Appy Saving
During my first week at General Assembly I conducted a series of interviews with a fellow GA classmate, Caitlin, to try and discover a hindrance in her life that could be aided by an app. To start we had an informal chat so that I could learn about my user before conducting a more structured interview.
Ø What’s your daily routine?
o Get up, sometimes shower in the morning depending if the bathroom is free and then commute — only 1 bathroom for 4 bedrooms.
Ø Who do you live with?
o In a flat share with 6 other people.
Ø Where do you live?
o Farringdon
Ø What parts of your day do you find most stressful?
o My morning and commute
Ø When are you most relaxed?
o At night when I am not in a communal space within the flat
Ø Do you enjoy your living situation?
o Not really
Ø What have you found frustrating this week?
o I get frustrated and stressed about money
Ø Would you like to see anything change about your living situation?
o Would like the tension to go or to move out but don’t have the money
Ø What is your dream?
o To move to a Bali and freelance from there since low living costs and then move back to Europe
Ø What would you say your spending habits are like?
o Generally quite bad — I am terrible at saving money, I always spend it on superficial stuff when my paycheck comes in and never save.
Ø Are you good at saving?
o No
Ø Do you spend time in the communal areas?
o Only to eat
Ø What is the lay out of the flat share?
o Big kitchen, small living room, small garden and then 4 bedrooms and 1 bathroom on upper floor
Ø If you were to design your own house what would it be like?
o Lots of open space and outside area. Glass walls
Ø Do you have any plans for when you finish the course?
o Earn some money and then move abroad for a bit, currently learning Portuguese and French
Ø What do you like to do in your free time?
o Draw/sketch
Ø Do you feel you do enough of this?
o No would like more time
The key point that were draw from this interview were:
Ø Caitlin doesn’t really enjoy her living situation.
Ø Doesn’t have the money to move and is bad at saving.
Ø Want’s to live abroad at some point.
The problem: Caitlin finds it hard to save money for long — term prospects.
My solution to this was to create an app for Caitlin to help her to save money for long term prospects such as moving out of her house or going on holiday.
By sitting down with Caitlin it was possible to set out some main goals for the user while using the app:
Ø Creating a target
Ø Monitoring a target
Ø Seeing their spending habits
Ø Suggestions on how to save money
Screens and Flows:
Once the main targets of the app had been set out it was possible to start creating some user flows.
After running through these flows with Caitlin I started to sketch out some possible screens for the app. Caitlin and I decided together which ones would work best and would be the most enjoyable to user. After multiple stages of refining these screens I created a wireframe to see how all the screens would fit together.
Through conducting user testing it become obvious that there were some issues with the flow of the screens such as the in ability to log in to a previously set up account when opening the app and over complication of the screens.
At this stage I created some paper prototypes to make sure the flow was correct before digitalizing the app through Marvel — https://marvelapp.com/29c7864
For further development of Appy Saving I would like to add a push notification feature that alters you in the evening of how much you saved that day. This would come with an option to deposit any savings you have made into your savings account. The push notification feature could also be developed to alter you each morning of how much money you should be saving that day.