#feedback for a budgeting app prototype that also helps students to learn how to manage finances

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

rough galleon
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feel free to have a look! I made the visuals myself!

rough galleon
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@old sinew 😁

old sinew
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Hi there, before I start, what feedback are you looking for.

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If this helps.

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rough galleon
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I appreatiate any comments that'll help me improve the quality of my work, but specifically, pointing out decision decisions that does not make sense or if my user flow makes sense or is detailed enough and other areas or features I can refine more in detail and if you found the interface user friendly?

old sinew
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Small nickpick as I'm going through the prototype, I see this a lot in more junior case studies but elements on your screen shift around. What I mean is open the prototype and just click the right arrow and watch the tab bar. See it shift around from screen to screen? That shouldn't be doing that. You have elements are you device that "dances" from screen to screen. And this will need to be fixed if you want to include the prototype in your case study. It shows a lack of attention to detail and craft.

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Click between transactions and budget and see how everything shifts

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It's not apparent what this means

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67% of what?

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this as well, I'm unclear what this means

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transactions is fine but you might want a running tab. Another nitpick, for your final design use fake real info. i.e. it shouldn't all say Wednesday, it shouldn't only be food Mcdonalds -20. The prototype is already a step away from reality (this is not my data) so you want to make it easier for the user testing it (or designer reviewing) to understand what is happening.

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rough galleon
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okiee noted!! this is really helpful

old sinew
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That will also help you as you design, does it make sense to have a large divider for 10/18? Do most people spend lots of money every single day? Or does it make sense to embed that into it i.e. do people spend a little bit but consistently

rough galleon
old sinew
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Your data right now assumes this user is spending and buying 4 things every single day. Would this be the case normally? An example of my transactions

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Would it make more sense to group each section differently is what I'm saying

rough galleon
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how is it colour pallette wise? The type hierachy and I tried to establish hierachy too with colours, hope that came across alright

old sinew
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And an example of transaction from Mint:

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perhaps this could be a weeks worth of transaction or something else that makes more sense

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rough galleon
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oh i understand and see what you mean now. like separting by dates may not be be the best way to show the transactions

old sinew
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Colour is fine, orange is hard to use especially for a money related app

old sinew
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Clicking on a transaction, is it suppose to open last 30 days?

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I clicked on this:

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rough galleon
old sinew
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It opened this:

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rough galleon
# old sinew It opened this:

ahh nono,, that is wrong, thank you for pointing it out. this is supposed to be under 'view all' but for each individual transaction if you click and drag you can edit or delete

old sinew
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I expected it to open up details about that transaction

rough galleon
old sinew
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Like which payment method used (Amex credit card, details about the payee, memos etc)

rough galleon
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by the way for the 'insights' screen is there anything else that you might want to see for the insights?

old sinew
old sinew
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I don't think these categories are enough either. Perhaps have a dropdown instead?

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I also might be the wrong person for categories lol

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Cause I have 80+ categories in my budgeting app

rough galleon
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greattt now i know what im doing wrong and fix accordingly, if there's anything else I shld be aware of feel free to let me know!!!!

rough galleon
old sinew
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I might not be the target user for your app

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I've been budgetting daily since January 2017

rough galleon
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ohh interesting!! i think my target user is as an intro to budgeting but i plan to accomadate for both begineeres and those who have had experience

old sinew
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oh let me screenshot what mine looks like for add a transaction

rough galleon
old sinew
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I say I'm not the target audience but my app may be. It's called YNAB (you need a budget)

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https://www.ynab.com/

YNAB

Working hard with nothing to show for it? Use your money more efficiently and control your spending and saving with the YNAB app.

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I like your achievements

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But it does feel like insights/achievements might be able to be combined

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Oh wait

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achievements open goals

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I didnt realize this link took me there

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rough galleon
old sinew
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How do you add money into goals?

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There's no place in expenses/transactions

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You have income, but no one to put the income into certain buckets

rough galleon
rough galleon
old sinew
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There's a budget page but no one to show how much money you have to budget with

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If that made sense.

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My current one has two ways, one via a transaction. I got $5 back from a restaurant so I kept it in the food category

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oops. you need the header

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But I can also enter my pay check and then divide it into the right categories

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So I know exactly how much I can budget with

rough galleon
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i assumed that users would have an idea of how much they want to budget then from there they allocate. because my app does not connect with other banking apps. would this make sense?

old sinew
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I do not have my budget app connected with my bank, but I manually enter it

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You have an "income" part of the flow in expenses

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But it doesn't go anywhere, that's what I meant

rough galleon
# old sinew But it doesn't go anywhere, that's what I meant

oh basically for transaction there are two categories income and expense so it's just different info you would have to fill out. if it were to go anywhere, i guess in the view all transactions we can see which ones are under income and which under expense?

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it's just for my filler text the 'food' transaction is all under expense but if it's income it would be '+'

old sinew
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I think, as a budgetting app, it's going to be hard if the user does not have an easy way to know how much money they have per month.

rough galleon
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Wait isn’t this it

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old sinew
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That's how much you spent, but not how much you funded

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And what if you get a refund on a food item, do you put expense -$5.00?

rough galleon
# rough galleon Wait isn’t this it

ah i think i understand now, sort of like the capital but maybe I can reverse this meaning when the bar is full it shows the total of what we can spend and as it gets empty vice versa would this work?

rough galleon
old sinew
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^ this one I got $5 back after I spent a certain amount

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There's no transaction to delete

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Another example: I got charged $232.11 for insurance cause it was one of those tracking insurances and my SO isn't as careful at driving as me LOL. So I changed insurances because tracking me was annoying. So I got a refund for the partial month

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rough galleon
old sinew
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yeah

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Also, since this is a personal project I think you can be a bit more blue sky about it

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For example, you mentioned you didn't want to connect with banks or credit cards earlier.

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But if it makes sense, user experience wise, you should do so because your app doesn't have those constraints.

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I would look at this more with a "what makes the most sense for the user"

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And not worry tooooo much about some technical limitations

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The reason I'm pointing it out is YNAB's whole premise is they would like you to enter it manually. However, whenever I intro a friend to try it, they usually don't like it or stick with it because it's "so much work" (entering all the transactions). While on the other hand, a lot of people previously used Mint more to track their expenses.

rough galleon
old sinew
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So user perspective, it might be super difficult to get new budget-ers to enter every single one of their transactions

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yeah!

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This is just me hahaha who has been super, super into budgetting for the last 7 years. And attempted to get other friends and family to do so

rough galleon
rough galleon
old sinew
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For?

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Oh to enter

rough galleon
old sinew
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Mmm it's not exactly forgetting, it's just you have to sit down either right when you make the transaction (I just bought groceries and I have the receipt right with me) or you have to sit at your computer and look at the transactions from your bank

rough galleon
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haha connecting to the respective banks would just be an easy way to solve this

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?

old sinew
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I tried budgetting before 2017, I bought YNAB January 2015. But it's hard to be consistent

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YNAB4 back then had no imports at all, you have to manually enter every transaction, and it's tough

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And mainly you have to make sure to do it right then and there

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And that can be tough because maybe you're out with friends and talking with them, and pulling out your phone is a bit rude

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I also switched from YNAB to a different app that was 100% manual for 6 months a couple years ago. I just made sure to make friday my budget day and I opened all my bank/cc to enter all transactions

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That was fine, I switched away from it because that app closed LOL not because I wanted to go back.

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However, this is really really tough for a beginner

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And that is who you're targetting

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I used Actual budget for a while before the creator stopped working on it 😦

rough galleon
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i guess the problem is just getting users to start tracking...i do know now that e-wallet is more common than cash (or getting more) in malaysia so what do you think if I just plan to have my app connect to that? or can I still persist with my manual tracking 👀

rough galleon
old sinew
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It's your choice, and you can pretend it works in yours since it's blue sky

old sinew
rough galleon
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what are your thoughts on my 'notes' section?

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it was something extra that I thought could help out users with their budgetting/personal finance journey

old sinew
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I was a but unsure since a lot of people in the U.S. don't like to be public about money

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Community notes when you hit certain goals seemed nice, though perhaps could be far and few between

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Also currently no way enter $$ to track the goal progress

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I see you have it there, but unsure how to put money into that section

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This part seems unnecessary to me

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It's almost like when people complain about people posting kid pictures on Linkedin. E.g. why are you using this as social media

rough galleon
rough galleon
rough galleon
old sinew
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So that might be empty

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I think I've only ever tracked one goal in my life, and that was "buy a car"

rough galleon
old sinew
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Like you might have 2-3 friends here. And we only each our goals a few times a year

rough galleon
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i was thinking along the lines of forum dicussions too like maybe people informing each other on the best deals or their money saving tips. like reddit+twitter maybe...

old sinew
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@rough galleon Do you budget now?

rough galleon
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currently i track my expenses yes and do minor budgeting

old sinew
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I think you should user test on yourself and take your designs and fake it. For example, you can make a google form of the responses you're collecting

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this stuff. And if it's recurring, then you just enter it once and remember

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rough galleon
rough galleon
old sinew
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You might need one for expenses and one for income

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These were the questions you had in the form

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And then you have a spreadsheet of your responses. This way you can track exactly what you spent

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The form responses will essentially be the data for this:

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And you can track and see how you feel entering your info and if the data is helpful to see

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If you want, end of the week mock up what it would have been in figma

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To see what real data looks like

rough galleon
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OH I UNDERSTAND NOW sorry i was a bit confused

old sinew
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I'm pretty sure you can do budget too, spreadsheet is pretty powerful

rough galleon
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Okay I will do that too, but using my past transactions as reference

old sinew
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And see if that feels okay and you can see if the data you got make sense or if you're missing stuff (like categories 😉 )

rough galleon
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Im not too familiar with spreadsheets myself

old sinew
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Mmm I'm pretty sure there's a way to do it

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But you might have to look up how to only select expenses from the food & beverages category and put it in expenses

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but like this grabbed it from the form

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Budget is what you set

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The others are easy calculations

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Expenses part I'm unsure about exactly, but I know there is away P: just don't know what

rough galleon
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this is only to have an overview of what we can expect from real users right?

old sinew
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Oh I got it

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=sumif('Form Responses 1'!$F:$F,"Food & Beverages",'Form Responses 1'!$C:$C)

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oops my percent broke

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cause expenses does not say dollars

rough galleon
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🥹 will be my first time using spreadsheets like this other than just making tables

old sinew
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there we go

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rough galleon
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Thank you so much 😭

old sinew
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=sumif('Form Responses 1'!$F:$F,"Food & Beverages",'Form Responses 1'!$C:$C)

But the thing in quotes 'Form Responses 1' is what the sheet is called

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The green thing "Food & Beverages" is the categories it's going to select

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And C is where amount was

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See I just added transportation

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rough galleon
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Is it possible if i can go on this document?