1 in 3 young adults lack financial literacy.
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.
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)
Most users just want to know:
“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 — three of the most popular budgeting tools on the market — through a heuristic lens and live testing.
Each of them offers features like account linking, 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?”
Budget bars, category breakdowns, and past spending summaries still require users to do the math and interpret what it means for the next purchase.
All three apps fail to show how much money a user actually has to spend in real time. They surface useful data — but leave the work of making it usable up to the user.
“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.”
Mint
Simplifi
EveryDollar
From the research emerged a common emotional thread: people don’t just need budgeting tools — they need support, clarity, and control.
“Being able to see visually on a piece of paper what I’m spending is everything.”
How might we help people make confident financial decisions — without stress?
How might we provide resources that help people stay aware and prepared?
How might we 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 began with a broad brainstorm to explore what a better relationship with money could look like.
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.
We mapped edge cases like failed bank connections, $0 Pocket spending, and complex split pays — making sure users never hit a dead end.
Edge Case: Not enough in a Pocket — triggers Split Pay logic
Paying with a Pocket doesn't always happen at the register. For physical card transactions, users can open the app afterward and assign that expense to a Pocket — so their visual balance reflects the real-world spend.
Watch how the system resolves this in real time
These polished screens illustrate how Pockets guides users through their most critical financial actions — from allocating funds to real-time mobile payments.
Pockets home, calendar, bank view, and core mobile pay logic.
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Selecting a Pocket, handling split pay, and assigning transactions retroactively.
Adding pockets, expenses, and accounts.
I conducted usability testing with participants from the target demographic: young adults managing full-time or part-time finances. The goal was to assess how well key flows worked and whether users could navigate core features intuitively.
Feedback led to key revisions across UI language, flow hierarchy, and toggle behaviors — especially around split payment logic, categorization, and post-transaction actions.
Summary of key user pain points across flows
These high-fidelity screens represent the culmination of Pockets’ design — focused on clarity, trust, and control. While these flows marked the official end of the capstone, they also laid the groundwork for what's coming next.
