Easy Expense
Budget Tracking
ROLE
Project manager
Interviewer
TEAM
Danny
Kira
DURATION
3 weeks
Overview
The Easy Expense mobile app empowers 40,000 monthly active users to effortlessly manage their finances and streamline tax preparation by providing organized financial data. To extend its value and reach a wider audience, the company sought to expand its platform. The goal was to design and develop a comprehensive web dashboard that would not only serve as a powerful hub for existing users but also appeal to a new market.
Problem & Goals
Despite its strong user base, the existing Easy Expense mobile app presented a critical challenge: its functionality was siloed, creating a fragmented experience for users managing complex finances and for accountants during tax season. The lack of a comprehensive web-based platform meant users couldn't seamlessly access or manage their detailed spending data on a larger screen, leading to inefficiencies and a less-than-optimal experience for both personal financial tracking and professional tax preparation.
Our primary goals for this project were to:
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Enhance Accessibility & Control: Provide existing users with a robust web dashboard that offers a more detailed, organized, and intuitive view of their financial data, empowering them with greater control over their expenses.
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Streamline Accountant Workflow: Develop a web interface that simplifies the process of accessing and utilizing financial reports, significantly easing the burden on accountants during tax season.
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Attract New Users: Create a compelling and user-friendly web experience that acts as a strong acquisition channel, appealing to new users seeking a comprehensive expense tracking solution.
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Ensure Cross-Platform Consistency: Design a cohesive experience that seamlessly integrates with the existing mobile app, maintaining brand consistency and a familiar user journey across all platforms.
As the Project Lead and a core UX Designer on a team of three, I spearheaded the strategic direction and execution of this web dashboard initiative. My responsibilities encompassed:
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Project Management: Defining project scope, setting clear milestones, managing timelines, and facilitating cross-functional collaboration to ensure the project remained on track and aligned with business objectives.
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User Research & Synthesis: Leading the planning and execution of user interviews. I personally conducted in-depth sessions with 10+ active users, uncovering critical pain points and unmet needs. I then synthesized this qualitative data, translating raw feedback into actionable insights that directly informed our design decisions.
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Information Architecture & Wireframing: Translating user insights into logical information architecture, creating initial wireframes and user flows to define the core structure and functionality of the web dashboard.
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Cross-Platform Cohesion: Ensuring that the web dashboard's design not only solved identified problems but also maintained seamless consistency and a familiar experience with the existing mobile application.
This role allowed me to bridge strategic planning with hands-on design,
ensuring a human-centered approach from conception to execution.
User Interviews
To ensure our design was built on a foundation of genuine human needs, we went beyond the surface. We conducted in-depth interviews with 20+ active users, not just to hear their feedback, but to observe their natural behaviors and listen for their unspoken needs.
This research allowed us to identify subtle points of friction and frustrations within the existing app. Our insights guided us to a singular design philosophy: to create a web dashboard that feels so intuitive and effortless that the user journey becomes a seamless, almost invisible extension of their daily lives.
🎤Interview Examples:
01 _ The Structure Seeker
Name: Jason, 35
Role: Product Manager
Behavior Observed: Frequently uses dashboards and expects consistent layout patterns
“Some cards had titles, some didn’t. It felt incomplete — like something was missing. Titles give me instant context.”
“When I click on a card, I expect to be taken somewhere — but not all of them do that. It’s confusing.”
Insight: Inconsistent visual hierarchy and navigation disrupted user trust and flow. Led to decision: Add titles and arrows to all cards.
02 _ The Budget-Focused Professional
Name: Amina, 29
Role: Marketing Specialist
Behavior Observed: Looks for budgeting features, opens mobile app daily
“I don’t just want to track spending — I want to plan for it. Where’s the budgeting tool?”
“I’d love a quick visual — like, how much of my budget is left for the month, not just what I spent.”
Insight: Strong demand for proactive money planning, not just reactive tracking. Led to decision: Add budgeting option + remaining budget indicator.
03 _ The Speedy Planner
Name: Sarah, 42
Role: Startup Founder
Behavior Observed: Navigates rapidly, gets frustrated by extra clicks
“I clicked the month in the dropdown expecting it to show me the view — but it didn’t do anything. Why the extra step?”
“If I’m selecting a month, just take me to it. One click should be enough.”
Insight: Users expect direct outcomes from their actions.
Led to decision: Update filter dropdown behavior to immediately show month view.
Competitive Analysis & Key Takeaways
To understand the market landscape, we conducted a competitive analysis of key players, including QuickBooks and Keeper. We found that while competitors offer comprehensive features, they often do so at the cost of simplicity, leading to confusing interfaces and poor onboarding experiences.
This analysis confirmed a clear market opportunity for Easy Expense: to fill the gap for users who need a powerful expense tracking platform without the overwhelming complexity of a full-scale accounting solution. Our key takeaway was that to evolve, Easy Expense needed to expand beyond its niche mobile offering by developing a comprehensive web dashboard that provides a more robust and organized experience, all while maintaining its core strength of simplicity and ease of use.
______Sketch
We began our process with low-fidelity hand sketches to quickly and freely explore a wide range of design concepts. This rapid ideation phase allowed us to translate user research insights into tangible layouts and test multiple approaches to information architecture without the constraints of digital tools.
______Low-Fidelity Wireframes
Following our initial sketches, we created low-fidelity wireframes to quickly test and validate the core structure and user flow of the web dashboard. This stage focused exclusively on laying out the information architecture and key functionality, allowing us to rapidly iterate on different designs for the main dashboard and the budget visualization. By prioritizing functionality over visual detail, we were able to streamline the user journey and ensure a solid foundation before committing to high-fidelity design.
Current users were able to use our products to see their income and expenses, categorized clearly.
DetailedIncome View
Expense Categories Breakdown
Additional feedback:
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More consistency
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All cards on the dashboard with a title
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Arrows to navigate to pages on all cards
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Need for a budgeting option
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How much of the budget is left
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Changes to the filter dropdown
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Showing the month view as soon as you click the month in the dropdown
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Additional categories
Based on users' feedback, we revamped the website by adding a dashboard to the side navigation menu. This update includes features from the mobile app, enhancing usability and ensuring consistency across platforms.
Financial Clarity, Unlocked.
We've enhanced the graph visualization to provide users with greater clarity and control over their financial planning. By adding a descriptive title to the graph card, we immediately set context.
Users can now easily set a personalized monthly budget, which is then visually represented on the graph, offering immediate feedback on their spending and clearly showing the amount of budget remaining at a glance. This empowers users to make informed decisions and manage their finances more effectively
Optimizing Navigation for Seamless User Flow.
Recognizing that intuitive navigation is key to a frictionless user experience, we've refined the path to the categories page. Instead of a generic "View All" text link, we've implemented a visually intuitive arrow icon that directly signals progression, reducing cognitive load and guiding users more naturally.
Furthermore, we meticulously aligned the arrow's style to be cohesive with the app's overall aesthetic, ensuring visual consistency and a polished brand experience. Crucially, we also expanded the clickable area (indicated by the subtle dotted lines), directly addressing potential usability friction by making it significantly easier for users to tap and navigate, especially on mobile devices. This ensures a more effortless and delightful interaction.
______High-fidelity
Recognizing that complexity can hinder the user experience, we streamlined the dashboard by removing the dropdown filter. This decision was based on the principle of providing options only when they are relevant. By relocating the filtering functionality to the contextual card view, we’ve simplified the main dashboard and reduced user confusion. Additionally, we updated the title from "Monthly Totals" to the more direct and actionable "View Summary," creating a clearer and more intuitive user journey.
3 USERS TESTED OUR FINAL PROTOTYPE:
Future UX Strategy: Enhancing Discoverability & Consistency
Based on key insights from user feedback, we've identified that the "Categories" section was difficult for users to locate. To address this critical discoverability issue, our future roadmap includes creating a dedicated, separate card for Categories, making it a prominent and easily accessible feature.
Moving forward, we are committed to elevating the overall product experience by applying UX best practices to all key components. This includes refining our visual language for icons (such as chat, help, and navigation arrows) and optimizing typeface choices to ensure readability and scannability of both numbers and text. As the site continues to evolve, our priority will be to maintain a consistent and cohesive experience across all pages and platforms, from web to mobile.
Reflection:
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Made a separate “Categories” card
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Made sure the navigation sidebar was the correct width earlier in the process in order to correctly size and space our cards
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Scheduled more usability tests with current users