Young adults lack financial literacy
Interview participants across demographics
Pocket balances that update as you spend
Traditional banking apps are abstract and passive — they don't show where your money is going or how to manage it in real time.
This leads to stress, avoidance, and financial anxiety. People are guessing their way through money management.
No framework for how money should be allocated before spending begins.
No real-time view of what's actually available to spend right now.
No organized structure that makes managing money feel intuitive.
I launched an open-ended survey and conducted live interviews with young adults to understand their real-world frustrations, habits, and financial anxiety triggers.
🧍 Age: 21–25
💼 Works: 31–40 hrs
😊 Comfortable: 3/5
💪 Confident: 3/5
💳 Expenses: car, cell, credit, rent, subs, other
🏦 Loans: student, auto
📆 Credit Card Use: 3–6×/mo
😰 Stress: a lot (70% financial)
🧍 Age: 26–31
💼 Works: 40+ hrs
😊 Comfortable: 2/5
💪 Confident: 2/5
💳 Expenses: rent, cell, utilities, credit, subs, other
🏦 Loans: student, credit
📆 Credit Card Use: 11+×/mo
😰 Stress: a lot (80% financial)
🧍 Age: 32+
💼 Works: 40+ hrs
😊 Comfortable: 2/5
💪 Confident: 2/5
💳 Expenses: rent, car, cell, utilities, credit, subs
🏦 Loans: auto
📆 Credit Card Use: 1–2×/mo
😰 Stress: always (80% financial)
🧍 Age: 21–25
💼 Works: 31–40 hrs
😊 Comfortable: 4/5
💪 Confident: 3/5
💳 Expenses: car, cell, rent, credit card, subs
🏦 Loans: auto
📆 Credit Card Use: 3–6×/mo
😰 Stress: most of the time (50% financial)
🧍 Age: 32+
💼 Works: 11–20 hrs
😊 Comfortable: 2/5
💪 Confident: 2/5
💳 Expenses: rent, car, cell, utilities, credit card, subs
🏦 Loans: student, auto, credit
📆 Credit Card Use: 11+×/mo
😰 Stress: always (70% financial)
🧍 Age: 21–25
💼 Works: 32–40 hrs
😊 Comfortable: 3/5
💪 Confident: 3/5
💳 Expenses: rent, cell, utilities, subs
🚫 No credit card
😰 Stress: often (30% financial)
"How much do I actually have to spend right now?"
"Being able to see visually on a piece of paper what I am spending is everything."
A 24-year-old full-time worker who struggles to track spending and wants a more visual way to spend money.
I evaluated Mint, Simplifi, and EveryDollar through a heuristic lens and live testing. Each offers budgeting tools and clean interfaces — but all three fall short on one core experience:
"How much money do I actually have to spend right now?"
All three fail to show real-time spendable money. They surface useful data — but leave the work of making it usable up to the user.
| App | What It Does | What It Misses |
|---|---|---|
| Mint | Category bars and graphs | No real-time clarity |
| Simplifi | Manual setup and tracking | Feels disconnected from daily money |
| EveryDollar | Zero-based budgeting | Requires heavy editing and upkeep |
"Most tools treat budgeting like a ledger — not a living, breathing process. If we were still managing cash, none of these apps would actually help you handle it day to day."
"Being able to see visually on a piece of paper what I'm spending is everything."
help people make confident financial decisions — without stress?
provide resources that help people stay aware and prepared?
organize financial information so it's easy to digest and interact with?
Pockets is a mobile app that connects to your bank, lets you allocate money to named Pockets (like "Food" or "Rent"), and pay directly from those Pockets — so you always know what's left.
I defined the MVP by prioritizing user stories, then mapped out the key steps users would take to achieve their goals — forming the foundation for the product's structure.
Map of early user stories
Define MVP scope
The core flow: connect your bank, fill your Pockets, spend with intention.
These are the essential actions a user must be able to complete quickly and reliably.
"All inclusive, easy interface. Allocating money that can be used in real time would be ideal."
Quick sketches helped validate flow, visibility, and emotional trust before jumping into Figma.
View Live Prototype ↗Turning sketches into digital wireframes brought clarity to core mechanics and exposed gaps in logic — helping refine the product's structure before high-fidelity design.
A walkthrough of the most critical task: spending directly from a Pocket — the moment where clarity and control meet.
These flows helped validate how users would initiate, split, and complete payments inside the app.
High-fidelity screens exploring core flows and key interactions.
Main checkout flow
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Selecting a Pocket, handling split pay, and assigning transactions retroactively.
Adding pockets, expenses, and accounts.
Linking a bank account.
Viewing the calendar.
Pocket details and actions.
I conducted usability testing with participants from the target demographic: young adults managing full-time or part-time finances.
Feedback led to key revisions across UI language, flow hierarchy, and toggle behaviors.
Summary of key user pain points across flows
These high-fidelity screens represent the culmination of Pockets' design — focused on clarity, trust, and control.
Next: I plan to iterate on this system and begin prototyping a real version of Pockets — one that links live accounts and makes mobile pay from named buckets a reality.
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