Case study: Building a budgeting app that’s 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!