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Aeon Bank

Reinventing how people spend, save and budget their money.

This project introduces a new banking platform that seamlessly integrates traditional banking features with a primary focus on innovative financial management tools. By offering people a unified interface, we empower them to navigate their financial journey with ease, streamlining processes from budgeting to online purchases and international transactions.

Intro

01

My Role

I single-handedly led the design journey for this project, steering it from inception to completion for desktop, including a responsive experience. With no collaboration with other designers or developers, I took sole responsibility for conceptualizing, designing, and implementing the project. Despite working independently, I maintained a rigorous feedback loop, seeking input from stakeholders across various departments to ensure alignment with project goals and user needs. This solo endeavor provided me with invaluable opportunities for growth and learning as I navigated the challenges and complexities of the design process.

Timeline: Jan 2023 - Nov 2023

Industry: Finance

Platform: iOS and Android App

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Design Toolkit:

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02

Product thinking

What's the point of helping people budget and save their money?

There are many banks to choose from, and the Big 5 in Canada have been around forever with little to no innovation in their offerings and services. We want to redesign how people think about their bank. By making it easy, and even fun, for people to save and budget their money we plan to drive increased user engagement and retention through personalised savings goals, budgeting tools, and spending insights, thereby solidifying Aeon's position as a leader in the financial management space. This would also expand the customer base and increase market reach by appealing to a broad audience seeking to improve financial literacy and achieve specific goals. The advanced budgeting tools would differentiate Aeon from competitors and open up monetisation opportunities through subscription fees and loans.

03

Research

People want control

When I started this project my first step was to create a survey to understand what people wanted, what was and wasn't working for them with their budget and savings and their overall financial goals. Doing this as a survey allowed me to hear from people in different financial situations and to get a lot of responses. I got some really great insights from this research and it was a great starting point:

 

1. People want to feel like they're in control of their money but "control" looks different for everyone.

2. They want to know what's happening with their money, but too much information is overwhelming and a deterrent.

3. They like to see the impacts of their spending and saving.

 

After the surveys, I did Zoom interviews with 4 people to elaborate on the questions I asked and gather richer qualitative data.

04

Research

The more steps there are, the less likely people are to follow through with all of them.

I decided to use to Jobs To Be Done framework to guide my research and help determine the problem we could solve. I conducted a second survey where I asked paired importance/satisfaction questions for each sub-job. The answers to these questions uncovered features that are crucial yet currently unsatisfied and signal an opportunity to stand out from competitors. I also wanted to know at what point people stopped following through with the budget they created and how many people actually did follow through with all of the steps, consistently. What I found was that those who had more steps in their budgeting routine were more likely to give up on it altogether. Those who had fewer steps were the ones who stuck with it consistently. This part of the research laid the foundation for the design process because I got such great insights.

05

Research

The current options are lacking.

Most people use an Excel spreadsheet to create and track their budget. While this may work for some, those it didn't work for said they don't like having to use another platform. It adds steps and as we learnt, more steps equals less likely to follow through. Some people said their bank has spending insights available but no budget tracking features. For the budgeting apps I researched none were directly integrated with a bank. And based on my user research, people want their banking and budgeting in one place.

Below is an interactive Miro board of my research results.

06

Product thinking

Creating "Spaces"

I combined the research insights I had uncovered and started ideating around two main opportunities:

People want to see what payments are upcoming and how this will affect their bank account

People want to budget/save for multiple things at once. Some are fixed expenses some are not.

From my research, I know that options help people feel in control, but too many will turn them off. So what would be the least number of tasks I could present to get the job done? The bare minimum needed to create a budget and save is income vs expenses. 

01 inputting income

02 inputting expenses

03 assigning specific portions of income to each expense

In my research there were a few different budgeting methods that were used but the most successful ones (i.e. the ones that were stuck to and achieved the result of saving money) were zero-based method and pay yourself first.

Based on these insights I came up with the idea of creating "spaces" which would be the different expenses and would function similarly to how physical envelope budgeting works. These would be sub-accounts from the main bank account.The information from each of the Spaces (ie expenses) could be used to show upcoming bills and due dates as well as how much money they had left in their account after their upcoming bills were considered. The third option would be the automatic transfer option for those who like automatic transfers.
 

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07

Design

Flexibility and simplicity

My earliest design challenge was determining how the budget would be created since all the other features rely on it.

I designed a few different methods for creating and editing the budget and conducted user research to get feedback on each one.

I learned that:

1. The method with the least clicks was preferred

2. Seeing how much is assigned to a category is more important than seeing how much is left to be assigned

3. Users want to create their own budget categories

Based on these insights I designed the budget creation experience to allow for the customisation of categories. I also wanted this to feel as little like traditional budgeting as possible because in my initial research I learned that the traditional methods aren't working for people and they feel restrictive. Part of this design challenge was figuring out how to make the process simple.

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08

Design

Giving users control

Some users want to have their money automatically moved into their budget categories so I asked myself "What would be the easiest way to move money into spaces automatically?" The idea of being able to split up an income payment automatically would be easy because it could be taken care of as soon as the income is deposited.

I was then presented with another question: How will users set up automatic income sorting into their spaces? I needed to keep in mind that some spaces are for fixed expenses eg. rent and some are for variable expenses eg. saving for a vacation. I needed to design for these two scenarios.

After weighing up the strengths and weaknesses of my explorations, I narrowed it down to one design that I could bring to usability testing. 

Income Sorter Wireframe.png

09

Design

Swiping right 

My initial user research showed me that people want to be able to easily see what's happening with their money, and this isn't limited to transactions that have already happened. Users want to know their future financial commitments and upcoming expenses. Since the research showed that important information needs to be front and centre or it's forgotten, I wanted to have the upcoming bills feature on the very first page of the app with the transactions. 

Part of the challenge was determining how to give equal weight to both past transactions and upcoming expenses without creating a long vertical page that required the user to scroll to get from upcoming to past transactions.

After comparing my designs I decided that the strongest one was to display the upcoming bill information horizontally in a carousel that could be swiped and keep the past transaction information vertical to leverage existing industry standards and user expectations. 

Upcoming Bills Wireframe.png

10

Design

A financial safety net

Another important piece of the puzzle in helping users stay on top of their financial commitments is showing how their upcoming expenses affect their bank balance. It's great that we can show them what bills are coming up but they also need to know how much money they have available to spend when those commitments are taken into account. 

The solution for this seemed simple to me: Subtract the upcoming bills from the balance left in the account and show what's left at the tap of a button.

This is useful for those who don't use automatic transfers and don't create a separate Space for their bills as I know from my research some users will choose this strategy. Users can either add in their own recurring expenses manually or the app will detect patterns in past spending to predict future charges.

There are a few things that need to be considered:

1. We can't deliver a Spendable balance without first understanding future commitments so this feature is reliant upon that information to be accurate

2. What timeframe will be used to calculate the Spendable balance (available balance minus relevant upcoming charges)? Their regular income payments are a good marker for this. Those who don't have a regular income can choose any date of the month that works for them.

3. This will work best for those who want to keep their bill money in their main spending account since that's the account recurring charges will be taken from.

I decided to design this around the account balance on the home transaction screen so it is easily accessible.

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11

Research

Testing and refinement

I had created a prototype that was ready for usability testing.

I conducted moderated usability tests using interactive mid-fidelity prototypes with 6 users. I employed a combination of Zoom for the video call and screen sharing, along with the participants' own phone screen recording.

The testing highlighted a few categories for user feedback and several key findings emerged that provided valuable insights into the user experience. 

Vertical space on home page

Customers indicated that they expected more of the transactions to be visible on the screen but the upcoming bill cards were taking up too much space.

I made the cards smaller and tightened the spacing of each transaction to increase the vertical space. Doing this also made it more obvious that the cards could be dragged left and right to view more bills which was an added bonus to making this change.

"Current" vs "Spendable" terminology

I observed that users had difficulty understanding the balance feature terminology. I had originally used "current" to signify the true bank balance and "spendable" to signify how much money is available when upcoming bills are taken into consideration.

"I don't know what this means or what will happen when I press this button" - User testing participant

My initial thought was to leave the terminology as is and have users learn what it meant as they used the feature. After some thought I instead decided to work on some different language and chose "in your account" to show how much money is in the account and "available to spend" to signify how much money is available when upcoming bills are taken into consideration.

Due to time constraints, I wasn't able to do user testing on this new language.

Streamlining button placement

In the initial designs, the "income sorter" and "insights" buttons were on the homepage and the budget page. Some users indicated that they weren't sure if the buttons on the different pages were for the same feature or not. Solving this issue by removing them from the home page and keeping them only on the budget page helped to solve another issue on the home page of limited vertical space.

13

Conclusion

Bringing It All to Life

In a fast-paced world, Aeon simplifies finances, offering effortless budgeting, saving, and investing. With intuitive design and user-friendly features, it empowers informed decisions, providing peace of mind as you navigate your financial journey.

The images below show some of the app designs for iOS.

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The video below is a walkthrough of the app's budgeting features.

14

Conclusion

What I learned

Research Smart, Design Better

Initially, my research efforts were broad and unfocused, leading to the collection of data that had little impact on the design outcomes. I conducted extensive user interviews and surveys without a well-defined scope, gathering information on general technology usage patterns and preferences for unrelated applications. This resulted in an overwhelming amount of irrelevant data, wasting valuable time and diluting focus on the core issues.

From this experience, I learned the importance of defining clear research outcomes before data collection. By establishing specific goals and questions related to the project's objectives, I could streamline research efforts and gather data that genuinely informed design decisions. This targeted approach led to more insightful findings and a more effective design solution, highlighting the value of strategic, outcome-focused research planning.

Initially, my research efforts were broad and unfocused, leading to the collection of data that had little impact on the design outcomes. I conducted extensive user interviews and surveys without a well-defined scope, gathering information on general technology usage patterns and preferences for unrelated applications. This resulted in an overwhelming amount of irrelevant data, wasting valuable time and diluting focus on the core issues.

From this experience, I learned the importance of defining clear research outcomes before data collection. By establishing specific goals and questions related to the project's objectives, I could streamline research efforts and gather data that genuinely informed design decisions. This targeted approach led to more insightful findings and a more effective design solution, highlighting the value of strategic, outcome-focused research planning.

Initially, my research efforts were broad and unfocused, leading to the collection of data that had little impact on the design outcomes. I conducted extensive user interviews and surveys without a well-defined scope, gathering information on general technology usage patterns and preferences for unrelated applications. This resulted in an overwhelming amount of irrelevant data, wasting valuable time and diluting focus on the core issues.

From this experience, I learned the importance of defining clear research outcomes before data collection. By establishing specific goals and questions related to the project's objectives, I could streamline research efforts and gather data that genuinely informed design decisions. This targeted approach led to more insightful findings and a more effective design solution, highlighting the value of strategic, outcome-focused research planning.

I don't know best

Initially, I found myself relying on my own preferences and assumptions, thinking that what worked for me would work for my users. This led to design choices that did not resonate with users during user testing. For example, I preferred a minimalistic interface, assuming users would appreciate its simplicity. However, user feedback revealed that they found it confusing and lacked guidance.

This reminded me of the importance of separating personal biases from the design process. Embracing an empathetic approach and prioritising user-centric data over personal inclinations resulted in more effective and user-friendly designs. This reinforced the lesson that good design is rooted in understanding and addressing the real needs of the users, rather than projecting my own preferences onto the final product.

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