Reimagining the Money Experience for International Students
Mobile App
Product Design
UX Research
FinTech
End-to-End
OVERVIEW
In a collaborative effort to reimagine financial tools through a more inclusive lens, our team developed an end-to-end solution that addresses the unique challenges this group faces and bridging the gap between financial literacy and system unfamiliarity.
THE CHALLENGE
Many individuals struggle to manage their personal finances effectively, leading to stress and uncertainty about their financial future.
How can we design a tool that helps international students to create and maintain a personalized budget?
Role
Product Designer
Team
Gloria Yang (Me)
Roshni Ganesh
Aswathi Thilak
Youlu Xu
Timeline
Oct - Dec 2024 / 6 weeks
Skills
User Research
User Interface
Information Architecture
Design System
Visual Design
OUR SOLUTION 🌟
A simple, guided tool for budgeting and financial literacy that empowering international students in the U.S. to build sustainable finance habits.
↓ So how did we got here? Let me walk you through the process! ↓
WE STARTED WITH DOING RESEARCH
Why Managing Money Is So Hard for International Students?
We began by reflecting on our own experiences. As international students who recently moved to the U.S. for graduate school, many of us had faced challenges managing our finances in a new country. That inspired us to focus on understanding the specific needs and pain points of this often-overlooked group.
So we asked ourselves:
How do international students in the U.S. manage their finances and where are they struggle?
To answer this, we conducted in-depth interviews with 18 international students across a wide range of majors and backgrounds. We carefully listened to their stories, mapped their emotions through empathy and persona exercises, and visualized their daily routines with user journey maps. By synthesizing the data through affinity mapping, we uncovered recurring patterns of frustration, confusion, and unmet needs around financial literacy and budgeting in a new environment.
MARKET ANALYSIS
What's Missing in the Current Market?
To understand where existing tools fall short, we audited platforms like Copilot, Chase, Bank of America, and Monarch.
What we found was clear:
While these platforms offer powerful features, they aren’t designed with international students in mind.
We examined core areas like onboarding, budgeting support, personalization, and financial education. Across the board, these tools assumed users already understood U.S. banking systems, credit concepts, and financial jargon—leaving international students overwhelmed or excluded.
There’s a clear gap: today’s financial tools cater to financially fluent users. What’s missing is a platform that meets new international students where they are—with guidance, flexibility, and contextual education to help them feel confident in their financial lives.
THE PROBLEM STATEMENT
How might we support international students in adapting to the U.S. financial system and developing sustainable personal finance habits for long-term stability?
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.
FROM INSIGHTS TO IDEAS
From User Voices to Product Vision: Designing Features That Truly Matter
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
clearly visibility and control over spending histories and shared payments
Budgeting
to help users to set, track, and manager their personalized monthly budgets
Goal Setting
to help users to set and track their goals and encourage them to meet their goals
Education
bite-sized financial content tailored to international students
This feature set became the foundation of our mid-fidelity prototype and testing strategy.
LOW-FIDELITY WIREFRAMES
Turning Ideas into Low-Fidelity Wireframes & Prototypes
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
Testing Our Design with Real 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.
Below are our five key findings and the recommendations we developed to address them.
Challenge #1: How do we make the onboarding feel faster and more purposeful?
INSIGHT
Users felt the onboarding had too many steps and didn’t see the need to upload a profile photo early on, causing friction and slowing engagement.
DESIGN OPPORTUNITY
We simplified the flow by removing non-essential steps like photo upload and grouping questions to make it more logically.
Challenge #2: How do we help users get a clear financial overview without overwhelming them?
INSIGHT
Users want a quick snapshot of their net worth, but too many numbers and navigation paths make the dashboard feel cluttered and stressful.
DESIGN OPPORTUNITY
We simplified the layout by prioritizing key financial highlights and removing redundant navigation to help users focus on what matters most at a glance.
Challenge #3: How do we help users get a clear financial overview without overwhelming them?
INSIGHT
Users found the budgeting flow overwhelming. Setting a total amount upfront without later reference felt disconnected, and the circular graphic didn’t offer helpful guidance, especially for newcomers unfamiliar with local living costs.
DESIGN OPPORTUNITY
We improved clarity by referencing the total budget throughout, replacing the circular graphic with clearer visuals, and introducing city-based budget templates to support users with localized starting points.
Challenge #4: How do we make the combine transaction feature easier to find and use?
INSIGHT
Users didn’t notice the combine option and found the process of adding up transactions repetitive. The save button was also hard to spot, which caused confusion during completion.
DESIGN OPPORTUNITY
We added tutorials to surface hidden features, removed redundant steps in the flow, and gave the save button stronger visual emphasis to support smoother task completion.
Challenge #5: How do we deliver educational content without overwhelming users?
INSIGHT
Users preferred pop-up tips over expandable content and found small icon-based hints ineffective. Dense, text-heavy explanations led to frustration and disengagement.
DESIGN OPPORTUNITY
We focused on clear, digestible learning by using pop-up tips, replacing icons with more informative formats, and presenting content through concise text and infographics with ample white space.
FINAL SOLUTION
Bringing It All Together: A Financial Tool Built for Real Student Needs
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.
Day One with UniFi: A Guided Path into Financial Clarity
From First Budget to Daily Check-ins: Stay on Track with UniFi
NEXT STEP
What’s Next for UniFi: Unlocking New Business Paths for Impact and Revenue
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 with credit or investment products
University Collaborations
to expand reach and credibility of our product
Bank Integrations
to streamline user onboarding and transaction to directly link with their cards
These areas align with user needs and open up new revenue models.