Need Finding (Understanding Problem Space)

Process 1: Identifying needs and establishing requirements

Problem Statement:

Nowadays, humans face several significant challenges in managing their finances, especially university students who are chasing after social activities and luxury. Among the countless financial tasks, splitting and settling bills with roommates or friends, tracking expenses and maintaining a clear overview of one’s financial health is particularly complicated. Traditional methods to manage these tasks, such as manual calculations, spreadsheets and paper receipts, are outdated because they can be time-consuming, inefficient and error-prone.

The lack of integrated tools that cater to their unique lifestyle and financial needs can lead to misunderstandings, unpaid debts, and poor financial habits. Thus, students need an efficient, reliable, and user-friendly solution to manage shared expenses, personal finances, and overall financial health.

Possible Solution

A mobile application that integrates the function of bill and financial management is designed to fit the students' lifestyles. It provides smart bill splitting that enhances transparency and accountability in shared financial responsibilities in group activities. Moreover, the app allows students to clearly see their financial status and manage their expenses.

Design Process

User-centered design process

User Analysis

• User Persona

To understand the users' needs, we conducted one-on-one interviews with users similar to Lau Kai Min to collect qualitative data. These interviews focused on how they manage their shared expenses and finances. We also gave them experience with existing applications such as Splitwise to determine what difficulties they have when using the apps. Finally, Lau Kai Min represents the users that were interviewed.

• Empathy Map

Empathy map

Task Analysis

• Hierarchical Task Analysis

Task 1

Task 2

Task 3

According to the HTAs and users’ thought processes, we found that people needed splitting bills and financial management applications to manage their finances. To fulfil the users’ needs, we combined the split bill and financial management application into an application. During the interview, we gave three different users' experiences of the existing split bill application, which is Splitwise. We found that they have different ways to accomplish the same task. The first user quickly navigates the interface as she has experience with the existing application, while the second user needs more time to navigate and struggles in certain steps as it is more confusing. The third user has a slower approach to checking and confirming the amount of accuracy. By comparing the HTA’s for each user on the same task, we discover that the application's activity and notification category are confusing. We also found that the users needed a scanning receipt and calculator function when entering the bill amount due to convenience. Besides that, the notification can be more regular to remind users to pay their debt. By gathering all of the users’ feedback, we will improve the categorised activity part and make regular notifications. We will add some new features like a calculator and uploading bill receipts. The user interface will be enhanced by using a simpler interface, attracting theme colours and icons, and providing clear navigation to improve the user experience and be user-friendly. On the other hand, we will keep some tasks like creating a group and expenses for the bills and entering bill details from the Splitwise app. Furthermore, we will keep the various splitting methods the users find very useful. From the user thought process, we learned to brainstorm ideas, understand our users better, organise and analyse our tasks, identify new features and enhance the user’s experience.