suttondj87@gmail.com | charlotte, nc
SAVINGS TOOLKIT BUCKET GOALS
Ally's Savings Toolkit allows customers to create digital envelopes inside of their accounts so they can divide their money and save towards specific goals. Before I joined the team that introduced bucket goals, users were unable to set target dates or target amounts, so users had to track their progress manually outside of the app, or add that information to the name of their bucket:"Beach Vacation 2021 – $5,000." I knew there was a better way to handle goal creation and tracking that would also encourage people to reach their financial goals by the target date.
The actual work on this project lasted 6 months. I was part of a small team consisting of a UX designer focused on the desktop experience, a content strategist, and I focused on the mobile app. We kicked off the project by going through brainstorming and design thinking exercises while also completing competitive research to see how financial institutions, fitness apps and various other platforms allow users to create and view the progress towards their goals. Once work began, we went through several rounds of user testing, after which we iterated on our designs and continued to refine them until we received final approval and handed the prototypes and final comps off to our development teams.
Bucket distribution is handled through the "distribute" link at the top of the table.
Based on some cursory qualitative research that was conducted prior to the start of the design phase of this project, we learned that even thinking about big, long-term financial goals can be a stressful and overwhelming thought, so we were intentional about making this setup process very conversational and friendly. In the app, I created a stepped flow that requests bits of information piece-by-piece so that users don't feel overloaded by the amount of information we are asking. Users can also skip steps along the way and revisit later on once the goal is created, so if they need to crunch some numbers or simply don't have the time to wrap up the creation of their goal, that can be easily accomplished at a later time.
After setting up a goal, the team was challenged with showing a user their progress towards their goal on their account page. There are plenty of different ways to visualize progress, so after trying countless different combinations of single progress meters, double progress meters, meters that filled up and meters that burned down, the team landed on a fairly straight forward progress meter that fills as money is added to the bucket and a simple field that reinforces the date by which the user has said they want to reach their goal.
After someone spends months or even years saving towards their goals, we wanted to make sure that reaching the goal felt like a celebratory moment. We also wanted to prompt the user to continue the good savings habits they may have developed over the course of reaching their goal. Quickly allowing someone to mark a goal as complete or challenging themselves to save more by increasing the goal amount did just that. These options connect with users in the moment that they learn that they reached their goal and hopefully influence their behavior and encourage them to go above and beyond their original savings goal.
Users must be able to quickly edit the date and amount parameters that they have placed on their bucket, so a straightforward interface that allows a user to not only edit the date or amount they chose, but also to turn on or turn off the date or amount goals altogether, was necessary to allow this feature to work for all users.