Smart Budget
A mobile budgeting companion for people on a regular income for the first time, who want to know if they can afford $40 for dinner tonight without opening a spreadsheet.
My Contribution
Smart Budget was a six-person capstone project. I led key areas of the research and synthesis while collaborating with the team on product direction and final delivery.
Team Lead
Helped coordinate the six-person team and keep the project moving through the design process.
Quantitative Research
Led the survey research used to identify budgeting behaviors, frustrations, and user priorities.
Competitive Analysis
Led the evaluation of competing financial products to identify common patterns, gaps, and opportunities.
Research Synthesis
Helped translate research findings into personas, empathy maps, user needs, and product direction.
Final Presentation
Led the work of organizing and delivering the team's final capstone presentation.
Wireframes, UI design, prototyping, and testing were completed collaboratively by the full team (Christina Staggs, Srijeeta Ghosh, Alyx Choe, Christopher Wilson, David Paleno, Ryan Speight).
TL;DR
People on a steady paycheck for the first time want to know whether they can spend money today, and most budgeting apps answer that question only after a long setup.
Research and Testing at a Glance
Survey research
23 respondents
10-question survey
Led by Christopher Wilson
Follow-up interviews
Qualitative contextual research
Used to deepen the survey findings
Helped inform the composite persona
Prototype sessions
Formative task-based evaluation
Dashboard, onboarding, budgeting, and alerts
Used to identify usability friction
Project status
Academic capstone prototype
Six-person collaborative project
No launched-product analytics
Participant totals for the follow-up interviews and prototype sessions were not preserved in the final project documentation. Those findings are therefore presented as qualitative and directional rather than as quantified usability results.
The 23-person survey established the initial patterns and feature priorities. Qualitative follow-up interviews provided additional context for the composite persona. Formative prototype sessions were used to evaluate the product’s core mental model and identify friction in onboarding, dashboard hierarchy, navigation, and alert language. Smart Budget was an academic capstone rather than a launched product, so the results should be read as directional design evidence.
There are dozens of personal finance apps. Most serve one of two users: the spreadsheet-loving optimizer who wants every lever, or the household coordinating shared accounts.
Neither is the largest underserved group. That group is the person earning a regular paycheck for the first time, moving from tips, freelance checks, or student life to a steady salary. They now have to make one paycheck last a month.
They don't need more features. They need fewer decisions and faster reassurance.
Most respondents rated themselves beginner or intermediate at personal finance. Roughly a third weren't actively budgeting at all.
Existing tools ask for ongoing categorization, reconciliation, and weekly reviews. Beginners can't sustain that.
How might we help a first-time budgeter answer one question every day, “can I spend this?”, without requiring weekly maintenance to keep the answer accurate?
A 10-question survey, a mixed-method audit of three incumbents, one synthesized primary persona, and a ruthless filter on every feature: does this earn its place for Alex?
This was a 6-person capstone team project (Christina Staggs, Srijeeta Ghosh, Alyx Choe, Christopher Wilson, David Paleno, Ryan Speight). As team lead, I led the survey research and the competitive audit, and helped translate the findings into personas, empathy maps, and the product direction we agreed on as a team.
Survey research (23 respondents)
My Lead23 respondents, 10-question survey. I led the survey design, distribution, and analysis.
identified staying consistent as their biggest budgeting challenge.
Product implication
The experience needed to reduce the effort required to understand current spending, not add more upkeep.
Design response
Our team anchored the app in goal progress and visible feedback instead of recurring categorization work.
chose a simple dashboard as the single must-have feature — ahead of alerts, automation, and goals.
Product implication
One glanceable surface had to answer the daily question, “can I spend this?”
Design response
The team prioritized a dashboard as the default screen and pushed filtering and reports one level deeper.
Open app
No landing screen, no splash decision
Dashboard
Default surface, always the same
Pick a module
Monthly Spend · Spend vs Budget · Savings Progress · Upcoming Bills
View by category?
Yes → filtered detail · No → stay in overview
Edit?
Yes → adjust budget or bill · No → back to Dashboard
Confirmation
Confirm, then return to Dashboard
Every flow in the app follows the same shape: Overview → Detail → Action → Confirmation → Return.
Why it matters
A simple dashboard was the most requested individual feature, finishing ahead of every other option. Beginners abandon tools that demand constant categorization; if the first surface looks like a spreadsheet, they're gone.
Design decision
Lead with one glanceable answer (can I spend this?); push categorization, filtering, and reports one level deeper.
Why it matters
Unexpected expenses and poor visibility into daily spending were the two biggest reasons people went over budget. Passive dashboards don't help; they require the user to remember to look.
Design decision
Bias the system toward proactive alerts (upcoming bills, category thresholds) over passive reporting.
Why it matters
'Staying consistent' was the single most common budgeting challenge in the survey — more than categorizing, more than feeling overwhelmed. Yet motivation came from specific goals and visible progress, not external reminders.
Design decision
Anchor the experience in goal progress and streak-style visual feedback rather than nagging notifications.
Why it matters
In testing, users conflated 'I budgeted $400 for groceries' with 'I spent $312 on groceries.' Two different jobs, two different surfaces.
Design decision
Hard separation between Transactions (history) and Budgets (planning); same vocabulary, different verbs.
Why it matters
During formative sessions, inconsistent categories repeatedly forced participants to relearn the interface across tabs. It was a recurring pattern, not an isolated quirk, and it eroded confidence.
Design decision
One canonical category set across Dashboard, Transactions, and Budgets. Filter once, see it everywhere.
Automation-heavy subscription tracker
Clean dashboards and strong at surfacing recurring spend, but advanced features sit behind multiple steps and paywalls. Great for cost control; weak on forward-looking weekly planning.
Premium goal-based planning platform
Polished, structured, best-in-class for long-term planning and shared accounts. Information-dense screens make onboarding heavy — wrong fit for a first-time budgeter.
Lightweight manual tracker
Fast to log a transaction and easy to learn. The UI feels dated, and the lack of automation, insights, and modern visualization means logging rarely turns into behavior change.
Alex is a composite proto-persona developed from patterns in the 23 survey responses and qualitative follow-up interviews, then refined collaboratively by the six-person project team. The profile represents recurring research patterns rather than one participant. Because the follow-up-interview sample size was not preserved, Alex should not be presented as a fully validated persona.
X-Ray Technician · Houston, TX
Hourly + shift differentials; paycheck varies $400–$900 every two weeks
“I want to know where my money is going without spending Sunday night on a spreadsheet.”
Synthesized from survey responses and interview notes, mapped to the four quadrants that shaped the product's tone and priorities.
The shortest path to a good product runs through several rough ones. These were the most useful failures.
As noted above, these are directional observations from the design process.
Core tasks
Observed friction
What happened
The first prototype asked users to link a bank, set eight category budgets, and create savings goals before they saw a single screen of value. In our sessions, most people stalled at the budget step.
What I learned
Onboarding is a value transaction, not a configuration form. Users won't pay setup costs for a product they haven't experienced yet.
How I adapted
Re-sequenced onboarding so the dashboard arrives first, with smart defaults. Budgets became an optional 'tune later' step surfaced after the first week of data.
What happened
The initial layout led with a monthly spend chart and a savings progress ring. Users glanced at it, then tapped through to their account balance instead.
What I learned
We had designed for the planner persona's mental model, not the daily-check persona's. The chart was well made and ignored.
How I adapted
Promoted 'Safe-to-spend today' to the top of the dashboard as a single large number. Charts moved down, so the answer is on screen before anyone taps.
Early version — chart-first
Final version — Safe-to-spend first
What happened
Early alert copy was either too generic ('Budget update') or too sharp ('You've overspent!'). One participant told us they would turn notifications off rather than read another one.
What I learned
Alert tone is part of the UX. Money worry runs deep, and alarming copy creates the exact feeling the product is supposed to relieve.
How I adapted
Rewrote every alert to be clear, calm, and actionable: 'Groceries is at 80% with 9 days left. Here's what's left to spend.' Added a one-tap snooze and a clear settings path.
Five flat top-level sections. Complex features (Split Bills, Alerts, Security) are nested one level deep rather than promoted to the main nav.
Every screen earns its place against Alex's daily question. Same vocabulary, same colors, same hierarchy. Learn one surface, you've learned the app.
The dashboard answers the one daily question with a single number, in the largest type on the screen. Everything else is supporting evidence.
Budgets is a planning surface. Transactions is a ledger. They share categories and colors, but never share verbs: you plan in one, you review in the other.
Notifications arrive before money becomes a problem and read like a thoughtful friend, not a bank statement. Every alert is snoozable, dismissible, and explains itself.
Split Bills, custom alert thresholds, and advanced security live one tap deeper. The primary nav stays calm because most users never need them on day one.
The full Smart Budget prototype, embedded right here — no need to leave the case study. Tap through the dashboard, transactions, and budget flows the same way a test participant would.
Prefer a full window? Open the prototype in a new tab ↗
Version 1 was a low-fidelity prototype of the dashboard alone: a safe-to-spend number, a few budget categories, and a basic transaction log. We walked participants through task-based sessions, asking things like “can you tell if you have enough to buy dinner tonight?” The goal was to check the core mental model before adding anything else.
Design changes
Observed after revision
As noted above, these are directional observations from formative prototype sessions, not product metrics.
Safe-to-spend moved to the top as the single largest element. Participants stopped tapping through to their balance to get the same answer.
Separating Budget (planning) from Transactions (history) removed the confusion we watched people run into repeatedly in early sessions.
Calm, specific alert copy replaced generic and alarming phrasing. Participants described the rewritten alerts as useful rather than stressful.
I've juggled uneven income as a musician, so I knew the Sunday-night spreadsheet dread. It gave me empathy for Alex. It didn't tell me what to build. The decisions came from watching people stall, then listening to what they said next.
I wanted every screen to earn its place. Often the way to make one screen useful was to delete the one next to it. Those cuts felt risky. The screens that survived got stronger each time.
The alert rewrite changed how people felt more than any layout change did. When money is tight, 'You've overspent!' lands like a threat. A calmer sentence kept people in the app.
The first two versions were wrong, and not subtly. Watching people struggle was uncomfortable. It also made the third version obvious.