UniFi Personal Finance Management App
A simple, guided tool for budgeting and financial literacy that empowering international students in the U.S. to build sustainable finance habits.
My Role
User Research
Usability Testing
Wireframing
Prototyping
Team
Gloria Yang
Roshni Ganesh
Aswathi Thilak
Youlu Xu
Tools
Figma
Google Form
Timeline
Oct - Dec 2024
Overview
Design Prompt
Many individuals struggle to manage their personal finances effectively, leading to stress and uncertainty about their financial future.
How can you design a tool that helps users create and maintain a personalized budget?
The Problem
International students often experience chaotic personal finance management in the United States due to difficulty maintaining a budget unfamiliarity with the U.S. financial system and limited awareness of available financial options.
How might we support international students in adapting to the U.S. financial system and developing sustainable personal finance habits for long-term stability?
Our Solution
A simple, guided tool for budgeting and financial literacy that empowering international students in the U.S. to build sustainable finance habits.
Process starts here↓
Research
Discovery & Research
User Research
Conducted in-depth interviews with 18 international students across varies major and age to understand their financial habits and pain points
Conducted empathy mapping, persona mapping, and user journey mapping to uncover emotional and behavioral patterns
Synthesized qualitative findings through affinity mapping to identify recurring needs and frustrations
Competitive Analysis
Audited existing financial tools such as Copilot, Chase, BOA, & Monarch
Assessed feature sets, onboarding flows, and educational components across competitors
Identified gaps in personalization, manage budget, finance support, and beginner-friendly guidance for international users
Key Insights
International students feel overwhelmed starting their financial journey in a new country
Generic tutorials are often ignored—users prefer content tailored to their situation
Excessive charts and analytics make tools feel intimidating and hard to navigate
Users frequently split expenses and need a clearer way to track shared spending
Manual tracking is tedious—users prefer features that automate categorization and input
Ideation
Concept Ideation
To turn research insights into actionable solutions, we held a collaborative brainstorming workshop with our design and strategy team. Using key pain points from user interviews and journey mapping, we explored a wide range of ideas—from personalized dashboards to peer-to-peer money tracking tools.
After mapping ideas against feasibility and user value, we narrowed them down to five core features that addressed both user needs and business goals:
Onboarding – to guide first-time users through setting up accounts and financial goals
Home Dashboard – a personalized overview of spending, balances, and key insights
Transactions – clear visibility and control over spending history and shared payments
Budgeting Tools – to help users set, track, and manage personalized monthly budgets
Educational Modules – bite-sized financial content tailored to international students
This feature set became the foundation of our mid-fidelity prototype and testing strategy.
Wireframes
Turning Ideas into Low-Fidelity Wireframes
After aligning on our 5 core features:Onboarding, Home Dashboard, Transactions, Budget, and Education, we translated our concepts into low-fidelity wireframes. These early sketches helped us quickly visualize structure, prioritize content, and validate user flows before committing to detailed design. We focused on layout clarity and usability to ensure each screen aligned with user needs uncovered during research.
Usability Testing
Moving on to Test our Design with Users
To validate our low-fidelity wireframes, we created a clickable prototype and conducted moderated usability testing with four international students who had recently moved to the U.S. We used a mix of remote and in-person sessions, guiding participants through five core tasks to evaluate clarity, navigation, and task completion. This helped us identify usability issues early and gather valuable feedback to inform design iterations.
Onboarding Main Insights
User felt too many steps
Streamline some questions, group them more systematically by affinity
User did not find the need to upload a photo particularly
Remove unnecessary steps
Home Dashboard Main Insights
Users want to see their net worth. Too many detailed numbers feel stressful
Focus on the most useful information
Users are confused by too many ways to direct to other pages
Reduce duplication
Budget Set Up Main Insights
Set up the total budget upfront without referring to it later makes no sense
Add up to total budget
Users felt the big circle on budget isn't informative
Change to better visualization format
Users who just moved to the city felt stressful to set up a budget without knowing the cost of living in the city
Provide budget templates based city they chose
Combine Transactions Main Insights
Users couldn't tell the exist of the combine feature
Add tutorials to introduce features
Users felt the search and add up steps in the process are repetitive. Save button was not clear on the screen
Simplify steps and emphasize the save button
Educational Tips Main Insights
Users prefer pop-up options instead of expand
Continue with pop-up design
Users dislike the smallest icon educational tips
Replace small icon tips with pop-up and page-style educational content design
Users felt text-heavy on the page and pop-up tips
Use infographic and keep the tips concise and enough white space for users to read
Final Solution
Refining the Design into the Final Solution
Based on feedback from usability testing, we iterated on our designs to address key pain points and improve usability. The final solution integrates the core features: Onboarding, Home Dashboard, Transactions, Budget, and Education, into a cohesive experience tailored for international students. Each screen reflects refinements made to ensure clarity, reduce friction, and better support users’ financial needs in a new country.
How New Users Experience with UniFi
They begins with a guided checklist that helps them take their first steps with confidence. They can set a monthly budget, define savings goals, and learn essential financial concepts through bite-sized, in-context lessons that all designed to ease the stress of starting from scratch in a new country.
How Continued Users Experience with UniFi
The platform becomes a flexible and supportive tool. They can experiment with combining and categorizing transactions, receive timely educational tips like reminders about credit card due dates and allocate any leftover savings toward their financial goals. These ongoing touchpoints make it easy for users to stay engaged and continue building healthy financial habits over time.
Next Steps
Business Opportunities to Explore
As thinking of the future potential business opportunities and help product grows, we identified 3 potential business directions to explore:
Partnerships with banks to promote student credit products
University collaborations to expand reach and credibility
Bank integrations to streamline user onboarding and transactions
These areas align with user needs and open up new revenue models.