Checkie App
The online money perception
Our “Big Idea” comes from the money management concept, from which we brought our focus on the current money perception and the way in which the money is used. We noticed that the majority pays with credit cards and does online shopping, one of the main reason is that we all know that the 90% of our time is spent on web like social media with large number of advertisement coming from e-commerce websites.
So in this kind of consumer society the online buying has become an unconscious and automatic habit rooted in our day to day routine.
The start point of our research
If I would ask you how many purchases have you done this month, could you give me a precise answer? You will underestimate the answer for sure. So our research has been started from this specific point: unawareness of online purchases!
User Research
During the user research process we identified our target which is online buyers aged between 20 and 35 to whom we have submitted a semi-structured interview, the interviews report showed that They underestimated the amount of online purchases made in the last month, and they have less perception of the money spent online than the money spent in shop with bancomat.
We have been asking to our panel what exactly happen during the online shopping and the mostly answer was : nothing is happened , nothing changed.
This is linked to two main factors: have not made a hand act payment and have not immediately gotten the product bought in their hands. So in the users mind triggers the called waiting curve, the time between the purchase and the arrival of the product. In fact is common to this users to classify the product box like a present.
The users have stated several times that they would need a help through a product that could helps them to manage and stay within the budget.
Solution
Hence the need to create a service that helps the user to become aware of the money spent online, and help them to take account of their budget.
Analysis competitor
Before starting the real design phase of our product we analysed the reference market through a SWOT analysis.
We have noted that: the budget is never the core of the app, the informations are hard to read and not intuitive, No user friendly, mandatory login, don’t have a precise focus and create confusion during their User Experience.
Checkie App
For this reason we realized Checkie, an app that wants to give to the user the perception of the money that he spends online. The core visual follows the metaphor of the sphere that is a perfect and a full shape and we decided to cut the sphere in pieces because every time we insert a purchase — and we spend money — the sphere loses some pieces. In the specific every piece of the sphere correspond to the 5% of the budget that we set.
We decided to have a sphere in pieces as our graphic symbol because with it everyone has the perception of something missing even if one piece is missing from the sphere. Figuratively, the sphere represents the wallet that contain our budget. The main thing in our app is the budget, the entire app works around it.
The structure of Checkie is simple and fast: we choose only two screens where the user could find all he needs. We implemented, at the very first launch of the app, an on-boarding part that explains to users features of our app. In the first screen he sees immediately his budget and the sphere, with this “strategy” he becomes aware of purchases that he does. In this view he can add his purchases and after immediately sees some parts of the sphere that disappear. In the status there is the settings that contains the privacy option (FaceID and password), the currency, re-set the budget and notifications, thanks to it the user could enable notification when he reaches some goals like the 50% of his budget etc.
The second screen of our app is “history”, where there’s the calendar. By clicking on the month, there’s a graphic that is generated automatically every time a purchase is insert and under it the list of all the purchases divided day by day. The list is editable manually, in order to give the possibility to delete some rows from the list if the user made a mistake.
Our user can use the app easily, he immediately sees his remaining budget and add quickly his purchases and the important part is that we don’t request log in and the data of our users: data are always stored through Core Data and User Defaults. In this way, we as developers cannot accede to user’s data, because they are local stored in their devices.
Using Test App
Future implementation
As developers we want introduce in Checkie the possibility to insert a new purchase through Siri, with custom intents. We want to give more awareness about money spent through a bar charts or pie charts. We want also give the possibility, to older devices, to use Touch ID. We will implement push notifications as reminders, using the nudge technique. We will make purchases list rows editable, in order to reduce steps to insert, edit and delete rows from the list.
User feedbacks from TestFlight
Some feedbacks were about errors management of the app. We fixed them and we gave the possibility to users to have always a visual feedback about them.
Some testers gave us some advices for the on-boarding part. They preferred to have also the possibility to insert the currency before app launching.
We decide also to ignore feedbacks about the position on budget label. Some testers told us to move the budget label under the sphere. But in this way, the “Add Purchase” button could be referred to budget label and not anymore to adding a purchase.
Check out yourself Checkie beta version!
All Scientists Team
