Helping you stay mindful with your money.
We designed Penny because... 💰
They want to save more, spend smarter, and feel in control.
But budgeting often starts to feel cold, stressful, and easy to avoid.
Penny turns these stressful moments into small chances to pause, reflect, and choose with intention.
The solution 🎨
Penny turns budgeting from passive tracking into active reflection through priorities, tickets, trade-offs, and goal progress.
Before Penny became a solution
we first needed to understand the behavior behind the problem.
Defining the problem
Young adults want to manage money better, but often struggle with invisible small spending, impulse purchases, and goals that feel disconnected from daily choices.
From our interviews with 18 young adults ages 18–30, we identified three key patterns behind why budgeting apps fail to stay useful.
Insight 01
Small spending stays invisible...
Until it turns into stress.
Pain point
Lack of awareness of how small purchases add up.
Insight 02
Impulse happens first...
Reflection comes later.
Pain point
Users need support before spending, not after.
Insight 03
Daily spending feels separate...
From long-term goals.
Pain point
Users struggle to link daily choices to future goals.
Design Opportunity
Based on our research, we saw an opportunity to redesign budgeting as a more supportive and reflective experience.
How Might We
How might we assist young adult who struggle with impulsive purchases to have more awareness and reflection on their behaviors.
From Question to Direction
But the key question was:
How can support feel helpful, not controlling?
To answer this, we used several methods to organize insights, study existing tools, and explore product directions.
Methods We Used
These methods helped us shape Penny as a decision-support system, not another strict budgeting tracker.
To move from research findings to product direction, we used five methods:
Why We Mapped the Spending Journey
We mapped the spending journey to understand where good intentions turn into regret.
It showed us that users need support before they spend, not only after their balance drops.
Three Design Directions
These directions became the foundation of Penny’s core experience.
The user wants to save for a bigger goal, but also wants to enjoy everyday life.
Design goal:
Help users understand what they value before they start budgeting.
Before
Now
Before setting a budget, Penny helps the user compare what matters more right now. Instead of treating every category equally, the user can define their own priorities.
During the week, the user faces small spending temptations like coffee, food delivery, or going out.
Design goal:
Help users stay aware in daily moments before small purchases add up.
Before
Now
Penny turns the budget into simple spending tickets, like “2 dine-out tickets left.” This helps the user pace spending without feeling like they have to stop enjoying life.
At the end of the week, Harper sees that skipping one unnecessary dinner moved her closer to her trip goal.
Design goal:
Help users connect everyday decisions to long-term progress.
Before
Now
Penny shows progress through goal updates, reports, and achievements. Instead of only showing what the user spent, Penny shows what their choices helped protect.
Now we got an idea...
Let’s start visualizing!
Turning Penny Into 4 Core MVP Flows
Brainstorming different designs through sketches
And finally, turning them into mid-fidelity prototypes!
The solution
Introducing Penny — a more approachable way to connect with your goals & daily spending habits.
Pick a path to explore each pillar.
Users can select their spending categories, allowing the app to analyze their habits and help them to stay more mindful of their spending
Users will be presented with a series of 'A or B' choices. These help the app to rank users' priorities, and they will have a chance to preview the list before moving to the next step.
Users create an account and link their bank so Penny can officially start their budgeting journey on Day 1.
Penny keeps users engaged by turning discipline into visible progress, not pressure.
Penny helps users pace their spending through clear limits, flexible adjustments, and real-time awareness.
Penny helps users see how everyday spending habits support long-term goals.
Instead of simply adding more spending, Penny helps users make trade-offs visible before committing.
Instead of only tracking transactions, Penny helps users learn from their spending and use that reflection to make better choices next time.
Penny reinforces positive behavior by making growth, consistency, and milestones easy to recognize.
User Testing Insight
We tested our high-fidelity prototype to understand whether users could clearly understand Penny’s core features and whether the experience felt supportive.
Insight 01
Users liked having flexible control, but the meaning of each action needed clearer explanation.
To be honest, I am not sure what the purpose of these features is as a first-time user.Participant feedback
Insight 02
Users understood the reward system, but wanted badges and numbers to feel more specific and motivating.
I like the achievement system, but I think it can be more interesting if the badges are more interesting.Participant feedback
Insight 03
Users were interested in alignment data, but needed clearer labels, timeframe, and context to understand what the numbers meant.
I am not sure if the data is showing for this month or for this week and the meaning of the numbers.Participant feedback
User feedback helped us refine Penny from a visually complete prototype into a clearer and more usable financial support system.
Reflecting on what I learned
Penny helped us understand that budgeting is not only a numbers problem. It is also about timing, emotion, and motivation.
Through research and testing, we learned that users do not need more pressure around money. They need clearer support at the moment of decision.
If we continue developing Penny, our next focus would be improving feature clarity, testing long-term engagement, and making the experience feel even more supportive, personalized, and easy to keep using.
Ultimately, Penny reframes budgeting from “tracking what went wrong” to helping users make more mindful choices before spending happens.
