Thyme
Empowering students' financial future by building lifelong financial habits.
Project
Ux/Ui Design
Tools
Figma, Illustrator, Qualtrics
Team
Abigail Morales
Laura Rengifo
Kailyn Saltzman
Duration
4 months
Thyme
Empowering students’ financial future by building lifelong financial habits.
Project
Conceptual UX/UI Design
Tools
Figma, Illustrator, Qualtrics
Duration
4 months
Team
Abigail Morales
Laura Rengifo
Kailyn Saltzman
Overview
/Challenge
Students and young people often struggle with finances and finding ways to track their spending, making daily activities much more difficult.
/Solution & Impact
We created a fun and interactive app that allows young people to not only learn about finances and built better financial literacy, but to also have fun while they're doing it.
Overview
/Challenge
/Challenge
Students and young people often struggle with finances and finding ways to track their spending, making daily activities much more difficult.
/Solution & Impact
We created a fun and interactive app that allows young people to not only learn about finances and built better financial literacy, but to also have fun while they're doing it.
Students are struggling financially.
situation
Without financial literacy education, many students find it hard to track spending, avoid debt, and build healthy money habits. Learning to budget effectively, finding ways to cut unnecessary costs, and seeking financial guidance can make a significant difference in easing these challenges - which is what we aimed to accomplished.
Helping students balance finances.
task
To learn more, my team conducted secondary research, interviews and surveys to find out why students are financially struggling, how they're effected, and what motivates them, and turned those insights into functioning prototypes we tested with users. I assisted in research, ideation, and visual design.
How might we motivate college students to improve their financial habits before they graduate college in a personalized way?
Initial Findings
19 million
people are currently in college.
$1.7 trillion
is how many past and current students owe a collective in loans.
$37,000
is how much the average student owes.
College students in the US…
...are not financially literate.
47% cannot answer basic questions about finances.
source: International Journal of Consumer Studies (2014)
...say finances are traumatic.
34% of students stated that their finances had been traumatic or very difficult for them to handle within the past 12 months.
source: American College Health Association (2016)
...are concerned about their loans.
28.8% of students reported that they had concerns about their ability to pay off loans.
source: College Student Financial Wellness: Student Loans and Beyond (2018)
...are stressed about finances in general.
over 70% of college students report being stressed about personal finances in general.
source: College Student Financial Wellness: Student Loans and Beyond (2018)
How we motivated college students to improve their financial habits. action
In 4 months, we did secondary research, created a survey, conducted interviews, user tested mid-fidelity wireframes, and turned our insights into functioning prototypes that had the capabilities to help students learn positive financial habits.
Students fall into one of the five categories
Popular budgeting apps are one size fits all – where's the personalization?
Survey Results
We utilized Qualtrics and snowball sampling in order to reach a sample size of 81 students. 39% of respondents state money is their biggest obstacle.
Interview Results
"I’m the type of person who relies both on hands-on work and the use of visual aides...keeping a budget planner has been the most successful budgeting method for me...”
– 4th year UT Austin student
"The thing with personal training was that it was super inconsistent.... It was just keeping track on [my bank’s] app- I can spend no more than $300.”
– 3rd year Texas Tech student
"I don’t know [why I’m not budgeting]. I’ll like think about it
and it’s a good idea. Maybe it’s the… putting things off
and not thinking about them”
– Non-traditional UNT student
"I don’t understand how taxes work so how do taxes work?”
– 1st year Texas State student
After our primary and secondary research was complete, we put our findings into an intuitive, personalized, budgeting app.
Welcome to Thyme, budgeting tailored to you
Thyme is a convenient to use budgeting app that aims to...
Increase financial literacy in a way that is fun and engaging.
Tailor the app experience using AI that understands users' spending personality type and financial habits.
Encourage young people to get in control of their finances.
Provide tools that makes budgeting intuitive and habitual.
Tailoring the experience
A personality assessment when onboarding helps our AI know what to expect from our user and make better recommendations.
Personality status is not permanent. As the AI learns how the user spends, it will start adjust accordingly.
AI builds its data by finding commonalities between personality types and what is most successful for each.
Interactive and memorable lessons
Allows users decide how to interact: manually, using the AI assistant, or through interactive games.
AI makes recommendations to the user about how to adjust their budget.
AI tracks progress and gives insights and recommendations on what adjustments on how to achieve goals.
Budgeting outside the app
Thyme has a physical or digital card that can be used to keep track of expenses.
With one tap the user can switch which pocket is being dipped into.
This allows for the user to keep track of how much money is in each spending category before making a purchase.
Students want to learn how to save.
result
After some mid-fidelity user testing, we discovered that users want to learn about finances and how to save, and want to do it in a way that's memorable. The results from our 4 usability tests concluded that:
Lessons need to be accessible and easy to follow and learn from through clear instructions and captions increase accessibility and clarity.
Not only should lessons be insightful, but they should also be memorable using fun animations.
Users don't always know where to begin, especially with something as daunting as finances. Adding prompts for users to begin their journey, including with the AI interactions, helped solve this.
View More Work...
Bridgecrest – UX/UI Design
Glidance – Packaging Design
Students are struggling financially.
situation
Without financial literacy education, many students find it hard to track spending, avoid debt, and build healthy money habits. Learning to budget effectively, finding ways to cut unnecessary costs, and seeking financial guidance can make a significant difference in easing these challenges - which is what we aimed to accomplished.
Helping students balance finances.
task
To learn more, my team conducted secondary research, interviews and surveys to find out why students are financially struggling, how they're effected, and what motivates them, and turned those insights into functioning prototypes we tested with users. I assisted in research, ideation, and visual design.
How might we motivate college students to improve their financial habits before they graduate college in a personalized way?
19 million
people are currently in college.
$1.7 trillion
is how many past and current students owe a collective in loans.
$37,000
is how much the average student owes.
Initial findings
...are not financially literate.
47% cannot answer basic questions about finances.
source: International Journal of Consumer Studies (2014)
...say finances are traumatic.
34% of students stated that their finances had been traumatic or very difficult for them to handle within the past 12 months.
source: American College Health Association (2016)
...are concerned about their loans.
28.8% of students reported that they had concerns about their ability to pay off loans.
source: College Student Financial Wellness: Student Loans and Beyond (2018)
...are stressed about finances in general.
over 70% of college students report being stressed about personal finances in general.
source: College Student Financial Wellness: Student Loans and Beyond (2018)
How we motivated college students to improve their financial habits.
action
In 4 months, we did secondary research, created a survey, conducted interviews, user tested mid-fidelity wireframes, and turned our insights into functioning prototypes that had the capabilities to help students learn positive financial habits.
Students fall into one of the five categories
Popular budgeting apps are one size fits all - where's the personalization?
Survey Results
Survey Results
We utilized Qualtrics and snowball sampling in order to reach a sample size of 81 students. 39% of respondents state money is their biggest obstacle.
"I’m the type of person who relies both on hands-on work and the use of visual aides...keeping a budget planner has been the most successful budgeting method for me...”
– 4th year UT Austin student
"The thing with personal training was that it was super inconsistent.... It was just keeping track on [my bank’s] app- I can spend no more than $300.”
– 3rd year Texas Tech student
"I don’t know [why I’m not budgeting]. I’ll like think about it
and it’s a good idea. Maybe it’s the… putting things off
and not thinking about them”
– Non-traditional UNT student
"I don’t understand how taxes work so how do taxes work?”
– 1st year Texas State student
Welcome to Thyme, budgeting tailored to you
Thyme is a convenient to use budgeting app that aims to...
Increase financial literacy in a way that is fun and engaging.
Tailor the app experience using AI that understands users' spending personality type and financial habits.
Encourage young people to get in control of their finances.
Provide tools that makes budgeting intuitive and habitual.
Tailoring the experience
A personality assessment when onboarding helps our AI know what to expect from our user and make better recommendations.
Personality status is not permanent. As the AI learns how the user spends, it will start adjust accordingly.
AI builds its data by finding commonalities between personality types and what is most successful for each.
Interactive and memorable lessons
Allows users decide how to interact: manually, using the AI assistant, or through interactive games.
AI makes recommendations to the user about how to adjust their budget.
AI tracks progress and gives insights and recommendations on what adjustments on how to achieve goals.
Budgeting outside the app
Thyme has a physical or digital card that can be used to keep track of expenses.
With one tap the user can switch which pocket is being dipped into.
This allows for the user to keep track of how much money is in each spending category before making a purchase.
Students want to learn how to save.
results
After some mid-fidelity user testing, we discovered that users want to learn about finances and how to save, and want to do it in a way that's memorable. The results from our 4 usability tests concluded that:
Lessons need to be accessible and easy to follow and learn from through clear instructions and captions increase accessibility and clarity.
Not only should lessons be insightful, but they should also be memorable using fun animations.
Users don't always know where to begin, especially with something as daunting as finances. Adding prompts for users to begin their journey, including with the AI interactions, helped solve this.
View More Work...
Bridgecrest – UX/UI Design
Glidance – Package Deisgn
Designing a better unboxing experience for blind users.