CARD SAVVY MOBILE APP
SMU Student UX Project - App Conception and Design
SMU Student UX Project - App Conception and Design
Video Contributions: Sue Yu: Motion Graphics | Lauren Hull: Branding, Copywriting, Music Selection | Bhakti Mai: Illustration | Kathleen Tibbets: Content Writing
PROJECT OVERVIEW
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TEAM
Lauren Hull, Bhakti Mai, Kathleen Tibetts, Sue Yu TOOLS Trello, Ai, XD, Invision PROBLEM STATEMENT
Power credit card users earn multiple rewards like discounts, miles, cash back and points on their purchases, but it's hard for users to manage their multiple rewards programs and knowing the best card to use when making a purchase. When the rewards offers change periodically and frequently, it’s even more difficult and time consuming to manage, and thus— users often miss the best rewards opportunities and cannot maximize their earnings. Power card users need an easy a way to earn the most rewards for purchases they would already make, so they can put earnings to use the way they deem financially fit. |
A BLUE OCEAN CONCEPT
Card Savvy represents a brand-new way to leverage your credit card spending, maximize earning potential, and promoting financial literacy. The real differentiating features are the ability to notify users of their earnings potential in real time using timed and customized geo-targeted push notifications, goal setting by type of reward, and managing all of a user's card rewards programs all in one place. MY CONTRIBUTIONS
Competitive analysis, user research, leading main workflows and structure of primary sections of app (Home, Earnings and Goal setting), brand identity and tagline, epics & user stories, promotional video copywriting and music selection, Sketches, Lo/Hi-fi wireframes, and usability testing moderation & observation |
THEME STATEMENT
Card Savvy helps credit card power users maximize the rewards they prefer, by advising the best card to use before a purchase is made.
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OUR PROCESS
PRELIMINARY USER RESEARCH
To determine if there is a market for this app, we conducted preliminary surveys and interviews to get a better understanding of who our users are and gather further insights about their needs and pain points. These are some the key takeaways:
KEY INSIGHTS
KEY INSIGHTS
- More than 82% of survey respondents applied for cards based on their rewards.
- Credit card users with more than one card may not know which offers the best rewards before they make a qualifying purchase.
- 50% of users have to check each card individually through a website to stay up to date on their rewards.
- 82% told us they had either missed out on rewards, or weren’t sure if they had.
- More than 53% responded that they were Likely or Very Likely to use a tool that can concatenate their rewards information, display it at a glance, and provide information on the best card to use before they buy.
- We discovered that adults who make $45,000 per year or more, and who spend at least $400 per month across at least three cards, are very likely to find this app useful and desirable.
- Working professionals with $75K+ incomes
- Card users who regularly use 5 or more credit cards for their rewards programs
- Card churners who open and close accounts for a one-time reward/promotional benefit
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
We compared features of other similar apps to find out if we had any direct competitors, namely Award Wallet, Nerd Wallet, Google Pay and Apple Pay, to study their rewards functionalities. Apple and Google Pay did offer functionality you might expect, like housing loyalty cards and redeeming rewards, but they did not offer any of the special features we were looking for. Our real differentiating features were the ability to notify users of their earnings potential in real time, based on location, rewards preferences, and set goals.
EPICS & USER STORIES
Using empathy exercises, user research, and heuristic principles as a guide, we created user stories and then grouped them into epics. We iteratively updated and clarified these stories throughout our design process which helped to inform the structure and main sections of our app. The Settings, Rewards goals, and Rewards Manager epics became the more prominent parts of our app's functionality.
USER WORKFLOWS
Supporting the value proposition of features that differentiates this app from others was top of mind. Everything considered for content and functionality ultimately had to support informing the user the best way to earn before they spend.
We saw the value of having a user see rewards at a glance and quick access to analytics easily. Our rewards manager was concerned with seeing earnings history with various filters, learning about your rewards programs and setting rewards goals.
We saw the value of having a user see rewards at a glance and quick access to analytics easily. Our rewards manager was concerned with seeing earnings history with various filters, learning about your rewards programs and setting rewards goals.
We decided as a group for a prominent settings page to live in our app’s main navigation, because we wanted users to have the ability to customize a notification-based app. This meant turning off cards you didn’t want information for- such as a company card, or customizing what push notifications you wanted, and being able to edit a rewards goal. With the apps ability to notify you via geotargeting, this has a unique feature to set a dwell time in a store before you are notified- so you can avoid heavy notifications while browsing at a plaza, for example.
The search epic is what became our deals page and was distinctly different, as it’s purpose was finding ways to earn and search deals by category, location, and by brand, based on the cards you hold. This required much discussion, as there were areas of overlap and blurred lines on functionality and purpose of the deals vs rewards sections of our app. This led to the renaming of pages for a better distinction of each pages purpose.
Our zoomed out workflow below shows a short user workflow of the user shopping, receiving a notification of their best card to use. This app is designed to integrate with your mobile wallet, our app will route you outside of the app to pay with your mobile wallet.
SKETCHING & WIREFRAMES
USABILITY TESTING
Our group ended up with two viable prototype designs with 6 users. Moderated and unmoderated remote testing measured the effectiveness of the home screen, Rewards Tracking and Goal-Setting flows. Preference testing gave us valuable clues to the design elements users preferred. To prevent recency bias, we alternated the order of prototypes tested for each user (A B then B A).
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WHAT WORKED
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WHAT BROKE
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CONCLUSION
FUTURE FEATURES
FUTURE FEATURES
After gathering feedback and data from our usability testing, we realize we had opportunities to expand features on this app further. We are currently pursuing how we could fully design this prototype for full testing and researching ways we could bring it to market.
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GET IN TOUCH |
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PHONE817-894-7271
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