Finotta
Designing New Features for a Constrained Scope
Helping a White-Label App Add Even More Value
Finotta is a White-Label App that is looking to make a splash in the world of personal finance. To give context, a white label app is an application that is designed to be built into another existing app. To cover more ground, most of the feature ideation was worked on individually to present as many ideas as possible to our stakeholders. This combination of methods demonstrated our design cohort’s ability to collect data and synthesize as a team but ideate features as individuals.
Methods + Programs Used
Competitive Audits
Customer Journey Mapping
Kano Analysis
Annotated Wireframes
Sketch
Stakeholder Interviewing
Understanding Our Stakeholder’s Goals & Constraints
At the time of our project, Finotta already had a fully functional prototype available for our design team to examine with clear goals and intended functions.
This existing structure provided the design team with a set of constraints to work within and allowed us to create features explicitly catered to the world of personal finance.
Analyzing Our Stakeholder’s Competitors
Before we got deep into our work, we needed to establish context. Our first order of business was to evaluate Finotta's potential competition via a light competitive analysis.
By doing a competitive analysis, we could not only see what potential competitors were doing to innovate in personal finance but also use this context to design features that would make Finotta stand out. Our design team could save a fair amount of time by not rehashing what already existed in the personal finance ecosystem. Instead, we were able to push forward with unique features that other applications did not cover.
Visualizing A Customer’s Journey
A customer journey map is an exercise in empathy that User Experience Designers are striving for. In a customer journey map, the goal is to put yourself in the shoes of a user of your application.
In the case of Finotta, we were looking to picture ourselves as users on a financial repair journey, which was a significant component of the Finotta app. We cycled through the potential emotions a user might experience in the app from start to finish in the customer journey map. We had to imagine problems but also successes throughout the app's usage by a customer.
This exercise provides incredibly valuable insight into app design. It might not be as impactful as, say, an actual usability test; it is a cost-effective and timely exercise that can identify design insights well before tangible design elements and assets are being created.
The Kano Analysis
After providing a survey to test users, our design team conducted a Kano analysis. The Kano analysis is a fusion between qualitative and quantitative metrics. In this analysis, we took survey answers constricted in scope and entered them into a grid that allowed us to evaluate how much users wanted and valued certain app features.
Using this data, we narrowed our design scope even further to focus on features that users would likely want and need.
Presenting Feature Suggestions via Annotated Wireframes
Our project concluded with the production of annotated wireframes for Finotta. As they were the developers, our focus was to develop the concepts that they would eventually code into their application.
Annotated wireframes show our stakeholders the concept but also explain the design rationale behind our decisions.
In my annotated wireframe packet, I suggested that soft gamification was the best way to make a splash as a new, innovative app that wasn't just another generic financial planning app. I took into account the ethics of gamification of finances and only gamified positive financial moves for users.
Finotta has a unique position of being a white-label app inside an existing app; they only need to add value and do not need to sell any products explicitly. That is the bank's role. This freedom allows Finotta to have more latitude on what they can do to help users get their finances on track and stay on track. Framing an ordinarily dull and mundane task into a literal journey will allow a user to stay engaged and make a concerted effort into moving toward financial wellbeing.
See The Finotta Annotated Wireframes:
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