Mainstream financial tools feel intimidating and alienating – Nav.it seeks to make financial health accessible to everyone.
Overview
Nav.it is a financial well-being startup that aims to connect Gen-Z’s emotional and financial habits through daily mindfulness tasks, financial tools, and unique insights.
I worked as one of two designers to revamp app organization and conceptualize a series of features that made up the “Money” project. This new design, a culmination of 3 months of work, launched to app stores in December 2021.
TEAMI was the product design lead, and I worked on this project with Ilana, a fellow product designer, and Brian, our senior developer.
TIMEFRAMEDesign - Fall 2021
Launch - December 2021
The Challenge
While users demonstrate an interest in improving their finances, they are not currently engaging with Nav.it's financial tools.
Opportunities for Improvement
🤔
Users can’t easily and quickly find the tools they are seeking
Users open the app to use a specific feature, and give up looking for it within 2 minutes.
⁉️
Confusion around how financial data is reflected back to users
If users disagree on a data point, they'll often assume it's a mistake and close the app.
🗯️
Labels and descriptions for features and terms are ambiguous
This leaves users confused and discouraged about their financial literacy.
Process overview
I created a screen map of the existing app to capture all existing money tools pain points.
Next, we delegated features and iterated on styling and determined a direction.
Ilana and I analyzed other app experiences for inspiration.
Then we prototyped our respective features and tested the directions.
From here, we sketched concepts for information architecture and features and began wireframing.
Once designs were finalized, we annotated them and handed them off to our developer.
The MVP designs
Accounts Overview Tab
Multiple connected account balances are calculated into a simple summary – “what you have” and “what you owe.”
We experimented with several approaches to summarize users’ financial pictures. One takeaway was to allow users to hide their summary to mitigate potential negative feelings that may arise with large amounts of debt.
“I know I’m in debt. I don’t need to be bombarded with it every time I want to see how much I can spend today.”
Ins & Outs Tab
Ins & Outs helps users understand their overall net cash flow for a specific period of time – monthly, weekly, and daily.
In naming this feature, we aimed to balance an intimidating financial concept – net cash flow, or inflows and outflows – with the opportunity to learn. Our team tested different names with users and concluded on something short, friendly, and accurate – Ins & Outs.
Budget Tab
The new, intelligent Budget tool uses historical financial data to create spending categories. Using anchoring, a behavioral science heuristic, we designed an experience that is inherently empowering – and nudges users in the right direction.
Users set their own spend limits based on tailor-made calculations from previous months.
Bills Tab
Transactions can be marked as a recurring bill, which helps users be aware of what they’ve already paid – and what expenses are coming up.
We experimented with a couple approaches on how to showcase recurring transactions and landed on an interactive calendar, a summary, and clearly marked sections of “to be paid” and “already paid.”
Auto-Save Tab
The overarching goal of Nav.it is to help users build healthy financial habits. Auto-Saves are available for all users to create goals and save up for them.