Lunch Money Buddy is an that app allows parents/guardians of k-12 students to electronically fund their children's school lunches. It will also allow them to perform other useful activities, like monitoring their lunch transactions and viewing upcoming lunch menus.  

The priority of this project was to design something that was simple and easy to use. My goal was to create an app based around a concise set of actions that would minimize the amount of time the user had to spend in the app itself. 

These User Journeys provide an in-depth look into the situational needs and outcomes of the app when paired with one of our users. It gives a visual representation of the expected emotional journey, anticipated points of contact with the app, and their presumptive outcomes.

The first major step towards getting the app designs off the ground was to create a sitemap.

Developing a well thought-out site map helps to inform the overall design and flow. Additionally, it allows me as a designer to better understand the relationship between the different sections of the application and how a user can flow in and out of them. 

Once the sitemap was finished, I began researching and sketching ideas for the actual look of the application and its interactions. I clicked through many of the leading money sharing and payment applications like Bank of America, Acorn, PayPal, and Venmo for inspiration. 

Through the initial design of this application, I focused on bringing in strong, concise interactions. I implemented extensive design research and refined common interactions found in some of the top financial applications. One of the most important things I learned from my iterative wireframing was to pay attention to patterns and flow rather than look for the immediate “best-practice.” I feel that in today’s world of app saturation, many of the "best practices" have become the easy way out for designers, when it may not actually be the “best” for their specific user.