Overview:
In this personal case study, I delve into the intricacies of Just Expenses, a highly acclaimed expense tracker app on Android. Initially hailed as a potential life-changing tool for meticulous expense tracking, the app failed to sustain user engagement in my personal experience. Despite its top-rated status and my initial enthusiasm, I found myself neglecting the app after a mere few days of usage.
This project delves into Just Expenses’ UX, dissecting the divergence between its touted features and user impact. Through a comprehensive analysis of design, functionality, and user interactions, the study unveils reasons behind the gap in user expectations. By identifying critical pain points and improvement areas, the goal is to offer actionable insights to enhance Just Expenses’ overall user engagement and effectiveness.
Role : UX Designer
Design Tools : Wireframe.cc , Figma , Miro
01. Emphatize
To gain comprehensive insights into the users, I initiated the study by delving into existing behaviors. This involved understanding the target audience demographics, conducting guerrilla usability testing, and researching its competitors.
Target Audience Demographics
- Men,Women (ages 20s–40s)
- Income levels: Middle to upper-middle class
- Individuals within the middle to upper-middle class
- Professionals, freelancers, and business owners, freshgrads
- Comfortable with technology and mobile apps
Online Survery
To gather rich qualitative insights, I asked questions that provide insights into users’ needs, pain points, and preferences while keeping everything open ended.
In the survey I retrieved Background information, usage and habits, motivation and goals, challenges and pain points.
Analysis
To collect informations on user’s challenges and pain points, I used an affinity map to group similar observations from the online survey , revealing key issues common among them. This visual organization aided in identifying consistent challenges, providing a foundation for targeted problem-solving and user-centric design decisions. The affinity map efficiently highlighted areas requiring improvement or innovation in the design process.
Key Research Findings.
· While many users don’t feel the need to actively manage expenses, those who do prefer a comprehensive solution like Excel for detailed tracking.
· The primary goal for users is financial security, emphasizing the need for budgeting features beyond simple expense tracking.
· Users prefer monthly expense tracking, likely influenced by time constraints, forgetfulness with daily tracking, or alignment with credit card cycles. Emphasizing user-friendly and efficient expense recording in the app is crucial to address these preferences.
02. Define
After delving into existing behaviors to gain a deeper understanding, I concentrated on pinpointing the specific tasks that users employ this product for. I established three user archetypes and associated them with their respective jobs-to-be-done.
PROBLEM STATEMENT:
1. Ineffective Landing Page
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The existing landing page of the application falls short of fulfilling its intended purpose. Critical actions are obscured, necessitating additional effort to locate them. If the primary objective of the app is expense tracking, finding a concise summary of total spending is not immediately evident. It raises questions about why inputting expenses is the prominent feature upon opening the app.
2. No Relevancy
The current user experience is notably inflexible, lacking in customization options, and lacks personalized relevance for individual users. For instance, if a user has never engaged with sports-related content, they may perceive the app as irrelevant to their interests, potentially leading to disengagement and a decreased likelihood of revisiting the app.
3. Disorganized and Unconsolidated Information
Instead of having the ability to customize the type of expenses to be recorded on the landing page itself, users are required to navigate to settings for organization. This scattered approach to information creates further confusion in navigating the app.
The current app design poses significant challenges for users in terms of both structure and personalization.
The absence of a streamlined information structure creates confusion, diminishing the app’s effectiveness in assisting users with expense tracking. Furthermore, the lack of tailored content according to each unique individual’s needs contributes to a decreased user connection, resulting in lower usage and overall engagement. Additionally, the absence of a defined user journey poses a significant issue, leading users to easily get lost and, consequently, resulting in low conversion rates.
Strategy.
GET budget-conscious individuals WHO want to keep a close eye on their spending habits, save money, and stick within a budget TO achieve a greater sense of financial well-being BY Monitoring their expenses to gain insights into spending patterns and identify areas for potential savings. This helps to give a clearer understanding of where money is going and making informed decisions about discretionary and non-discretionary spending.
03. Ideate
I’ve outlined a user flow that maps each archetype to their respective journey within the app, aligning each with corresponding success metrics.
Sketches:
Wireframing to Prototype
My wireframing process prioritizes functionality over aesthetics, separating visual design from structural layout. This allows focused refinement of core functionality and user experience. The wireframe emphasizes key aspects for intuitiveness, featuring a top section providing a snapshot of the user’s account. Informed by research, a simplified chart illustrates income, expenses, and budgets, enhancing user awareness in line with our expense tracker app’s goals.
01. Fast Start Guide: Onboarding and Usage Tips
02. Simplified Tracking & Overview Experience
03. Track Spending in a Fun and User-Friendly Way
04. Alerted Budgeting
05. Exportable Financial Reports for the Financially Savvy
Conclusion
In this case study, JustExpense prioritizes user experience through strategic features, such as the Income and Expenses Progress Bar on the Home page, promoting motivation and proactivity. With a focus on simplicity, the design minimizes cognitive load by featuring three budgets and the three most recent transactions, catering to beginners. Users can expand for more details, striking a balance between simplicity and depth.
Beyond functionality, JustExpense aims to be enjoyable and user-friendly, leveraging principles like Hicks Law to streamline decision-making and appeal to both finance enthusiasts and beginners. The intentional design seeks to transform the traditionally serious task of expense tracking into an approachable and pleasant experience, encouraging mindful spending.
