[6] Prototyping stage 1

April 19th — April 23rd

Small Physical Piece

For the visuals for this iteration, I took on the look that goes with our proposed color scheme and the “cow spots” shapes. The days of week strip is to keep the magnets more organized and easier to visualize throughout the week. The little calendar thing on the bottom represents the “notebook” or notepad that comes with the kit. I is a place for users to actually tally up the numbers and have a clearer idea of how they are doing monthly.

Spatial Piece

In rethinking our spatial piece, I wanted to do some research on private interactions in public spaces as well as methods people use to break social taboos.

I found articles talking about the taboo of money.

• Break the Taboo: Talk with your Peers about Money — This article talks about why people, especially grad students, should talk about money and their reasoning behind their financial decisions. Talking about money and financial decisions help learn about money management strategies and brings people together by discussing their values.
• Breaking the Last Taboo: Talking Money With Our Partners — While this article focuses on couples, the author talks about examining financial problems (yours and someone else’s) from a curious and understanding perspective.
• Make #TimeToTalk today — This article applies to money and patients with mental health. It made me realize that the conversation on the taboo of money is not suppose to be one-sided. How can we get people to become aware if a person feels uncomfortable with spending too much money on eating out and encouraging them to make it supportive for that person to say no?

Storyboards of Potential Ideas for the Spatial Piece:

Getting People to Think About Price Ranges

Pros:

• Get people talking about expenses and personal price ranges.
• People can see how many people are also in the same boat as them.
• Can write on cow stickers their reasoning or goals for saving money.

Cons:

• Can feel like you’re on the spot for placing a sticker on the board even though your name is not necessarily attached

Price Tag Activity

Pros:

• Personal stories will emerge. People can write the highest price they are willing to pay for a meal on one side and their reasoning/goals on the other side.
• Feels anonymous since people can’t see your information while writing on the price tag.
• Get people talking and thinking about personal prices.

Cons:

• Location to allow for price tags to be hung.
• Not an immediate visual sense of how much people are willing to spend.

Where in Pittsburgh… Activity

Pros:

• Helps people stick to their saving goals by knowing where they can eat out at different price points
• Potentially stir up conversation about personal price points

Cons:

• Does not directly try to break taboo about money talk

To tie our concept together, I think the spatial activity should accomplish three main things:

1. Getting people to set goals (whether that be writing about it)
2. Providing people with a planning kit (to jumpstart their savings)
3. Discuss different price points (to break the taboo and make people more conscious of other people’s personal price points which will lessen the likelihood they will steer people off of their goal by asking them to eat out somewhere too expensive)

Digital Piece

Some initial wire framing of the App:

1. the user enters the budget and how many times the user wants to participate in each activity
2. based on the budget, restaurants are suggested based on the price range (which links back to the spatial activity)
3. The user gets tokens to be placed on a weekly calendar view (see upper right screen)
4. While in the planning stage, if there is a friend who has the same plan, his/her name will pop up.
5. The user could also go to a specific friend’s page to see the friend’s plan and invite the friend if he/she also plans to eat out this week.
6. Maybe a monthly view is also available to visualize the plan better

I looked at another award-winning app called Twine, which takes in a social aspect because it is made for saving for two (couples). I found some interesting aspects that we could learn from.

1. the visuals: the illustration s and color schemes looks super friendly, but the font makes it very trustworthy. The entry screen makes it looks very inviting, and the catch phrases are very encouraging.

2. The plans are goal-specific, and the app does the math for you.

3. There are some preliminary questions initially when you create an account. But since there is only one question per page, it is more user-friendly than the wireframe that I planned originally.