GrowBread
Overview
GrowBread is a comprehensive financial management tool designed to assist individuals with planning, budgeting, forecasting, and predicting their future finances. For this project, I designed a financial dashboard for the company to better cater to their target demographic of users which is people above the age of 50 wanting to manage their finances.
Role
UX Researcher
UX Designer
Tools
Project Scale
5 months
Approach
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Market Research
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SWOT Analysis
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Quantitative User Research
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Qualitative User Research
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Personas
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Journey Maps
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Redesign Wireframes & Prototype
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Retest
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Information Architecture
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Low-fi-Mid-fi wireframes
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Hi-fi Wireframes
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Prototype
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Usability Testing
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Affinity Mapping
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Task Analysis
Competitive Analysis
To understand the dynamics of the financial budget market, our team conducted a thorough analysis of existing financial applications that will serve as direct competitors to GrowBread’s application. This assessment is crucial to gain insights into current offerings and devising strategies for GrowBread to establish a competitive advantage in the market.
You Need A Budget (YNAB)
What makes it successful?
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YNAB operates on a subscription model, where users pay a monthly or annual fee to access the software.
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YNAB provides a mobile app, allowing users to manage their budgets on the go. The app offers features like real-time syncing, goal tracking, and expense management.
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YNAB offers customer support to assist users with any issues or questions they may have. The support includes email assistance and an extensive knowledge base.
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The company actively engages with its user community, incorporating user feedback into product updates and improvements.
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What are some drawbacks?
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For users prioritizing investment tracking, YNAB may not be the most efficient choice, suggesting the need for a specialized app for this purpose.
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YNAB lacks a bill-tracking feature, and its steep learning curve may pose challenges for users.
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A comparatively higher price point among budgeting apps and a more labor-intensive tracking process, particularly compared to other budgeting applications.
Monarch Money
What makes it successful?
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Monarch excels as a comprehensive snapshot tool, allowing users to monitor various financial facets, including bank accounts, brokerage accounts, assets, and liabilities.
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Its standout feature lies in its scenario-testing tools, empowering users to visualize the potential impact of their spending habits on diverse financial goals.
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Monarch's integration capabilities enable users to import assets, liabilities, and transactions, presenting this financial data in an intuitively designed spreadsheet for a comprehensive and accessible overview.
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Monarch has paved its way as a top-tier platform for net worth tracking, encompassing an extensive array of assets and liabilities, including cryptocurrency through Coinbase, investments, loans, and online accounts like Venmo.
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What are some drawbacks?
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A steep learning curve for beginners due to the platform's extensive features, potentially overwhelming those new to financial management apps.
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It may not be the ideal choice for users seeking simple, passive budgeting tools, as its features cater to a more involved approach.
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The limited functionality of the free basic version may dissuade users, encouraging them to opt for a different tool that offers more features and functionalities for free.
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Syncing issues, including reported difficulties and occasional disconnections of bank accounts, pose additional drawbacks.
SWOT Analysis
In order to evaluate the benefits of GrowBread entering the financial planning market, our team performed a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). This analysis allowed for the identification of opportunities for innovation and potential challenges that GrowBread might encounter. Thus, facilitating decision-making regarding resource allocation and risk management.
User Research
To comprehensively understand the target audience for the dashboard, I engaged in mixed research methodologies. Analyzing these findings guided the design process, enabling me to propose a solution that addresses user needs, pain points, and behaviors effectively.
The methodologies used include:
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Analyzing the quantitative data gathered through pre-testing surveys completed by participants.
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Conducting qualitative research through user interviews with participants to understand their needs and goals for a financial dashboard.
Quantitative Research
The survey participants consisted of individuals aged 50 and above, all possessing at least a bachelor's degree or higher level of education. Here are some of the key insights gathered from the google survey:
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1. The majority of participants plan to retire between the ages of 65 to 69, although some aim for earlier or later retirement ages, most of them while currently maintaining full-time employment.
2. Despite the frequency of reviewing their finances, which most participants do on a weekly basis, they report experiencing only moderate ease in managing their financial affairs with some even rating it lower. The Likert scale provided ranged from 1 - Extremely Easy to 5 - Extremely Difficult.
3. 57% of participants responded that tracking their expenses was the biggest challenge when managing their finances. This implication could serve as an opportunity for GrowBread to meet the user’s needs with their integration of Plaid’s technology, linking all financial account information into the GrowBread application. The automation of the tracking process will ease the user’s financial management experience and could increase their desire for such a tool.
Qualitative Research
For the user interviews I focused on asking open-ended questions about the thoughts on security and reliability of digital financial applications, along with the difficulties they encounter in financial management. The interviews were conducted with the same group of participants remotely via zoom.
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How do you keep track of your income and expenses? Do you use any specific tools to help you track them?
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What are your financial goals? Both short and long term.
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Could you tell me how you set a financial goal and review if you’re on track for it?
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When it comes to financial planning in your life, what are the most important factors you consider?​
Empathy Map
I consolidated the interview insights into a comprehensive empathy map (Figure 19). This map delves into participant's thoughts, emotions, and behaviors regarding financial management tools like GrowBread, highlighting both pain points and benefits experienced through their usage. This analysis can help identify opportunities for design enhancements, ultimately improving GrowBread’s usability.
User Personas
Based on the empathy map and conversations with stakeholders I came up with personas for target users including their behaviours, pain points, goals and motivations to create a better understanding of our users.
Journey Map
I created a journey map to illustrate the process by which the user personas currently budgets their expenses and plans for their savings. The map discusses the various actions, pain points, touchpoints, feelings, and opportunities associated with budgeting and savings for our “Empty-Nester” personas. This exercise helps me better understand the various pain points that our users experience in this process so I can help design an effective solution that caters to their needs.
Information Architecture
After multiple interations using the original IA of the website and presenting our proposed changes in the IA with our stakeholder, we finalized on this updated version of the website structure to use for our website redesign.
Low-Mid Fidelity Wireframes
Flowing the thorough analysis I planned the design for the GrowBread application starting with storyboarding sketches to creating low-mid fidelity wireframes on figma. Given that the primary demographic predominantly utilizes desktop platforms for financial management, our focus for the redesign naturally gravitated towards enhancing the desktop version. The process involved a comprehensive overhaul of the application's information architecture, with particular attention to refining labels and categories for improved user intuitiveness and navigation.
Storyboarding
Mid Fidelity Wireframes
Hi-fidelity Wireframes
To give some insight into how our redesign has changed the current website, here are some before and after pages in comparison. Since the process oof development and testing is still in progress these are not finalized and subjected to further be modified in the near future.
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Usability Testing
In order to understand the usability of the design, I conducted a task analysis. The tasks were meant to understand how users respond to the navigation, functionality and information architecture.
Post-Task Questions:
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How was your experience using the application to manage the finances?
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What specific features do you believe would be beneficial in a financial management tool?
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If you were having troubles with the application, how would you go about finding help?
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If you could make changes to make this experience easier, what would you like to change?
Research Insights
Affinity Map
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Navigation: Straightforward and uncomplicated terminologies.
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Familiarity: Incorporate design elements and patterns that can reduce the learning curve and improve user adoption.
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Accessibility: Include larger font sizes, high-contrast color schemes, clear navigation, and intuitive user interfaces.
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Guidance: Users may require additional support and guidance when using digital platforms.
Updated Information Architecture
Updated Wireframes & Prototypes
Incorporating the UX recommendations presented in our research report backed by:
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User data gathered in first usability test
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UX Design Principles & Best Practices
Key Takeaways
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Starting and iterating through the process with research and comprehensive analysis of the market and target demographic offers in-depth understanding of the product needed by the users.
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Explain design choices and back up implemented changes with principles and research while showcasing to the stakeholders..
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Re-evaluate the product needs in every stage of the design process to ensure alignment with the business goals and user findings.
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Create backups and have multiple versions of design files in case the team wants to refer back or revert to a certain change in the process.