Mobile App Design

My Role

In Fall of 2015, I attended the CapitalOne hackathon as a UI/UX designer, where my team (two entrepreneurs, a developer, and me) created a diagnostic app to help small businesses identify problem areas in their financial management and provide solutions and guidance for being "financially fit". Our app was awarded honorable mention.

The Challenge

"WE DON'T WANT TO DEAL WITH..."

Methods: user research/testimonials, competitive research, market research

CapitolOne gave us 24 hours to design an app to help small businesses run more efficiently, specifically

"so [small businesses] can spend more time on their passion, and less time on [logistics such as] their banking."

Our user testimonials enabled us to create these three personas:

Our initial idea was to create some sort of a personal financial assistant, but we wanted to narrow our focus.

Our user research showed that small business owners (from here on, SBOs) were often preoccupied with immediate issues such as finding business partners, finding other reliable resources, and staffing. What about long-term financial planning?

Looking at the market, we discovered a useful fact: 8 out of 10 small businesses fail within their first year. We would not try to recommend a viable business model for every small business, but we could help bring attention to financial issues as they arise before they blow out of proportion.

The Vision

A diagnostic approach

We proposed an app to diagnose financial "sicknesses" and provide recommendations for "treatment", to keep small businesses alive and healthy the same way a doctor cares for a patient.

A diagnostic solution would eliminate the "you don't know what you don't know" loop.

Partial inspiration came from physical fitness trackers such as the Fitbit, from which we also drew inspiration for our name, BizFit.

Features and Flow

We had many ideas for cool features (premium services, long-term trajectory, regular reminders) but prioritized these given our time constraint:

diagnostic quiz to measure financial health
quiz results + detailed analysis
actionable recommendations

We then drew up the user flow, deciding on a mobile app because the modern SBO does business at home, on-the-go, in coffee shops, and in a wide range of environments, not limited to facing their computer screen.

Wireframing with content

With the time constraint in mind, we knew we had a limited amount of time to generate both the written content and the visual layout of the app. We decided to do it at the same time by using Google Docs (my first experience wireframing on Google Docs!). The two entrepreneurs on the team worked on content strategy while I worked on design.