Redesign That: Online Personal Finance (Part 6)

By guest authors Charles W. Bush and Kathy Hwang of 3Strand Innovation, a brand, design and business consultancy.

3Strand’s Concept Features for Wesabe:
Support Groups and Scorecard

Trying to get your finances under control can be an extremely stressful and overwhelming process. Throw in the worst economic downturn Generation Y has ever faced, and you’ve got a whole generation crying out for something to offer them a sense of control and stability.

Wesabe has a key opportunity to support these needs while emphasizing their core strength at integrating community into the money management process.  In our redesign of their website service, we introduce the concept of Budget Buddies, friends in the Wesabe community who loosely act as your financial support group. With a daily feed of updates, you can see new goals, tips and requests posted by your more intimate community.

3Strand Concept Design - Budget Buddies

3Strand Concept Design - My Challenges

My Challenges is a feature that brings some friendly competition onto this social networking scene. Challenge a group of your friends to each “give up your Starbucks latte three days a week until April.”  As Wesabe tracks your daily transactions, you can see who’s closest to keeping to their goals and winning the challenge. Make the hurdle of “saving money” less about strict abstinence and more about trash-talking with friends, with built-in community accountability. At the end of the challenge, you can see that you’ve already saved $50, and if you choose to continue with this habit, you could save an extra $500 by the end of the year.

Or maybe you’ve been eyeing the new BlackBerry Storm, but it’s not within your budget. Add it as a wish list item, and your account will automatically put any extra budget money towards this future purchase. Being able to track these challenges and goals gives you an easy and stress-free way to have control over your money.

The comparative Scorecard aspect of money management also brings up typical questions like:

What are people like me spending?
Am I paying too much for rent for my area?
How are others like me saving?

A critical part of these questions is the comparison to others of a similar age, location, or profession, who tend to have similar living styles and preferences. The Savings Board feature allows you to see how others like you are spending or saving, based on your own personalized search filters. So if you are in your 20s and very socially active, you get saving ideas for how to save money while staying social, such as “cook meals with friends during the week.” You can also compare your monthly spending habits to those of others like you, to see how you measure up to your peers.

3Strand Concept Design - Savings Board

This segment is part 6 in the series : Redesign That: Online Personal Finance
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