Money insights young professionals act on
What I did: Turned complex data into simple insights, personal goals, and clear next steps.
Problem: Young professionals found their finances confusing and didn't know what to do next.
Finora, personal finance app
The Product Itself
Product Overview
Finora is a personal finance and investment app designed to bring spending, saving, investing, and financial goals into one connected experience.
The product aims to help users understand their current financial position, identify important financial patterns, track progress toward their goals, and make more informed financial decisions.
Rather than functioning only as a finance tracker, Finora focuses on turning financial information into something that is easier to understand and act on.
Discover
Domain:
FinTech
Industry:
Financial Services
Product Type:
End-to-End Product Design
My Role:
Product Designer & UX Researcher
Focus:
Personal Finance · Investments · Financial Well-being
Platform:
Mobile Application
The Problem Space
Managing personal finances involves more than checking a bank balance.
Users may need to:
Track everyday expenses
Understand spending patterns
Manage savings
Monitor investments
Set financial goals
Review financial progress
Make decisions based on changing financial situations
However, these activities can become fragmented across different applications, spreadsheets, or manual processes.
Even when all the information is available, users may still struggle to answer simple questions:
Where am I financially?
Where is my money going?
Am I making progress?
What has changed?
What should I pay attention to?
What should I do next?
Why Finora?
The initial exploration revealed that the challenge was not simply access to financial information.
The larger challenge was understanding that information in context.
₹18,500 — Monthly Spending
But still need to understand:
Is this higher than usual?
Which categories contributed most?
Has spending affected a financial goal?
Is there a pattern worth noticing?
A user might see:
This created an opportunity to move the experience from:
Tracking → Understanding → Action
Target Users
Finora was explored around three behavioral user groups rather than demographic profiles.
01 — Everyday Money Manager
Users who want greater visibility into their everyday finances.
Financial activity can be difficult to review consistently when information is scattered or overly detailed.
Track expenses
Understand spending
Monitor available money
Identify spending patterns
Needs
Challenge
02 — Goal-Oriented Saver
Users who are working toward specific financial goals.
Financial goals can feel disconnected from everyday financial behavior.
Set financial targets
Track progress
Understand required contributions
Connect everyday spending with savings
Needs
Challenge
03 — Growing Investor
Users who have started investing and want to understand their portfolio better.
Investment information can become difficult to interpret when multiple metrics are presented simultaneously.
Monitor investments
Understand performance
Review allocation
Track portfolio growth
Needs
Challenge
Core User Needs
Across these behaviors, five fundamental needs emerged as the starting point for the project.
See
Understand my current financial position.
Understand
Know where my money is going and what is changing.
Plan
Set meaningful financial goals.
Track
Understand whether I am progressing.
Trust
Feel confident about my financial information and actions.
Initial UX Challenges
Information Overload
Financial products can contain balances, transactions, categories, charts, investments, goals, and notifications.
The challenge is deciding what deserves attention first.
Lack of Context
Financial numbers can communicate information without communicating meaning.
Users may need comparisons, trends, explanations, or related information to understand what a number represents.
Fragmented Financial Activities
Spending, saving, investing, and goal tracking are interconnected in real life but can feel disconnected within digital products.
Investment Complexity
Investment interfaces need to provide enough information for informed decisions without overwhelming users who have different levels of financial knowledge.
Trust & Transparency
Financial products handle sensitive information and consequential actions, making clarity, transparency, and user control important parts of the overall experience.
Initial Assumptions
Before moving into research, I documented the assumptions that needed to be investigated rather than treating them as established facts.
01
Users may want a more connected view of their finances.
02
Users may find raw financial numbers difficult to interpret without context.
03
Users may benefit when spending information is connected to longer-term goals.
04
Different financial priorities may require different information hierarchies.
05
Showing too much information at once may increase cognitive load.
06
Trust and transparency may influence how comfortable users feel using a financial application.
The research combined four complementary methods:
Understanding Financial Behaviours, Needs & Friction
Research
The research explored how people understand and manage their finances, where existing financial products create friction, and which UX patterns can make complex financial information easier to interpret.
The goal was to understand the problem before defining the product experience.
Secondary Research
Reviewed findings from financial well-being and digital finance research to understand user behaviours, needs, trust, and decision-making.
01 — Secondary Research
Financial information needs context
Research into financial well-being suggests that financial well-being is not simply about having money available. It includes feeling in control of day-to-day finances, being able to absorb financial shocks, making progress toward goals, and having freedom of choice.
This suggested that a finance product should help users understand their overall financial position, rather than only display individual numbers.
Research Approach
Competitive Analysis
Studied existing personal finance and investment products to identify common patterns, strengths, and experience gaps.
UX Pattern Research
Examined how financial products handle dashboards, transactions, investments, goals, insights, and complex information.
Research Synthesis
Connected the findings across research sources to identify recurring user needs and opportunities.
Real-time financial feedback can be valuable
Research on spending management found strong consumer interest in receiving real-time feedback about spending.
This supported exploring ways to make spending information more visible and meaningful instead of requiring users to manually interpret transaction history.
Financial data requires transparency
Research around financial data sharing highlights the importance of users understanding what information is being accessed, why it is being used, and giving explicit permission for that access.
This reinforced transparency and user control as important parts of the experience.
Ease of use influences financial product adoption
Research into fintech experiences indicates that factors such as cost, ease of use, and how personal information is handled can influence how people evaluate financial applications.
This reinforced the importance of reducing unnecessary complexity while maintaining trust.
02 — Competitor Analysis
Product
Focus Area
Opportunity
UX Observation
INDmoney
Investments & financial overview
Connect information with clearer context
Broad financial visibility
Groww
Investments
Extend simplicity across broader financial management
Simple investment discovery
Money View
Personal finance
Make financial patterns more actionable
Spending and financial tracking
Fi
Banking & financial experience
Balance visual engagement with deeper financial context
Strong visual communication
Competitive Takeaway
Existing products solve individual parts of financial management well, but there is an opportunity to create a more connected experience across spending, saving, investing, and goals.
The research also showed that simplicity does not mean removing information. It means prioritizing the right information at the right moment.
03 — UX Pattern Research
Financial Dashboards
Provide an overview of balances, spending, investments, and goals.
Opportunity: Prioritize information based on relevance instead of presenting everything equally.
Transaction Categorization
Provide an overview of balances, spending, investments, and goals.
Opportunity: Prioritize information based on relevance instead of presenting everything equally.
Data Visualization
Uses charts and visual summaries to communicate trends and comparisons.
Opportunity: Use visualization to explain financial changes rather than decorate the interface.
Goal Tracking
Shows progress toward a target over time.
Opportunity: Connect progress with clear next steps.
Contextual Insights
Adds meaning to financial numbers through trends, comparisons, or explanations.
Opportunity: Turn raw financial data into understandable information.
Progressive Disclosure
Keeps the primary experience focused while allowing users to access deeper information when needed.
Opportunity: Reduce cognitive load without hiding important financial details.
Status & Feedback
Communicates changes, progress, alerts, and completed actions.
Opportunity: Help users understand what changed and whether they need to take action.
04 — Research Synthesis
01 — Financial information needs context
Numbers become more useful when users understand what they mean and why they matter.
02 — Users need prioritization, not more information
A finance dashboard should help users identify what deserves attention instead of presenting every metric equally.
03 — Financial activities are connected
Spending, saving, investments, and goals influence one another and should not feel completely isolated.
04 — Different users have different priorities
A person reviewing monthly spending may need a very different experience from someone monitoring investments or working toward a savings goal.
05 — Complexity should be progressively revealed
Users should be able to understand the important information first and explore deeper details when required.
06 — Trust is part of the UX
Financial products need clear communication around data, permissions, actions, and important changes.
The research showed that the core challenge was not a lack of financial information, but how that information is organized, understood, and connected.
The design direction focused on creating an experience that helps users move from seeing financial data to understanding it and taking action.
Design Direction
Design Principles
01 — Understand Before Acting
Present essential information clearly before asking users to make decisions or take actions.
The interface should answer the user's immediate questions first, while allowing deeper exploration when needed.
02 — Context Over Numbers
Financial numbers become more meaningful when supported by context.
Use trends, comparisons, categories, and explanations to help users understand what changed and why it matters.
03 — Prioritize, Don't Overload
Not every piece of financial information deserves equal visual priority.
Surface the most relevant information first and progressively reveal deeper details when users need them.
04 — Connect the Financial Picture
Spending, savings, investments, and goals should feel like connected parts of the user's financial life rather than isolated features.
05 — Trust Through Transparency
Financial information and actions should feel predictable and understandable.
Clearly communicate important states, permissions, changes, and actions so users remain in control.
Product Experience Direction
Financial Overview
Understand the current financial position.
Spending & Transactions
Understand where money is going and identify patterns.
Investments
Monitor portfolio value, performance, and allocation without unnecessary complexity.
Goals
Set targets, track progress, and understand the relationship between current behaviour and future goals.
Design Goals
Reduce cognitive load
Improve financial information hierarchy
Make financial data more contextual
Connect everyday activity with long-term goals
Simplify investment information
Make important changes easier to notice
Create a consistent and scalable product experience
Maintain clarity and trust throughout the experience
The UX structure translated the research findings and design principles into a clear framework for navigating financial information.
The experience was organized around the user's primary financial activities while keeping the overall financial picture connected.
Key User Flow
UX Structure
Mockups
Working on Finora helped me understand that effective financial UX is not about presenting more data, but about giving users the right context to understand it. Research showed me how complexity can be managed through clear hierarchy, progressive disclosure, and meaningful connections between spending, saving, investing, and goals. I also learned that different financial priorities require different information structures, while trust and transparency need to be considered throughout the experience. Most importantly, the project reinforced how research can shape product decisions and turn a data-heavy financial experience into something more focused, understandable, and actionable.
Key Learnings
DIVYADHARSINI
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divyadharsinir3@gmail.com
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