Expense Management
Hello, Designer,
Firstly, congratulations on your journey. We appreciate the experience you've presented, even as a beginner in the field, and your proactive approach to career growth.
Welcome to our team. Here, you will play a crucial role in creating a solution that helps people better control their finances.
The idea for our product originated from a personal issue our CEO faced: he used his personal credit card to pay for many company tool subscriptions. These included email marketing tools, domains, business platforms, traffic ads, management apps, and many more. The challenge was that all these expenses mixed with installment payments for flights, courses, and other personal costs.
It reached a point where he had no idea how much he paid monthly or annually for fixed expenses, what he paid for, and how long these installments would last. The truth is, he would discover periodically that he no longer needed a tool he was still paying for unnecessarily. In some cases, he fell into the trap of trying a tool for free, entering credit card information, never using the tool, and forgetting to cancel.
These are just some of the problems we aim to solve. To prioritize and define the solution, we need to understand if others share similar issues and what other financial difficulties people face.
Your task is to identify these opportunities and propose a solution that can be integrated into any digital banking application. When connected to the bank, our app will retrieve user financial transactions to present opportunities for cutting unnecessary expenses, if any, allowing users greater control over their finances.
Are you ready? Let's get started.
More details about the challenge:
This is a low-difficulty challenge, as it's easy to find credit card users.
Part of the job is to understand the business, its frictions, and propose solutions regardless of the industry it operates in. The UX Designer needs to be prepared to understand any type of business, whether in healthcare, education, finance, or any other. Use your UX knowledge to understand user journeys in this context, their main frictions, and propose solutions.
At the end of the task, we expect you to demonstrate the problems you discovered and how you solved them, moving from the idea to a high-fidelity prototype tested with users to verify if the solution is indeed simpler than before.
[Mini Case Strategy - Exercise I]
1. Who is affected by the problem, and who is involved?
Users of credit cards who have difficulty monitoring their finances.
2. What are the effects of the problem?
Uncontrolled spending, difficulty in managing money, and unnecessary charges.
3. Where does the problem occur?
The problem occurs in the user's bank account.
4. When does the problem occur?
The problem occurs when the user examines their statement.
5. Why does the problem occur? Why is it important?
The problem occurs because charges are usually listed chronologically, making it difficult for the user to identify and categorize their expenses, complicating financial management.
6. How does this problem occur? Who is impacted?
This problem occurs by limiting the user's organizational possibilities, with the user being the most impacted.
[Context]
This causes problems for: [user groups]
Why: [how and why this affects the user]
This is important because: [impact of the problem on organization]
Problem Statement: Users of digital banks struggle to monitor and categorize their expenses.
The first credit card emerged over half a century ago. While this invention undoubtedly provided many conveniences to humanity, the transition from physical currency to a more abstract concept, such as credit cards, has generated other consequences, such as increased difficulty in recognizing and monitoring expenses.
Today, we have the convenience of using cards, apps, digital banks, and even our phones to make payments. Additionally, we have the option to split purchases and authorize recurring charges for services we frequently use. With this diversity of payment methods, managing our finances has become a significant challenge.
Therefore, users of these new payment methods need tools to assist them in organizing and analyzing their expenses. Traditionally, both debits and credits are listed chronologically and with minimal information—usually, the establishment's name and amount. Thus, it becomes challenging for the user to examine their expenses, determine the remaining installments of a purchase, and locate recurring charges. Without this control, the user may be spending more than intended and paying for services they do not use. Additionally, users face difficulty in financial planning.
To alleviate this problem, categories, recurring charges, and numbering [Context] This causes problems for: [user groups] Why: [how and why this affects the user] This is important because: [impact of the problem on the organization] [Context] This causes problems for: [user groups] Why: [how and why this affects the user] This is important because: [impact of the problem on the organization]
[Mini Case Strategy - Exercise II]
Business Plan: Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas Analysis
Continuing from Exercise 1 of this module, using the same challenge theme, create in FigJam, Miro, or any other virtual whiteboard tool with the Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas templates and analyze:
Firstly, Business Model Canvas:
Value Proposition
- What value do you deliver?
- Which customer segments do you support?
- What channels do you use to reach them?
- How do you retain customers?
Operations
- What are the key resources needed to run the business?
- What are the main activities that need to be executed?
- Who are the partners that can help execute the business?
Cost and Revenue Structure
- What are the main costs the business will incur?
- What are the main sources of revenue you can obtain from the business?
Next, the Value Proposition Canvas, exploring the columns of "Value Delivered" and "Customer Segments":
User Information
- What are the main tasks or objectives of your user?
- What are their pains in performing these tasks and achieving these goals?
- What are the main benefits they have when performing these tasks?
Business Information
- What are the main pain relievers to address the pains your product has?
- What are the main gain creators to boost the benefits?
- What products and services can you offer?
3. Competitor Analysis
Continuing with the same challenge you were working on, research companies on the internet that somehow partially solve or complement the problems your product addresses. Consider not only direct competitors offering the exact same service but any business that helps users achieve the same goal you want to help them achieve. See the examples below:
Example 1: The main competitors for my courses are not other UX courses but any other initiative that helps people grow in their careers.
Example 2: The competitors of Booking.com are not just websites offering hotel reservations, but any business that helps people travel better.
In your analysis, do not forget to go through the following points:
- Define what you intend to measure, which is relevant to the study you are conducting.
- Define how you intend to measure this variable for comparison, which can be a survey in app store comments, a usability test to measure the time to complete a task, or even a heuristic evaluation.
- Collect the measurements and present the comparison.
4. Relevant Objectives and Metrics
After formatting the problem, finalizing the two canvases to better understand how your business can be operationalized, and getting to know competitors, consider that business and user objectives may be interesting to achieve, and define metrics to measure this success. It's not a marriage yet. The goal and metrics will give you a direction to
be more assertive in your solution, but the path can be adjusted as you do more research and get closer to your users.
Business objectives suggestions: think about goals to improve acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, or other business metrics.
User objectives suggestions: think about goals to improve satisfaction, engagement, adoption, task success, or other user objectives.
In this challenge, you will analyze the problem, the business model, conduct benchmarking, competitor analysis, and think about goals for your work.
We are not starting user research yet, but we will explore important information that you can focus on in your initial meetings with your future clients. After outlining this information, you will have much more clarity on what to focus on in your user research.
Remember that:
- Not every project will use everything we teach in the same order. There is no one-size-fits-all process that always works.
- Not everything you apply needs to go into your main portfolio because you don't want to write a book. Although not everything goes into the portfolio, everything goes into your repertoire, making you more prepared to answer questions about your decisions in interviews.
- You can use the exercises as separate "mini-cases" for your portfolio to be used at opportune times when the company wants to understand more about how you analyze problems and businesses.
- Practice is what will give you the repertoire to know what to use at the right time.
- You will practice first in a sample situation, and after training, you will do the same for your main work that will accompany you throughout the course.
All exercise challenges must be done individually, and only the main challenge should be done in a group, as team members have practiced and gained experience in different scenarios. In other words, choose different individual challenges from your team members.
[Challenge Case 1]
Choose one of the challenges proposed for UX Unicorn 2.0 that is not your main challenge and perform the following activity to create an independent case:
1. Problem Definition
When reading the briefing, extract:
- Who is affected by the problem and who is involved?
- What are the effects of the problem?
- Where does the problem occur?
- When does the problem occur?
- Why does the problem occur? Why is it important?
- How does this problem occur? Who is impacted?
And write a problem statement:
[Context]
This causes problems for: [user groups]
Why: [how and why this affects the user]
This is important because: [impact of the problem on the organization]
Reference: Review the Mustang Design Thinking Module lecture, Well-defined Problems.
It is recommended to conduct secondary research for more information.
2. Business Model Analysis
Create in FigJam, Miro, or any other virtual whiteboard tool with the Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas templates and fill in the analysis:
Firstly, Business Model Canvas:
Value Delivery
- What value do you deliver?
- Which customer segments do you support?
- What channels do you use to reach them?
- How do you retain customers?
Operations
- What are the key resources needed to run the business?
- What are the main activities that need to be executed?
- Who are the partners that can help execute the business?
Cost and Revenue Structure
- What are the main costs the business will incur?
- What are the main sources of revenue you can obtain from the business?
Next, the Value Proposition Canvas, exploring the columns of "Value Delivered" and "Customer Segments":
User Information
- What are the main tasks or objectives of your user?
- What are their pains in performing these tasks and achieving these goals?
- What are the main benefits they have when performing these tasks?
Business Information
- What are the main pain relievers to address the pains your product has?
- What are the main gain creators to boost the benefits?
- What products and services can you offer?
3. Competitor Analysis
Choose one of the challenges proposed for UX Unicorn 2.0 that is not your main challenge and perform the following activity to create an independent case:
Research on the internet for companies that somehow partially solve or complement the problems your product addresses. Consider not only direct competitors offering the exact same service as you but any business that helps users achieve the same goal you want to help them achieve. See the examples below:
Example 1: The main competitors for my courses are not other UX courses but any other initiative that helps people grow in their careers.
Example 2: The competitors of Booking.com are not just websites that offer hotel reservations but any business that helps people travel better.
In your analysis, do not forget to go through the following points:
- Define what you intend to measure, which is relevant to the study you are conducting.
- Define how you intend to measure this variable for comparison - it could be a survey in app store comments, a usability test to measure the time to complete a task, or even a heuristic evaluation.
- Collect the measurements and present the comparison.
4. Objectives and Relevant Metrics
After formatting the problem, finalizing the two canvases to better understand how your business can be operationalized, and getting to know competitors, consider that business and user objectives may be interesting to achieve, and define metrics to measure this success. It's not a marriage yet. The objective and metrics will give you a direction to be more assertive in your solution, but the path can be adjusted as you do more research and get closer to your users.
Business objectives suggestions: think about goals to improve acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, or other business metrics.
User objectives suggestions: think about goals to improve satisfaction, engagement, adoption, task success, or other user objectives.
For the portfolio:
It is recommended to have a separate case showing this study, and in your main work, you will only define what the problem and objective are clearly. A link to the detailed study of how you arrived at these two simple sentences can help illustrate your process better during an interview, but you don't need to include everything in the main narrative.
In summary:
- Your main portfolio with a link to a contextualized study on this topic (group work)
- An extra portfolio case that will be this exercise focused solely on strategy (individual)
- NOTE: Individual mini-cases will not be evaluated, but any doubts can be clarified in the community in the #doubts channel.