Personal finance, made simple and safe.

From tracking to managing

I designed a mobile app, FlowPay, to help users better manage their finances through budgeting, spending insights and educational resources. My goal was to simplify complex financial information into a clear, accessible experience that helps users track expenses, set goals and build stronger financial habits.

The app brings together budgeting tools, investment tracking and financial learning into a single platform, helping users move from passive tracking to actively managing their finances.

Research → define → structure → iterate

I followed a product design process focused on understanding user behaviour, defining clear problems, and iterating towards simple, usable solutions.

I began by conducting user research to understand how people currently manage their finances and identify key challenges around budgeting, spending and financial literacy. Using these insights, I defined the core problems and product goals, then mapped out the information architecture and key user flows to ensure a clear and intuitive structure. I explored solutions through wireframes and iterated on them before developing high-fidelity designs focused on clarity, usability and accessibility.

Understanding financial behaviour

I conducted user interviews and surveys to better understand financial behaviours, challenges and needs, how users track spending, manage budgets and make financial decisions, and how confident they feel using financial tools. Key questions explored:

1. How do you currently manage your finances? Most users rely on banking apps to check balances and transactions, but struggle to gain a clear understanding of their overall spending and to maintain consistent budgets.

2. What are your main financial challenges? Impulse spending, difficulty tracking daily expenses, managing irregular income, and a lack of clear saving strategies.

3. How do you stay informed about financial news? Most don't actively follow it, relying on occasional social-media updates or conversations, leading to limited financial awareness.

4. How do you make investment decisions? Users often depend on recommendations from friends or family rather than their own research, highlighting a lack of accessible, trusted guidance.

5. What are your short- and long-term goals? A mix of short-term (saving for purchases or travel) and long-term (a home, retirement), but few structured ways to achieve them.

6. Are you comfortable sharing financial data with apps? Some express privacy and security concerns when connecting accounts, which impacts trust.

7. What features would you want? Automatic expense tracking, customisable budgets, clear insights, and accessible investment guidance.

Validating the patterns

To complement the interviews, I surveyed 10 participants. The results validated recurring issues: inconsistent saving habits (unclear goals and limited guidance); impulse spending without understanding budget impact; limited financial knowledge and low confidence; budgeting that feels overwhelming because existing tools are complex; and a clear need for simple, actionable recommendations.

Ellen & Conor

Ellen, 26, a working professional with a stable income who struggles to manage her finances effectively. She finds budgeting overwhelming and lacks clear visibility into her spending. She's motivated to improve her habits but needs clearer guidance and simpler ways to manage her money, a clear overview, consistent saving, and financial concepts explained simply.

Conor, 19, a student working part-time with an irregular income. He often loses track of spending and runs out of money before the end of the month. Financial planning feels confusing and time-consuming, so he avoids it, he wants simple tools that keep him in control without extra effort.

How users think & feel about money

I created an empathy map to synthesise findings and understand users' motivations, frustrations and behaviours. Users think "I'm not sure where my money goes" and "I wish I understood investing better"; they feel frustrated about inconsistent saving and stressed by financial uncertainty, yet motivated to improve; they say they want better control and safe, reliable tools; and they check balances frequently, use multiple apps, and occasionally seek investment advice.

Eight goals to design against

1. Design tools that help users actively understand and manage their finances, not just view balances. 2. Simplify complex financial information into clear, scannable interfaces. 3. Provide meaningful insights and context that support better decisions. 4. Support consistent budgeting, saving and tracking to encourage long-term habits.

5. Integrate educational content relevant to users' situations. 6. Build confidence by presenting financial concepts simply and approachably. 7. Provide guidance that helps users set realistic goals and stay on track. 8. Reduce cognitive load through clear hierarchy, progressive disclosure and intuitive interactions.

Five clear areas

I designed the information architecture to organise the app's features into a clear, intuitive structure, making it easy to access budgeting, expense tracking, investments and financial education. Analysing patterns from Revolut, Monzo and N26, a central dashboard supported by dedicated sections, I structured the app around five primary navigation areas.

I then mapped key task flows to define how users complete core actions such as creating a monthly budget and viewing a monthly spending report, identifying friction points and reducing unnecessary steps so each flow felt clear, guided and efficient.

Testing structure before visuals

I created low-fidelity wireframes to explore layout, information hierarchy and interaction patterns before moving into visual design. This let me quickly test and iterate on different approaches, ensuring key tasks, budgeting, tracking spending, and accessing insights, could be completed clearly and efficiently.

Clear, approachable, consistent

The visual design makes financial information feel clear, approachable and easy to act on. I used a purple-led colour system for a distinctive identity while keeping strong contrast for key actions and important data. Typography and spacing establish a clear hierarchy so users can quickly scan balances, transactions and insights, and components were designed to be consistent and reusable across the app's many features.

A complete mobile experience

The high-fidelity designs bring the research, architecture and task flows together into a complete experience, each screen designed for a specific goal and prioritising clarity, focused layouts, clear CTAs and progressive disclosure.

Home, an immediate overview of the user's financial position, combining balances, recent activity and quick actions, prioritising high-frequency tasks like transfers and bill payments. Invest, portfolio performance without deep financial knowledge, with simplified charts and summaries of holdings, trends and gainers/losers. Learn Finance, accessible, bite-sized education around budgeting, credit and saving, mixing short videos and articles. Budget creation, a clear, step-by-step flow to set income, a spending limit and category allocations, with a final preview and alerts.

Passive tracking → active management

The final design combines budgeting, investment tracking and financial education in a single, cohesive product: a clear dashboard for an immediate understanding of financial position; a guided budgeting flow for realistic limits and progress tracking; simplified investment views; and integrated learning content that builds knowledge and confidence.

Together these shift the experience from passive tracking to active financial management.

Clarity, trust, usability

This project reinforced the importance of simplifying complex financial information into experiences that feel intuitive and manageable, designing for finance requires balancing clarity, trust and usability so users feel confident making decisions.

Through this work I developed skills in structuring complex systems, designing guided task flows and creating visual hierarchies that support quick understanding. The next step would be validating the designs through usability testing and iteration.