$aunter
Collaborative Saving With Friends & Family
Role: Product Manager - Product Designer
Context: Mobile App
Duration: Oct 2023 - Jan 2024
My individual contribution
I was the product manager and product designer of this mobile application.
Research
Interaction Design
Product Design
Product Management
___ PROJECT DETAILS
Understanding the project.
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$aunter
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$aunter is a passion project design that I created to address a personal need.
I have a large extended family on both sides, and I am usually the one responsible for organizing and booking our family reunions. It is a challenge to get everyone to agree on a rental location, food, and other expenses. Then I often pay for expenses out of pocket and later get reimbursed by family members for their portions. That means I needed to track how much each person owes and who has paid me back. It can be a challenge. There must be a better way.
About
Saunter
[ˈsôn(t)ər]
VERB
walk in a slow, relaxed manner, without hurry or effort:
NOUN
a leisurely stroll:
Trying to coordinate finances between multiple people can be complicated and frustrating.
With $aunter the goal was simple: to design an app that helps friend or family groups manage a budget and save up for a common goal (such as a vacation).
$aunter makes it easy to set goals, invite friends, and start saving together toward the things that are important to you.
$aunter does all the hard work so you don’t have to; tracking expenses, updating how much each person still owes, and securely holding funds until you are ready to make your purchase.
Design Challenge
This project had several design challenges:
Users need to be able to easily perform complex tasks like creating new saving Journeys, adding participants and expenses, and setting up savings plans.
The app needs to be able to escrow funds for participants, and then act as a payment method for agreed upon expenses.
Users need to be able to easily tell how much they have saved toward a particular goal, how much they have left to save, and what the savings status is of the rest of the participants.
Participants need to be able to add dependents and be able to easily calculate the share of expenses for each primary participant.
These are a lot of complex interactions that need to be handled in a way that feels seamless and intuitive to the users.
01/
CHAPTER
Research
___ KEY ASSUMPTIONS
Target audience.
Groups that could benefit the most from saving with $aunter
Coordinating anything with a bunch of people can be challenging. Even more so when it comes to friends and family. Those who can benefit from $aunter primarily fall into two categories: Users and Participating Businesses.
Users are divided between the Primary Planner and Participants. The Primary Planner is the person who takes the lead in organizing the group toward their savings goals. Primary Planners can struggle to manage all the moving parts, and they are also the ones taking the financial risk if they are fronting money for a purchase and then counting on being reimbursed. Participants can sometimes find it challenging to stay motivated and achieve their savings goals.
Participating businesses can include retail organizations that increase sales by integrating direct $aunter payments ($aunterPay) into their platform. Businesses also include the financial institution that partners with $aunter to escrow funds for users. Banks are then able to earn a profit on those escrowed funds via overnight lending to other institutions.
Primary Planners
Participants
Businesses
Banks
___ VALIDATING ASSUMPTIONS
Key Findings & Results.
82%
Primary Planners
Struggle with being responsible for coordinating everything
49%
Participants
Find it challenging to stay motivated to save for important goals
79%
Businesses
Would benefit from $aunterPay integration on their website
100%
Banks
Would profit from overnight lending on escrowed funds
___ QUALITY OVER QUANTITY
Feature Prioritization.
MUST HAVE
High Impact
__Create and manage Journeys
__Add and manage Participants
__Link expenses to a Journey
__Escrow funds within the app
__Contribute money to a Journey
__View personal and group savings progress
__Accept Journey invitations, + expenses
__WCAG 2.2 and A11Y compliant
NICE TO HAVE
High Impact
__Link to expenses directly from within app
__Pay expenses directly from escrow account
__Notification system
__Auto-calculate + assign Participant expenses
__View current savings plans from User Profile
__Set recurring savings
__Allow users to directly link bank accounts
EXPECTED
Low Impact
__Add image and tags to personalize a Journey
__Nest dependents under a Primary Participant
__User-editable profile banner image
__Share successes on social media platforms
__Gamification
UNEXPECTED
Low Impact
__Dark mode
__Integrate ApplePay, Cash App, Venmo, etc
__Web application
___ COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Understanding the competition.
Trust the way you pay
Unlock a smart way to pay. Make secure payments, earn cash back rewards, and send money almost anywhere in the world—all in one place.
Fast, safe social payments
Pay, get paid, grow a business, and more.
Do more with your money
Send and spend, bank, and buy stocks or bitcoin
___ JOURNEY MAP
Understanding the user experience.
02/
CHAPTER
INTERACTIONS
___ USER FLOW
Low fidelity interactions.
Primary Persona Types
The distinction between the different personas is based on their specific roles in the $aunter process, which will determine the accesses and features they need. For example, a Primary Planner will have the ability to create new Journeys, add expenses, and add or remove members from Journeys. Participants need to be able to update savings strategies, view overall Journey progress, and approve or decline proposed expense items.
Participants
Primary Planners
03/
CHAPTER
EXECUTION
___ HIGH FIDELITY DESIGNS
Anatomy of a group savings app.
GROUP SAVINGS 01
YOUR PERSONAL SAVINGS ASSISTANT
$aunter is like your personal savings assistant, doing the heavy lifting so that you can focus on saving and enjoying the success of your diligence. It will walk users through each step of the process and then keep everyone up-to-date on personal and group progress. And when you are ready to spend that hard-saved money, $aunter is there to make it easy and secure, so you can enjoy the experiences you and your family and friends have worked so hard for.
What a view!
$aunter’s home screen shows users a quick snapshot of their current Journeys via the Journey cards. Users can see their personal progress, participants, and overall Journey progress. Adding background images to cards helps engage users’ imaginations and help them stay motivated as they flip through their active Journeys.
On your mark!
Creating a new Journey is easy. Just hit “Create Journey” and start inputting information.
You can:
Add Journey info, including title, tags, background image, and description
Add Participants from your Contacts
Add expenses, and link Participants to expenses
Add a target completion date
Get set!
Once the Journey has Participants and expenses added, and expenses have been linked to Participants, it’s time to set up a savings plan to help users achieve their goals. Each Participant sets up their own savings plan based on what works for them. They can do one-time contributions, or can set up recurring savings if they prefer. Even if Participants have recurring savings set up they can always add a one-time contribution to get them to their goals faster.
Go!
Now that the new Journey has been set up it’s easy to track progress toward users’ goals! Not only can Participants view their own personal progress toward their portion of expenses, they can also view the overall group progress.
Each expense shows how many Participants are tagged to that expense item, and users can view more details by tapping on the expense card.
GROUP SAVINGS 02
PERSONAL SPACE
In addition to creating group Journeys users can track their own personal stats, create individual Journeys, and request/send money directly to other individuals.
Your Profile
The Personal Profile page lets users easily update their personal information. More than that, it provides users with a complete overview of their current savings plans so they know exactly what will be coming out of their bank accounts on a recurring basis.
Users can easily update existing savings plans from their personal profile rather than needing to navigate to the specific Journey.
Your Wallet
The $aunter wallet lets users easily add one-time or recurring savings to any active Journey.
Not only can users contribute money toward active Journeys, they can also request or send money directly between contacts. $aunter acts as a digital wallet, even for expenses that aren’t part of a Journey.
___ KEY FINDINGS
Measuring success.
What I did well
I was able to successfully map out all the steps users need to complete in order to set up and manage a new Journey. This was no small feat, because the complexity of managing financial goals between multiple people is significant and what led me to design this app in the first place. $aunter takes users by the hand and walks them through each step one at a time, removing as many friction points as possible. It also makes it easier for others to participate in a Journey by fostering consensus among all Participants, and setting each one up for success with a simple savings plan process. Using this process will allow each user to feel a sense of ownership and accomplishment.
What I would do differently
One thing I would do differently is to do additional research on the front end around how to integrate direct pay of expenses from within the app. The idea was that users could not only create expenses, but also link those expenses directly to a shopping page on a company website, and that this would create a one tap zero-trust payment process guaranteeing to all Participants that escrow funds could only be spent on pre-approved expenses. As I learned later this can be a complex feature from a technical implementation standpoint.
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