A banking app is developing a new budgeting feature to help users effectively plan and achieve their financial goals. The feature will incorporate seamless onboarding, engaging gamification, and align with a socially responsible mission.
View designs
Maple Bank is a financial institution seeking to secure new clients to its platform. We were tasked with designing a new feature for successful onboarding that targets and attracts a new user demographic. The designs are aimed at new users who want to track financial goals and manage their budgets. Additionally, we were given the opportunity to create philanthropic features that would benefit the community.
Create a feature within the Maple Bank mobile app to help users track and achieve their financial goals. This feature will include expense tracking, as well as goal creation and tracking. Effective onboarding will be required to successfully convert users and promote loyalty.
Ideation, UX research, wireframing, prototyping
2 weeks
Figma, Canva, pen & paper
2023
.png)
Monique is a divorced mother of two who is looking for a simpler way to manage her budget. She values spending time with her kids and enjoys going out with her friends whenever possible. She has both long-term and short-term financial goals and needs a banking solution to help her track those goals more efficiently, allowing her to spend less time worrying about her finances and more time enjoying her friends and family.
Maple Bank budgeting will provide a feature in the mobile app which lets users track their expenses and create/track financial goals they would like to achieve. Through pleasant onboarding, and gamification, the aim is to make this experience fun yet efficient.
The Maple tree project is an email campaign promoting Maple Bank's referral program. The user will be prompted to invite friends and family to the Maple Bank app. For every successful conversion, the user will have a Maple tree planted in their name. They will be able to track their tree's growth within the app.
As a team, there were many ideas brought forth that helped us develop solutions that best suited the user's needs. Many opportunities came to light via sketches, such as when and how gamification should take place within the app and how to best onboard new users. The ideation process was constantly employed throughout the creation of the wireframes in an effort to make the user flow as efficient as possible.
.png)
.png)
User testing was done on the high-fidelity wireframes to get a better understanding of the user's perspective on the designs as well as any pain points that might be an issue. User testing was done remotely via zoom with one interviewer and two researchers taking notes. Two users were provided with a high-fidelity prototype and were given a series of tasks to complete.
The final designs for Maple Bank successfully accomplished the set goals. Features were created for budgeting, tracking, a referral program, and improved user onboarding.
The budgeting feature was successful in providing a solution to users who were looking to get a better handle on their finances.
Some considerations to consider in future iterations would be to consider how to further integrate this feature into the already existing app. Ideas to develop further on would be creating the ability to set up automatic payments for goal contributions available directly within the budgeting feature, as well as integrating AI for expense calculations in a way that the user feels comfortable and less confused.
Onboarding was an important requirement and has been successfully implemented into the design through a series of opportunities which allow the user to both learn and actively engage with the platform's features. Maple Bank achieves its objectives by employing social media advertising, informative onboarding and gamification to foster loyalty and advocacy to the brand.
Contribution suggestions for goal achievement within the app take into consideration the financial goals users wish to achieve, as well as income and expenses, allowing them to contribute to and track progress.
Maple Bank's gamified dashboard excites users about achieving their goals by likening their progress to planting a tree. The dashboard displays an animation that starts with a seed, then sprouts a few leaves, and finally grows into a flourishing tree, with each stage representing a different milestone in the user's financial journey.
Maple Bank's referral program encourages its users to share the platform with friends and family via a newsletter. In exchange for every successful conversion, Maple Bank will plant a tree in that user's name, which they can track, and watch grow through the app.
The Maple Tree Project received a lot of great feedback. Many people seemed to be interested in signing up for Maple Bank solely for the opportunity to have trees planted in their name and track their growth. There are opportunities to expand on this idea and make it a star feature of the banking app as a whole. Additionally, there are many environmentally conscious organizations that could be partnered with to help scale this program.
