Bolso Inteligente App

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"Bolso Inteligente" App

As a student at Howbootcamps School, my colleagues and I were challenged to create an app to help middle to lower-income families in Brazil budget their expenses.

Our app was crafted and developed by me Larissa Colino, Mayara Lima, and Jonathan Westin. We had the objective of creating an app to help middle to lower-income Brazilian families to help save money and manage their expenses.

The name of the app is "Bolso Inteligente''( Smart Pocket free translation)

In the following section, you'll be able to understand and see how everything came to life.

Here is a sneak peak of the app

The Methodology Used - Double Dimond and Design Thinking

As Ux design students we were taught how to use the Double Dimond and design thinking methodology.

The Desk Research

To start our project we define our data using the Desk Research method.

Here we gathered the maximum information we could in articles, the internet, newspapers, etc to evaluate if the middle to lower-income population in Brazil had problems with debt and knew how to budget their income to see if we could use our app to help them do it.

In our first research, we saw some problems, especially with families with lower income where they didn't have ways to save money or budget and were full of debt.

CSD Matrix

After we gathered our data we went to separate what we were Sure, what we could Suppose, and our Doubts.

In the things, we were sure according to our data was: People with higher education had better financial education. The credit card was a huge factor in the increase of debt. The most affected genre with debts was women.

In the supposition part, we thought disorganized people were more influenced to spend money without a reason. People have a credit card for basic costs but end up using it for extra costs. The extra costs should be for an urgent situation like a pandemic, or an unemployed person.

And in the doubts, we create some questions to help understand why this situation. Like

Does there exist a priority for the fixed monthly payment? Is there any influence on the extra expenses? Is there an age group that is most affected? (25 to 30 years old). How difficult is it for these people to plan their income and spending? Is easy access to credit cards a way of inducing people to buy outside their budget?

Qualitative and Quantitative research

So we had our data through our desk research, and we had separate what were we Sure of, Our Suppositions and Our Doubts through the CSD Matrix. Now we need to start being sure what we were learning with all of this information was true and viable for our app to be born.

First, we did Quantitative research through a questionnaire and then we interviewed 7 people for our Qualitative research.

Below you can see the results of our research.

The Quantitative Research

We decided to make a questionnaire on Google and questions about people's age, genre, where they live, and profession. And questions about their income, and how they budget and spend their money.

The result was 76 people answered and most were from the State of São Paulo, Brazil (82,7%) and 67,1% were women.

A lot of them had a job and a fixed income and almost 60% didn't have difficulty in organizing the expenses But 42% had it and were with their pain we decided to go forward.

The Qualitative Research

With this research, we were able to interview 7 people, and here are the hypotheses raised and the questions that were made:

HYPOTHESES

- Does the higher the salary or income, and the work format (CLT, autonomous, PJ) improve the way you organize yourself financially?

- Knowing financial health can help when it comes to organizing fixed and extra expenses?

- Credit cards can be an ally for Brazilians when it comes to paying bills, essential expenses, and so on?

- Having an emergency reserve can be a method of avoiding major debts?

QUESTIONS

* Do you feel that the salary or income you receive covers your monthly expenses?

* Do you agree that people who work in a CLT format have more financial stability and why?

* Do you think that if your income increased you would spend more or would you know how to manage your budget better?

* Do you have any methods that help you organize your finances?

* What criteria do you use to separate fixed and extra expenses?

* Comment on what you know about financial health and whether it makes a difference to your life

* Comment on what you think about using credit cards to pay bills and essential expenses.

* Do you feel that extra spending on credit cards (leisure, travel, clothes, etc.) puts a strain on your budget?

* How do you think credit card use can influence you to buy more?

* Do you agree that an emergency reserve can help you financially?

* Are you currently able to have an emergency reserve? Why?

* What do you think would be the best way to have an emergency reserve?

Qualitative Researchch Result

After interviewing these people we conclude:

- People have control of their expenses but it can be better;

- Not all people know financial education;

- People fail to have an emergency reserve - some use the emergency reserve with a credit card - some can't have one because the income is only for fixed expenses ;

- People don't know how important is to register their income and expenses;

- People don't have control over their expenses and income they just pay their bills;

- In some situations, they make superfluous expenditures due to some event that has affected their emotions

- With that, we had an idea(insight) to add to the app: Show expenses so that the customer can see if it's really necessary at that moment.

Example: Netflix

Affinity diagram

After all the researchers we decided to use the affinity diagram to help us brainstorm our ideas from all the data we had collected from the researchers.

We separate into 3 columns with 4 insights each :

1- Controllers:

The ones who register in a spreadsheet/notebook their earnings.

Have investments/savings.

Work as CLT/PJ ( types of contract in Brazil).

More incoming would manage money better.

2-Trying:

The ones who try to register in a spreadsheet/notebook their earning.

Are looking to have some savings.

Work as CLT

More income could have savings.

3- No- controllers:

Don't register their earnings.

Don't see the necessity of having savings or they use the credit card as an emergency. - Fixed expenses exceed salary

Don't have a fixed expenses or work as a CLT

Increased income, would cover fixed costs - increased income, would spend more

The second part of the Diamond - Definition

Now that we have our target audience for our product in mind is time for us to go to the second part of the diamond - The definition.

We start creating our personas. Sergio and Maria, are two Brazilians with different ages jobs, and lifestyles.

Below you can look at their profiles.

Sergio, 28 years old, Technical Support.

A family married man has a salary of BRL 5000. Has a wife who works but she earns less than half his salary.

They live well, but the wife has high out-of-pocket expenses, often exceeding her income.

Sergio is in control of the family's spending, for the sake of control and security of the expenses.

Maria, 40 years old, Secretary.

Divorced, with a daughter and a salary of BRL 1,700, her teenage daughter is asking for new and current things.

They live well; they live in her mother's house and pay no rent. She has a food ticket card that she gives to her mom to help with the grocery store every month.

Maria a centered and down-to-earth woman, always tries to pay her expenses in cash, and rarely uses her credit card, as it serves as her reserve in emergencies.

Job Story

To continue with our project we needed to define the necessity of our User. Here we use the Job story way to identify the motivation and context of our User to be able to complete our task.

We separate in:

1- Situation (when):

- I am organizing my bills in a notebook

- Thinking about the future

2- Motivation (I want):

- Reduce my expenses

- Save money

3- Expected results ( so I can):

- Have a savings account

- Finance a house

HMW (How Might We)

Then we went to analyze our User using the HMW way starting by looking at our job story again, with that we had some conclusions:

How might we? :

- make it easier for people to record their monthly expenses via an app.

- helping people to save without a pay rise.

- encourage people to use the service?

- help with the service without taking up too much of the user's time?

- create the desire to use the service daily?

- give people autonomy and control over their impulses to spend extra money.

make people aware of the financial sector and different ways of making their money work.

And the most important one:

How might we provide a service for recording earnings and expenses, for better monthly control and visibility of the user?

Diagram of ideas for our HMW

Start of the month salary payments - You will pay your bills and start filling in your notebook - You realize that the salary you receive won't be enough - You think you'll only be able to pay all your bills if you get extra money or a raise -He/she tries to prioritize some bills but realizes that it is necessary to pay all of them in question -Son/daughter says he/she needs new shoes-You start to think about all the expenses but that your child's request is also a necessity -You pay your credit card, water, electricity ...-You realize that you won't have any money left over for savings this month.

The User Journey

Before crafting our app we made a Map of our User journey to describe their pain, opportunity, and necessity.

We separated into 7 topics and described each one in detail:

1- Profile:

- People who need to be in control of their earnings and expenses;

- What are the most important goals and needs?

- What do they have more problems with?

- What task do they need to perform?

2- Outcomes:

- What will they start doing?

- What will they avoid doing?

- Has it had any impact on the environment?

3- Journey Step by Step:

- Understand your current financial situation;

- Organize spending;

- Cut extra expenses;

- Aim for financial independence;

4- Describe what the user needs or what to avoid in each step:

- Actions - What does the User do?

- What information does he need?

- What is the context?

Needs and Pain

- What does the user want to reach or avoid?

5-See if the user is clumsy, needs help, influenced by. (Aim: Listen to the people who interact.):

Points of contact;

- With whom does the User interact?

6- Leave clear the user's feelings in each step. ( Aim: try to express how the user feels):

Feelings- What is the user's feeling at the stage?

7- Brainstorm the ideas on how to solve(Aim: Think in Better steps for the user journey) :

- Opportunities - What can we fix or improve?

The crazy 8

In this part, we used the "crazy 8" method to make 8 frames in 8 minutes. Each frame should be done in 1 minute. Here is the result of opur first app sketch:

Benchmarking

In the benchmarking process, we analyze some apps with the same functionality. This way, we can compare what people are already using and what fulfills the same function as our app idea. We choose about 1 to 3 features that are in line with the goal of our idea and evaluate whether they are features that add value or not, what are the positive and negative points of each feature.

We choose 3 apps:

- Guia Bolso

- Mobilis

- Controlle

MoSCow- Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, Won't Have

The Moscow Method helped us to collect and prioritize the functional ideas we had during brainstorming.

*Name related to what the service provides - Easy to understand name
Access via email
*Incentivize savings with a points system
*Show monthly savings compared to previous month
*Friendly tone of voice and confidence - after all, users are bringing their financial lives to us to sort out.
*Integration with personal bank account

-Should Have:

*Easy access and navigation - for young and old alike
*Application or website that provides access to both income and expenses
*Tips on how to save and make money work
*Quick to fill out, so it doesn't take too long
*Encouragement to get rid of unnecessary expenses
*Attractive colors, but not fatiguing

-Could Have:

*System that understands the route and gives a forecast of how the month will end
*Daily spending notifications
*Points systems with partners, e.g. Livelo if you are a user with a positive score or points on the interest rate to negotiate for those with a negative credit score.

-Won't Have:

* App or website can be from the bank itself or from a partner where it can pull up the data just by entering the CPF (single person registration-Brazil's system) - Data validation through the bank's own access

Purpose and task flow

This section identifies the user's primary goal in using the product, what he or she really wants to accomplish. It then lists the main tasks that this user needs to accomplish.
Once the main tasks are defined, we design the path the user will take to accomplish them.

Tasks main goal : Track and view expenses and income

Tasks:

- Log in via e-mail or manually
- Create registration
- Register a new password
- Onboarding:

Know the purpose of the app
- Terms of use
- Shelf of what we offer to customize according to each user profile
- First access:
Overview of the app
- Manually record your financial life: how much you earn, your main expenses and create categories
- Link bank details: credit card, salary, investments
- Upload data