Week 2

I was still struggling to decide what to make for my project so I conducted a survey to ask my audience as this is a very user-focused project. I needed to find out what they needed most and what was most useful to them in the most accessible form. 

From my survey, it is clear saving and budgeting is the most important aspect of personal finance young adults need help with. I am still unsure which medium I want to use but for the moment I need to focus on the content that is needed.

I decided to write out all my ideas I have on a large piece of paper because narrowing down such a huge topic is hard and what I want to make is hard to decide.

My two favorite ideas are creating an app or redesigning a financial literacy text book. I created two mood boards to show these ideas.

I got a bit lost with where my direction was heading and got very caught up in the research side of my project. I decided to have a long hard think about what that small nugget is that I care about. what part of my project am I passionate about and what am I triggered by. I needed to remind myself why I am doing this not for the user but for me. what is the bad habit I want to change:

• People spending money as soon as they get it and not thinking about the future
• wasting money because they have bad habits
• spending unnecessarily on things they don’t need
• as a result, getting into bad situations because they have no self control, no structure, no routine, too much freedom leaving home with no authority telling them what to spend money on as wasn’t taught money management
• they need to be taught how to be good not just what to do
• have no financial goals
• if you don’t have enough money for it you shouldn’t be buying it, living outside your means - buying things you cant afford

Although it took me a while to realize the answer to everything I've been asking is budgeting. I need to show my audience how to budget and adapt not just teach them this app will do it for me. It is a lifelong commitment that needs to be consistently used, so they need to be physically shown how to do it and how to adapt and change. If I am to focus on just this one aspect, one bad habit of personal money management I need to go in depth in budgeting meal ideas cheap food etc

"Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."

I had to remind myself that a small contribution done well has more impact than trying to solve a big issue not done well. I can turn one bad habit into a good one and hopefully have a lasting impact for the rest of their lives because their behaviour and attitude towards budgeting has changed and they will continue to use this knowledge for the rest of their lives.

My goal is to make a small contribution to their financial well being through an aspect of personal money management. Instead of trying to change everyone's financial habits and situations. I am not a superhero and I cannot do it all.


My next step is to find out why budgeting resources such as apps are not working, write down all the issues with budgeting and find the solution to these.

Next, I planned out all the ideas for my budgeting resource and brainstormed all the features it needs to have.

I started looking at existing precedents to see the style and design features they have used for the financial apps. This helped me get a sense of what the audience expects from a budgeting app.