What is it?
Balance is a financial services and business analytics product that is targeted towards Generation Z hustlers including content creators, small business owners, and freelancers. It provides a seamless, all-in-one mobile application that allows users to view and manage cash flow, set business strategy goals, and track growth over time using AI generated business insights.
What was my role?
My role as the sole UX designer was to translate Balance into a seamless, user friendly mobile app while contributing to branding and collaborating with my client.
The research for this problem space was completed by my client prior to my on boarding. Here are some key research insights that guided the vision and purpose of Balance.
Let's begin with a quote from a user interview with a small business owner.
"I owned several E-Commerce businesses and a clothing brand, and I found that keeping track of cash flow was getting increasingly difficult as I scaled my businesses. I would lose track of how much I spent on ad spend, outsourcing employees & more. Money was lost in the cracks. I had to audit all the data to create efficient financial strategies for my businesses. This cost me a significant amount of time & money that I would've rather spent on my businesses."
The user research insights emphasize the importance of organization and seamless tracking when growing a business. In addition to user research, understanding the market and trends allowed us to understand the audience and the scale of the problem we are solving.
This pain point affects all users of our target audience. The mission of balance is to empower businesses by providing a service that helps organize and scale their entrepreneurial efforts. The solution would achieve the following:
Kyle Wu is a 28 year-old full time content creator. He focuses on making authentic, relatable and engaging day in the life videos on TikTok, Instagram, and Youtube.
Kyle's biggest pain point is that revenue slips through the cracks due to poor expense tracking. He also has many responsibilities (brand deals, ad spend, filming) and struggles to keep track of his performance across multiple social media platforms on a consistent basis.
With this persona in mind, I began my ideation process.
The specific features my client wanted in the product are:
How can this information be presented in an intuitive, accessible, and user friendly manner?
Brainstorming
In my ideation process, I explored many possible ideas through a whiteboarding session (don't worry about focusing in on the image)....
... which was followed by a prioritization mapping after extracting the best ideas:
Final Ideas (Converge)
Going back to the question: How can this information be presented in an intuitive, accessible, and user friendly manner?
These are the main ideas integrated into the final product.
A quick scenario with our persona Kyle, using some of the main features from the brainstorm ideas.
A few of the low-fidelity wireframes that outline the home screen (dashboard) and the finances tab.
After multiple iterations and feedback from my client, I created the styling and branding guidelines and integrated everything into the final MVP mobile application.
Here are the final mock ups of the Balance mobile application. I integrated a dark mode theme to achieve a clean, sleek look. Select each frame to expand view.
