: building a budgeting app thats kinda fun

Case study: Building a budgeting app that’s kinda fun

We all work to avoid this

So we got a call to do something a bit

different

Flickr Credit: London Permaculture

“We want to do something that helps people in these crappy times -- a budgeting app that actually helps them with their money”

Flickr Credit: London Permaculture

Personal budgeting ≠ fun

Challenge #1:

but Mint isn’t in Europe

Flickr Credit: MarcelGermain

Apps make us do the hard work

Apps make us do the hard work

Don’t ask people questions they can’t easily answer

Obvious general principle #1:

I don’t have a favourite athlete!

Ignore categories people can’t easily change

Project principle #2:

Flickr Credit: infomatique

The big idea:

Forget your mortgage, think about those coffees

Our design principles• Low effort to use

• A bit of fun, but not totally frivolous

• Give actionable results

• Focus on a single-visit use

• Make it worth sharing

• Discretionary

• Frequent

• Easy-to-calculate

• Provocative

• Widespread

Initial theme:

riffing on the Irish Catholic thing

Sketchy wireframes leads to sketchy visual design?

So let’s see what worked

Long funnels can work

Not-so-obvious design principle:

• Nice visual design?

• Good copy writing?

• Interest in the results?

How to convince client/boss to go with the

better design?

Common design challenge:

User-testing

A/B testing

Collaborative design workshops

Design rationale + jargon-y terms to add credibility (banner-blindness)

Convince one member of client team -- have them work behind the scenes to persuade the other!

User-testing

A/B testing

Collaborative design workshops

Design rationale + jargon-y terms to add credibility (banner-blindness)

Convince one member of client team -- have them work behind the scenes to persuade the other!

Design changes/decisions late in the process tend to be hurried, and have high risk of having

unintended risk to overall design

• 11% clicked through to client’s brochureware

• 11% clicked through to client’s brochureware

• only 2% shared the site

• and very little usage of the Compare filters

Making things successfully social is hard to do

• only 2% shared the site

• and very little usage of the Compare filters

How can agencies move from

Ongoing challenge:

launch and leave it to

launch, test, learn improve, repeat

Thanks!@brian_donohuewww.iqcontent.com

and thanks to for letting us do this case study

We’re recruiting!