obtaining multiples licenses and approval from participating banks and Apple to get their API's in order to have full operating system integration.

Technical

Machine Learn and artificial intelligence are missing for my capstone which prevents my project from full delivering the ideal solution to the end-user.

Design & Usability

A lot of the screens will be a combination of proven successful as well as experimental concepts that the design community has create in which I took elements from them and create an inspirational flow.

Market Research

1 in 3

Millennials spends money that they did not have to keep up with their friends.

Source: Credit Karma

12.4%

Millennials do not contribute to retirement at all.

Source: Investopedia

40.2%

Of young Canadians are expected to work beyond retirement to keep up with inflation.

Source: Interact News

03 - Scoutiung the competition

Competitive Analysis

By analyzing Fortuna's direct competitors, I will be able to uncover trends, features, and implementations that works and how they address similar problem. Thus helping me to discover areas of opportunities to make Fortuna stand out.

You Need a Budget - Best Overall Package

Herald as the best overall budgeting app due to its budgeting philosophy.

Pros:

Strong Customer Service
Diverse education system.
Complete control on budgeting

Cons:

Subscription-based premium service
Account sync issues
Has a high learning curve

04 - Set out a path

Project Goals

Once I've gathered information and analyzed the statistics and our competitors. I set goals to oversee the purpose of the digital product design.

Accessibility
Establish an inclusive and accessible environment that allows users of all levels to get access to help and financial tools.
Integration
Implement features and systems that integrate with the current operating system to offer an seamless experience that has continuity.
Streamline & Simplify
Optimize and combine existing features that are successful and add new conceptual design from the community to create a unique and personable experience.

05 - Understanding Potential Users

User Interviews

Utilizing this research method allows me to gain insight into their behaviors, frustrations, motivations and needs of my potential users and how they manage their personal finances and how can a budgeting app can help address their issues and improve their experience using open-ended questions.

User Interviews

Methodology - Extensive user interviews are taken place over virtual zoom video calls with unique individuals. On average, each session has a duration of 30 to 45 minutes.

Participant Criteria - Millennials that are between the ages 25-35 that have a career and manage their own finances.

Hypothesis - By providing opportunities for Millennials to access financial resources conveniently while being intuitive and simple, they will achieve better personal financial results.

Theme & Insights

Once the interviews are completed, I synthesize & look for patterns within the qualitative data and categorize them into relevant themes and then add key insights that describes opportunities that the user truly need and prioritize.

Simple & Modern
Some interviewees have used various budgeting apps. They've pulled away from them due to their outdated design flow. Making it feel corporate and rigid.
Inclusive Learning Environment
Majority of the interviewees have expressed similar sentiment where they want to learn more about financial literacy but do not know where they can begin.

Time & Energy
Many do not have time and energy to focus to properly manage their personal finance as they prioritize more immediate problems to remedy.
Complete Dislike of Budgeting
All interviewees has expressed a dislike for budgeting because it felt corporate and boring which cause major cognitive strain.

06 - Person manifestion

Meet Alex!

Concluding the user interview and consolidated their insight. The next phase is to create a persona that can encapsulate on an ideal persona I want to target. Below highlights this persona's behaviors, motivations, and pain points.

07 - Brainstorm Commences

Feature Prioritization

Discover & Learn

Include a dedicated learn and discover sections for users to learn financial literacy with interactive exercise and articles.

Simple Registration Process

An convenient method of registration that allows users to use their existing email address like sign up google or apple.

Personable Budget Creation

Create a journey that understands the user's financial goals and helps them stay accountable.

Challenges

Offer small and easy challenge to help users to stay accountable and build a healthy spending habit.

IOS Integration

Integrate widgets and other IOS features to create a seamless experience that includes continuity.

Bank Account Sync

Allow the ability to have users link their online banking account in order to have an algorithm consolidate all the information and neatly categorize them for easy an easy to organize experience.

Information Architecture

Once the features are listed out, the next step would be to plan out the foundation on what kind of screens would be present in the app.

Task Flow

As the skeletal foundation is formed then I map out how the user will go through a process and interact with app.

08 - Ideation awaits

From concept to wireframe

It is the intended result of the complete process of presentation of textual material in order to communicate meaning.

Lets Get Testing

What better way to see if your concept work is through user testing. Gathering similar individuals from the interviews. I have given them two scenarios that will be in the perspective of the persona Alex.

I will ask them several open-ended questions to probe some insights on how they feel and think when they go through the task flow. The tasks were performed through a shared Figma link and was observed through a Zoom call.

They are encourage to think out loud in order to help me discover opportunities to improve the design.

Below are the following scenarios:

You just downloaded the app on your phone. Now go through the registration process either through Apple, Google, or the traditional method.
Now that you're on the homepage, you would like to create a budget. During the budget creation process, you would like to enter your monthly income and input your expenses (Mortgage & Rent, Transportation, and Personal Spending) before concluding with budget review .

User Feedback

High Cognitive Load

"The open-ended questions in the questionnaire felt really long and I had a hard time thinking of a suitable answer to fit my budget."

What I have noticed during user testing was each tester had some difficulties understanding what the certain questions implied whether or not that the questions were relevant specifically for this user flow.

Continuity

"The design is straight forward and minimalistic but I do not have a sense of progression or when the setup process ends or begins anew."

Some testers were lost during the registration process and didn't have a sense of progression. They were annoyed by the length that it took them to finish it.

Information Overload

"The overall design seems straight forward. However, once I have complete the setup process, I have felt mentally tired and I feel that I do not want to come back to it."

All tester expressed exhaustion when completing the user flow and felt that they were much overwhelmed by the amount of information that was on the screen, which resulted in wanting to not return to the app.

Major Screen & Changes

Upon completing the user testing, I took a step back, synthesize all the feedback and consolidate them into a prioritization matrix to see what changes are high in priority as well as giving the largest impact.

Demo Prototype

Registration

Simple Registration

Intuitive and secure registration process allows users to sign in using their Google or Apple credentials, or register traditionally with a separate email.
Clean home page that is broken down in to digestible sections while being easy to scan and navigate.

Account Link

Linking your Online Banking

Securely link your online banking to the app with an easy to navigate interface that helps you find your designated bank.
Utilizing your bank's API code, you can safely login and link.

Homescreen

Personalized Dashboard

Menu Items are categorized by priority so that the user is well notified of which element needs attention.
Users can navigate through the homepage by vertically scroll and horizontally scroll through their categories.
There is a summary of the user's total balance within their online banking at the top where the can see at a glance when the login.

Learn & discover

Learn New Things & Practice To Get Better

The search bar helps user filter and look for new things that they may not know about.
Categories are divided into daily recommendations and popular for users to freely explore; they also have the options to see all contents in that category.
Exercise cards are structured to allow users to see what kind of activity it is, the duration, and their progress.

Budgeting

Budget Your Way To Happiness

A carousel for the goal setting gives off a "choose your own adventure" feeling for the user; which is clean and easy to navigate.
A simple 3 step process to setting up a budget decrease cognitive strain where users fill in the blank and removes the feeling of corporate.
Budget review lets users see the summary of their budget before finalizing it. It is setup as a math table to allow users to understand the breakdown.

The Results

In conclusion, recapping what happened, I ask myself. Did I address Alex's pain points? Listen to her behaviors and motivations?

1

Greater Clarity
I've made all the content in the app to have clear intentions with how the app can service her. Also provided indications for each stage of the flow to allow Alex to know what step she is on when budgeting and registration.

2

Interactivity
Rearranged dynamic and interactive elements to give her more control.

3

Streamline & Simplification
Streamlined & Condensed the onboarding process into digestible sections for ease of use. Designed a modern and an easy-to-navigate interface to reduce cognitive strain.

Key Takeaways

As the project conclude there are many lesson that I have learned throughout this journey. Below are a couple I would to bestow upon.

Simplify the process
By breaking down a process into multiple screens rather than putting it all out in a single screen can tremendously help with lowering the initial bounce rate during registration and increasing the likelihood of gaining new users for the app.
Have a creative mindset but try to keep it grounded.
I learned to keep ideas a bit more realistic as wishful thinking can open many opportunities but I will alway have to keep in mind of the developers that have to build the product and make it work.

Create a Path for the User
Being having open-ended content is nice to get know your user on a deeper level but it also has a risk of creating greater cognitive strain for the user thus resulting in dropping the app before actually using it.
Efficient Workflow
I learned that having a set design system and components developed at the beginning of the ideation process or borrow UI Kits can speed the design process. It also helps me stay organized and keep my workspace clean.

Next Steps

There are many things I would improve on this project even further If I had time to revisit it again. Below are a list of objective I have laid out.

Refinement

Integrate social features to allow cooperative budgeting and empower each other for accountability.
Conduct further user testing with different design variations.
Take advantage of the iPhone scanner feature to make listing additional expenses easier.