Bănuț

Stage 01

Context

A mobile application designed to make expense tracking so quick and easy that you can do it on the go. With this app, households no longer need to struggle budgeting with messy spreadsheets, as expense tracking is fast and intuitive, and it includes monthly and yearly spending statistics. Design & development done by me.

Stage 02

Research

Research started with an audit of direct and indirect competitors, in order to identify the strength and weaknesses of existing products before deciding what to implement in the app.

• Wallet (budget bakers)

  Direct competitor

  Strength

  Bank sync, strong reports, budgets, automatic categorisation.

  Gap

  Designed as a full personal-finance system, but certain features are locked behind a paywall.

• Spendee

  Direct competitor

  Strength

  Polished visual analytics, bank connections, budgets.

  Gap

  Shared finance is organised into wallets rather than around a household-first experience.

• YNAB

  Indirect competitor

  Strength

  Strong categories, reports and goal planning.

  Gap

  Focuses more on planning where money should go before/while spending it.

The idea for this application came from my own need for a simple and intuitive expense tracking system to replace the good old spreadsheet system. After exploring existing solutions, I found that most offered far more functionality than I needed, making a simple task feel unnecessarily complex.

Stage 03

The user

Two user personas, taking into consideration the two main types of users.

Amy

“The initiator”

Age

26

Occupation

Junior Associate

Income

1800$

Tech comfort

Medium

“I want us to actually know where our money goes, not guess at the end of the month and wonder where it all went.”

Goals

• See the full household spending picture at any moment
• Make financial decisions together as a team, not one person carrying the mental load
• Spot patterns (“we spend way too much on food delivery”) and adjust mindfully

Frustrations

• Her partner forgets to log on a spreadsheet or does it at night when memory is fuzzy, which corrupts the data
• Spreadsheets work on desktop but are painful mid-purchase on mobile
• Existing apps either split bills (not what she wants) or are bloated with features she doesn’t need

What matters most

Spending insights 95%

Simplicity 85%

Tracking speed 60%

Jake

“The participant”

Age

28

Occupation

Software Developer

Income

2500$

Tech comfort

High

“If logging takes more than a few seconds I’ll procrastinate and I’m going to forget about it. I’m not going to do it later, I know myself.”

Goals

• Contribute to the tracking without it feeling like admin work
• Not be the reason the household data is incomplete
• Know roughly where money is going without actively managing it

Frustrations

• Remembering to log after the fact is nearly impossible; he pays and moves on
• Feels guilty when Amy’s dashboard is incomplete because of him
• Finance apps feel like work clouded with too many features and views and he already stares at a screen all day

What matters most

Spending insights 50%

Simplicity 90%

Tracking speed 100%

Stage 04

Flow

The main user flow focuses on logging an expense, iterated and refined until the process is as simple and quick as possible.

Stage 05

Ideation

The initial design of the application was way simpler than its current state. The point was simply to make logging as quick as possible, however after user interviews and testing, I’ve leaned more into the idea of including budget limits, to help keep users aware of their financial standing. This change included spending limits per household and per category, as well as detailed spending insights (monthly spending per category, yearly spending per category and per month average, detailed logs in each category).

Some initial sketches

Stage 06

UI design

From simple wireframes to polished UI designs.

Hi-fi mock-ups

Stage 07

Prototype

Interactive HTML prototype created for testing. Try it out!

Open the prototype in a new tab →

Stage 08

Testing

I conducted usability testing with a group of individuals aged from 22–54, and the feedback greatly increased the user experience the app offered. While the younger users were more focused on improving UI features, placing buttons for commodity or where certain actions are expected, the older users were providing very constructive feedback on what features the app offers, and provided many great ideas to consider.

Some ideas I implemented

• Improved navigation

  Wherever a category name appears, users can navigate to the detailed page of that category by tapping it.

• Diverse currency

  Added the possibility of logging expenses in multiple currencies, converted into the default household currency at live exchange rates for the total spending insights.

• Informative dashboard

  Added a new category to the home dashboard which displays categories “At risk of overspending” (for categories with set spending limits).

Stage 09

Reflection

Bănuț started from a problem I couldn’t find a good solution for in existing finance apps: understanding shared spending without needing to split every expense. Designing around this specific use case made me realise how important it is to define what a product isn’t just as clearly as what it is.

The project also gave me the opportunity to take an idea through the full UX process, from competitor and user research to prototyping, testing and developing. The research helped me make design decisions based on actual user priorities rather than my own assumptions about how people manage shared money.

As I continue developing Bănuț, I plan to test it with users over a longer period of time. Since much of its value comes from identifying spending patterns, I think real usage over several weeks or months would reveal things that a prototype test cannot.

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