Finotta Feature Overhaul

Can finances be fun? Exploring methods to simplify and gamify fintech with the finotta app.

Format: Mobile App

Research: Competitive Analysis, Stakeholder Interviews, User Journey Map, Feature Cards, Kano Analysis

Tools: Sketch, Figma, Excel, Invision, Zoom

 Executive Summary

Problem-Space

Finotta is an in-progress mobile app designed to help users build their wealth and pay down debts. They asked us to brainstorm features that would improve the onboarding process, increase gamification aspects, enhance micro-interactions and address accessibility.

Solution

After conducting stakeholder interviews, competitive analysis and secondary research, we crafted feature cards as a group and sent a batch of them to Finotta for review via Kano analysis. From there, individually I devised four features that I felt brought a high level of value to the application: a preview of the app that would be show to the user before onboarding, a soft redesign of the dashboard that simplified its presentation, a process to unlock and customize their Autopilot feature, and a level-up system that rewards users for completing tasks.

How Did We Get Here?

Finotta is a white-label finance-management app currently in progress that is planning to be released sometime in 2021. Finotta offers two products simultaneously: a mobile app for end users that will run through their existing banking apps, and a desktop analytics dashboard designed for banks to gather data on user engagement so they can better understand and improve their own products. We were focused on making improvements to their mobile app, which is designed primarily to help users reduce debt, improve their financial health and build wealth.

Finotta came to us with four primary goals for their mobile app:

  1. Increase engagement during onboarding

  2. Advance gamification concepts for incentivizing financial behavior change

  3. Leverage micro-interactions for encouragement and support of behavior

  4. Integrate accessibility considerations


Finotta considers their primary user to be: an individual who wants a personalized digital banking experience so they can better understand and achieve their financial goals as fast as possible.


Finotta provided a working beta of the app which included the launching and onboarding process, the main dashboard, and access to some of the daily task and wealth-building flows users would be likely to use. To gain better insights into the fintech landscape and see how finotta stands out, a competitive analysis was conducted.

Competitive Analysis

There are literally hundreds of banking and finance apps, budgeting tools and self-motivation products within the fintech landscape. From this plethora a group of applications was selected to perform a competitive analysis:

  • MX Technologies (Helios 5)

  • Personetics

  • Mint

  • Credit Karma

  • YNAB (You Need A Budget)

  • Digit

The goal of this analysis was to determine what features users expect to see among similar apps, how these apps handle the onboarding process, see to what extent gamification is already being utilized, and ascertain what gaps exist in the market that finotta may be able to take advantage of.

Findings

  • Of these apps, MX Technologies is the only product that offers the dual mobile API / desktop analytics platform that finotta also provides. However, MX Technologies appears to be focused on delivering a more complex platform for end-users than finotta is hoping to achieve, and I believe their target users are more well-versed and confident in their finances than the primary users finotta is targeting

  • Personetics is intended as a white-label extension of a user’s banking app, similar to finotta, but is not focused on improving financial health

  • Mint and Digit both offer excellent guided onboarding experiences that feel personal and flexible. However, those apps (and YNAB) are more focused on budgeting tools than finotta

  • Credit Karma has a slick user interface and friendly interactions, but its laser focus on improving the user’s credit score ignores other aspects of financial health. Also, Credit Karma’s repeated attempts to sell credit cards felt slightly underhanded

Stakeholder Interviews

To gain further insight into finotta’s goals, mission and ethos, a stakeholder interview was conducted with their CTO on April 19, 2021. This interview was incredibly valuable and provided critical enlightenment of how finotta views the user’s context. Some key takeaways include:

  • A typical finotta user may have anxiety when dealing with their finances and the user experience needs to be carefully considered as to not overwhelm them or drive them away

  • Finotta is concerned with the ethics of gamification and want to avoid addictive concepts

  • The app is centered around a proprietary financial health score that grows as the user pays down debts and builds their wealth

  • There is a robust Autopilot feature in development that can automatically manage the user’s debts and build wealth without any input from the user

User Journey Map

With a deeper understanding of the app, the competitive landscape and the company’s goals in mind, I constructed a user journey map in Sketch detailing the complete path a user might take with finotta, from discovering and downloading the app, through onboarding and getting acquainted with its features, through an extended endgame where the user extends their financial health beyond the app’s boundaries. I elected to craft a persona whose financial story is close to my own: a young professional with a small amount of wealth who has anxiety about dealing with their finances, which has created a barrier to them becoming more financially stable.

From this journey map, pain points and opportunities for improvement were elucidated, with a clear path forward for sketching and prototyping features.

Click image to view full-sized

Feature Cards

In a group setting, over 70 features were sketched in low fidelity and presented as feature cards on a freehand Invision board. These features were arranged into groups by feature type and brief descriptions of each feature was drafted to complement the sketches.

These feature cards were presented to the finotta CTO on April 22, 2021 to gain insights regarding the practical use of each feature, how it fits into the finotta app, and most critically, an estimated man-hours budget needed for the development team to build each feature.

In total, 11 features were selected to send to finotta for an internal Kano survey.

Kano Survey / Analysis

The Kano Survey results plotted onto a graph. The four largest squares contain the most highly-rated features

Kano surveys ask potential users to rate features based on how they would feel if the feature was present as well as if the feature was absent, and from those surveys an analysis of the features can be performed and their importance categorized and graphed. In this instance, the Kano survey was sent internally to the finotta team as the app is not currently available to the public.

Key Findings

  • Users should know what finotta is before they start onboarding

  • The dashboard is too long and overly complex for users

  • Users don’t know what Autopilot is or how to unlock and use it

  • There is a lack of visible rewards for progress made using the app

 Annotated Wireframes

I drafted high-fidelity wireframes in Figma fleshing out features that would address the key pain points and findings from the research. These wireframes were annotated, bundled into a presentation deck, and presented to the finotta CEO on April 26, 2021.

 

App Preview

  • Provides an overview of the Finotta app and its features before a user begins onboarding

  • Gives users a clear descriptions of the app’s most important features: the dashboard, the financial health score, Autopilot, and the personalized recommendations

  • Motivates users who embark on the onboarding process by providing a clear picture of what they are getting involved in 

 

Dashboard Redesign

  • Simplifies the dashboard into a single “above-the-fold” screen

  • Prioritizes the app’s most important features: the health score, the users' income and expenses, the daily tasks, and the Autopilot feature

  • By moving the rest of the features into a hamburger menu, new users won’t be overwhelmed and will be more likely to engage with the app

The original dashboard is too busy

My redesign prioritizes the health score

 

Autopilot Unlock

  • Clearly communicates to the user what needs to be accomplished to unlock the Autopilot feature

  • Educates the user as to Autopilot’s basic features

  • Provides the user with customization tools so they can tailor Autopilot to their specifications

The Autopilot button turns green when the feature is unlocked

Dropdown menus let the user customize the Autopilot experience

 

Level-Up System

  • Gives users feedback for any action that adds points to their financial health score in the form of confirmation pop-ups and micro-animations

  • Users “level up” every twenty points gained and see changes to their icon for every level gained

  • Each level provides bigger and better perks and rewards, from free checkbooks to gift cards to better interest rates on their accounts

 Deliverables

A report containing the details of my findings and recommendations was sent to Finotta leadership on April 23, 2021. This report contained:

  • A detailed overview of the research conducted and my findings

  • The journey map showing how a typical user would interact with Finotta over time

  • A complete breakdown of all features utilizing annotated wireframes to demonstrate their function