PROJECT OVERVIEW

As the name states, FinGuru helps users with finance management through gamification.
In this case study we delve into designing the goal setting feature and budget tracking with focus on user engagement.

Contex

FinGuru is an AI powered finance management app. By connecting to user's bank accounts and tracking spending habits and income, helps users in:

• Managing all their finances in one place

• Effortlessly setting personalized budget and goals to save more and invest

• Helping them stick to their plans and improve their spending habits

Target audience

People who:

• Struggle with budgeting, saving and investing in general

• Are used to budgeting manually but haven't had a good experience with finance management apps

• Want to know where their money goes and stay on top of their finances

Challanges

• With a retention rate of approximately 5% in finance management apps (by the 30th day of installing), we needed to figure out the reasons for drop offs in these apps.

• Given the complexity and often overwhelming nature of finance, and the fact that fintech is associated with lots of numbers and boring charts, we needed to come up with strategies to maintain user motivation and also make it enjoyable and engaging.

THE PROCESS

DISCOVER

User Interview & Affinity Diagram

We asked mostly open-ended questions for a more engaging and conversational interview style, rather than sticking to a strict Q&A format.
Our questionnaire focused on:

1- What needs and expectations users have if they use budget apps
2- How to encourage them to stick to their plan

3-Why they stopped using previous finance management apps

Top Takeaways:

• Automation, estimations and predictions to lower the manual entry and calculations

• Strategies to manage overspending

• Preparation of users for unexpected costs

• Instant notifications to give users more control and room for growth

• Clear and straightforward design with minimal learning curve

Competitive Analysis

In order to make more informed decisions, we evaluated some well-known apps from various perspectives which helped us with:

Strengths the competitors share:

Weaknesses the competitors share:

• Difficulty in reducing the learning curve specially for users who are new to budgeting apps

• Inefficiency in automation of goal setting process

• Inability to enhance user engagement and motivation to stick to their plans

Secondary Research: Gamification

For more inspiration for gamification elements we analyzed Duolingo, which makes a perfect case study considering user engagement.

Pros:

• A character makes the experience more friendly, fun and personalized

• Point-based rewards are extrinsic motivators to give reason to users to come back

• Badges fulfil the basic need for self-worth, an important intrinsic motivator. Plus, users can look at their earned badges and review their progress

• Small visual milestones are manageable steps to motivate users to engage consistently

Cons:

• Leaderboards, being compared to others and constantly competing can cause frustrations and anxiety in some users, also mentioned by some interviewees

DEFINE

Persona

In order to establish tasks for our design, and to communicate information about the users that we collected during research, we developed a persona.

User Flow

DEVELOP

Ideation Session

Now it was time to have a meeting with the UX manager, stakeholders and engineers to present our identified challenges and developed solutions based on our research.

The official charecter of FinGuru: ‘Monstie’

A funny and friendly monster to soften the inherent complexity of fintech by serving as a:

• Motivational figure that celebrates achievements and milestones. This can keep user engagement high through a memorable and enjoyable experience

• Guide to offer tips and personalized feedback to finish tasks and challenges

• A sense of personality and consistency that ties different parts of the app together

Taming the finance management monster