¢ents App
¢ents
Project Overview
Helping Students Succeed Financially.
Navigating personal finances for the first time can be a big challenge for students balancing tuition, living expenses, and often, limited funds. Cents is a mobile student finance app designed to provide an easy-to-use solution for tracking expenses, setting budgets, and helping to achieve financial goals, coupled with a brand identity that seeks to connect with the student demographic.
Cents logo
Research and Discovery
Competitive Analysis
In order to establish a baseline foundation for Cents, research was undertaken to understand the financial habits and needs of university students:
- Qualitative Insights through User Interviews: In-depth conversations with a diverse group of students revealed key pain points, including the difficulty of tracking small, frequent expenses, a lack of clear visibility into where their money was going, and a desire for more personalized guidance on budgeting. Students expressed a need for tools that were simple to use and visually appealing.
- Quantitative Data via Surveys: Online surveys distributed to a wider student body provided statistical validation of the interview findings. The data highlighted common budgeting challenges, preferred features in finance apps (simplicity, visual summaries), and the prevalence of financial stress among students.
- Competitive Analysis: An examination of existing personal finance applications identified both strengths and weaknesses in the market. This analysis revealed an opportunity for an app specifically tailored to the student demographic, focusing on their unique income patterns and financial goals, while offering a more engaging and less intimidating user experience than some existing solutions.
Strategy & Concept
The insights gleaned from the research phase informed the core strategy for "Cents," which centered on creating an intuitive, visual, and empowering experience designed specifically for students. The guiding concepts were:
Based on the research findings, the core strategy for "Cents" focused on creating a simple, visual, and empowering experience tailored to the student lifestyle. The key concepts driving the design were:
- Effortless Tracking: Minimizing the friction involved in recording financial transactions through features like quick-add options and intelligent categorization suggestions.
- Visual Clarity: Translating complex financial data into easily understandable visual formats, such as charts and graphs, to provide a clear overview of spending habits and budget performance.
- Goal-Oriented Motivation: Enabling students to define and visualize their financial goals (e.g., saving for study abroad, a new laptop), providing a tangible target to work towards and track progress against.
- Contextual Education:Integrating relevant financial literacy tips and resources within the app, delivered in a concise and accessible manner, to enhance students' understanding of financial concepts.
Color Palettes
Design Process: An Iterative Approach to User-Centered Design
The design of Cents App followed a user-centered design process, emphasizing iteration and feedback:
- Low-Fidelity Wireframing:: Initial design explorations focused on the fundamental structure and flow of key screens. These basic wireframes were used for early-stage feedback sessions with students to validate the information architecture and navigation.
- Interactive Prototyping:: High-fidelity prototypes were created using Figma to simulate the user experience and test key interactions, such as adding transactions, creating budgets, and viewing progress towards goals. These prototypes underwent multiple rounds of usability testing with student participants.
- Visual Design Development: A clean, approachable, and visually engaging aesthetic was developed for "Cents," utilizing a friendly color palette and clear typography to promote ease of use and a sense of trust. The visual language aimed to be modern and relatable to the student demographic.
- Usability Testing and Refinement:Throughout the design process, iterative usability testing was conducted to identify and address any usability issues. Feedback from these sessions directly informed design revisions, ensuring a user-friendly and effective final product.
Final Outcome
Cents: Empowering Students to Master Their Finances
Navigating personal finances for the first time can be a big challenge for students balancing tuition, living expenses, and often, limited funds. "Cents" is a mobile-first student finance application designed to provide an easy-to-use solution for tracking expenses, setting budgets, and achieving financial goals, coupled with a brand identity that resonates with the student demographic and fosters trust in managing their finances.
Cents logo
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident sunt.
Cents App logo
Branding
Cents App Screens
Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia.
Cents App Screens
Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia.
Final Outcome
Here we present a few of the final mockups for the prototypes created in Figma.
Rockport Film Festival
Social Media Tiles
Reflection
This project allowed me to explore the identity and visual elements of a shoe brand while also allowing me to focus on the user-experience possibilities with human centered design thinking executed into interactive prototypes. Next steps would be to continue user research with additional users (scale up) and develop and execute on a site an app launch plan, while measuring success metrics in terms of consumer awareness, brand loyalty, web traffic, usability feedback, and other elements of a digital strategy built on growth.
