PACO
An auto-accounting financial app prototype
Collaborate with
NCCU
Department of Land Economics│甘翊萱
NCCU
Department of Information Management│姜姵君
Overview
This is a project made for TRANS-ACTION 2018, one of the biggest UIUX competition in Taiwan. We found that it was nearly impossible for some people to properly manage their money and keep accounts, even though there were already plenty of accounting apps existed. It just seemed that those accounting apps were not really helping those people.
Hence, we proposed an auto-accounting financial app that could combine multiple bank accounts, payment methods, and automatically manage transaction records. At that time, this concept had not yet been realized in Taiwan until similar apps such as Moneybook came out, just a few months later.
My Role
Project management
User research
Wireframe design
Prototyping
Phase 1. User research
Phase 1. User research
Based on the interview and questionnaire result, we found that users often do not realize how much money they have spent, as most daily expenses are related to foods and commuting, which are so frequent and difficult to be kept track of. From the stakeholder map, we can see that there is a lot of cash flow between users and main stakeholders. To control budget, users must keep accounts, but the current accounting tools do not satisfy their needs.
Insight:
Cash is difficult to be managed.
Manually-managed accounting tools are not useful for some users.
Phase 2. Competitor analysis
When we were doing competitor analysis, the accounting tools on the market could not automatically record consumption data. Although mobile payment and electronic invoice apps were able to do that, they could not provide classified consumption records and comprehensive financial analysis like accounting tools.
Phase 3. Value position
We created a value position illustrating users’ pains, gains and how our product could probably benefit users and solve their problem.
Phase 4. Story board
A story board were used to demonstrate the usage scenario of our product.
Phase 5. Prototype and testing
A wireframe was first created for demonstrating user flow and testing. We presented the wireframe to several testers to make improvement and finally defined a lo-fi prototype.
For example, it is how someone pay a NT$80 item with our product, PACO, and then checked the expense description, which is auto-classified and editable.
The user can add multiple bank accounts and payment methods into PACO and check the latest discount of each to make comparison.
When the user clicks one of the payment methods he/she added, PACO will navigate the user to that payment app.
After the user complete the payment, the expense will be automatically recorded and classified into categories such as “food”. The user can later edit the expense description by entering the “accounting” section. PACO will memorize the user’s edit history to improve the classification algorithm.
It is worth noting that the remaining budget has been changed and the water level of the fish tank becomes lower than before. We hope to help users control the budget by letting them feel like they are taking care of a fish, named PACO.
Here is a prototype video.
Result
In sum, our design concept can be concluded into 5 features :
-
Auto-accounting
-
Auto-classification for expenses
-
Integrate multiple bank accounts and payment methods
-
Integrate the latest discount news of the different payment
-
A fish tank designed for reminding the users about their budget
A few months later, Moneybook, a personal finance app, came onto the market with a similar concept and became one of the most popular finance apps in Taiwan. It proved the market value of PACO and it’s feasibility, relying on the fact that more and more Taiwan’s banks are willing to embrace open banking.
