Overview

Manage your Cashflow is a feature within the BNZ activity tab. It gives customers the opportunity to answer the question of “How am I doing?” It totals all of the users money coming in and out over either a weekly or monthly timeframe and then will indicate if they have spent less or more than what has come in. Customers are able to take positive action on their cash-flow by setting a target for the surplus with the ability to transfer the savings to another account.

This feature was in response to customer feedback during research sessions where it was indicated that they wanted a way to budget and track their spending against their incomes without having to do any hard work. It became clear in usability that some customers have a strong desire to understand how they are doing with their money but haven’t looked that deep into their finances. 

Managing your finances can be challenging…

“How might we help customers be better with their money by providing them an insight to how their expenses are tracking against their income?“

Background

We have learned from customers that they want to know: 

• How much money has come in and out of their accounts in a selected time period of weekly/fortnightly time frames

• How do we treat almost getting there to their target

• How do we treat not getting their target 

'“People who are good with money say it looks like spending less than they earn”

Users and audience

Manage your cashflow is available to all mobile digitally active customers. This feature was designed with two specific personas in mind which were created by the research team as the initial ‘day in the life’ project for Activity. These were:

The sieve (Lillian)
‘My money seems to go out as fast as it comes in and I’m never quite sure where its all gone’

The futurist (Angus)
‘I like to plan ahead and I am really focused on making sure I am set up for the long term’

These customer groups were targeted as it gave us a good base of a customer who had little financial literacy and understanding of their spending compared to a customer who had more knowledge but still wanted to learn more. 

Roles and responsibilities

Activity was built by the everyday mobile banking team, where we worked collaboratively to define a customer centric solution. My role in this project was the Product Designer working alongside the Design Lead and a UX content writer. This was the third and most recent feature for the Activity tab. I worked on this project from the start to the finish with a couple of release improvements as we added value after the original release. My particular role included concepting, wire-framing, prototyping, analysing customer sessions and continuous iteration until we crafted the final UI. 

Scope and constraints

The scope for this project was tightened by the product team during the build, this was due to time constraints with the need to deliver value to the business. The intent of the Activity feature is to be evolving and improving so hopefully some of the experiences that we didn’t get over the line can be implemented at a later date. Some of these ideas included choosing your own payday and a target history overview. 

Research 

The UX research team carried out a big project to understand our customers and how they manage their finances. Over this time they conducted 120 face to face interviews with people aged 18-65 where the main focus was to put people over banking. I was lucky enough to have this resource at my disposal so I spent some time analysing and reading the findings. As I was also a part of the creating ‘category comparison’ for the activity feature I had some general knowledge of what customers were finding challenging and what would help them during customer sessions that I previously attended. 

Competitor research

I did some exploring into other personal financial management tools as initial competitor research to understand other businesses offerings. 

Quick fire concepts

Conceptualising through sketching is always my first step in the process as it allows me to get all my ideas out on paper with the blue skies as my limit. I find this gets me thinking broad without getting too caught up in the finer details of UI and focus on the experience as a whole.

Customer sessions

The first round of usability we had 3 wireframe concepts, this was a good start to findings as customers didn’t get too caught up on how the prototype actually looked but rather how it behaved. These were over two days, with six customers in total, 3 who fit the ‘sieve’ personas and 3 who fit the ‘futurist’ persona. 

Our three concepts were structured in slightly different ways as we had some assumptions that we wanted to validate. We wanted to find out what would be the most valuable information for the landing page of manage your cash flow these were:

• List of income sources with their values

• List of expenses grouped by category and values 

• Surplus/deficit as the hero 

• Do customers want to set up a ‘target’?

• Is it useful to have a monthly history of surplus/deficit

• Are customers interested in a tip of how to get a surplus amount?

• Do our customers want us to celebrate with them? 

• Are targets a set a forget or do they need to change monthly/weekly?

From these findings of the sessions we validated what information was the most important to customers, such as the surplus number, transaction lists and different time frames. 

Our next round of usability was with 6 customers who had money personas of the ones we were focusing on. In these sessions we had a prototype with refined UI design and the target feature added. We did two scenarios for the customer, one where they were in surplus and one that they were in the shortfall. 

From these sessions our findings validated that customers thought the notifications were a win, both a celebration and not reaching a target. We also learned that guidance for setting a target was helpful as some customers wouldn’t even know where to start and what action they would want from meeting a target.

Payday concepts

One of the findings we found was that setting your own payday would make targets more contextual. This didn’t make the build but I think it is very valuable to customers who don’t have a weekly or monthly pay cycle.

Target history

For the last round of usability we did guerilla testing for target history, this was a reasonably small feature so we did it with BNZ staff who used the Activity feature and got them to run through the prototype, this was to validate that the information displayed was understood, helpful and impactful. 

Strategy

The experience was shipped in two stages, the first release was ‘Manage your cashflow’ and the second release was the ‘Set a target feature’. 

What we wanted to improve:

• Customers know what their incomings are

• Customers know what their outgoings are

• Provide a quick overview of how they are tracking

• Provide timeframes that a customer can toggle between and use most suited to their paycycle

• Provide a target tool for customers to take action and improve their savings/paying down debt

How we did it: 

• Providing surplus/shortfall summary

• Categorising a customers incomings and outgoings

• Allowed customers to set a surplus goal

• Provided a visual target history to track their success/or just short

• Onboarded customers to the new feature

• Released ‘turn off transfers’ so the categorisation worked better (technical)

• Communicated content in plain english with the aim of being non-judgemental

Outcomes

This feature focuses on customers getting a greater transparency and oversight of their finances. Customers told us while their spending was confronting, they said the feature was making it easier for them which meant we were doing the hard work for them so they can focus on the right stuff. It has been awesome seeing responses of people loving the activity feature and how it is making an impact on how they manage their finances. I look forward to watching this space grow and evolve over time. 

Recognition

2021 • Best Design Award
Bronze

Software

Sketch, Invision, Adobe XD