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John Doe is a regular MIT student who is pretty nitpicky about his money and likes "bills to be split equally to the cent". He really doesn’t mind paying for others, but gets annoyed when multiple people borrow money and then forget to pay it back. He finds that he can manually keep track of how much people owe him and how much he owes others, but finds that it’s simply too cumbersome and slow to be effective when "there's more than like four-ish people". Since John would use this app extensively as he likes to keep a detailed record about his money, he would like a simple user-interface that allows him to input records super efficiently. The current systems that he employ are what he considers "just one layer over a simple database," and he wants an "actual simple system to lend and collect money." According to him, "the less complexity and options there are in a program like this, the more I'd want to use it."
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- Pencil/Paper - really low-level way of keep tracking, works for only a few people
- Excel-style Spreadsheet - depends on user-implemented functions subject to human error; difficult for multiple people to manage
- iPhone - uses a money managing app meant for one person and attempts to use it for multiple people
- In general, most systems involve the user directly interacting with the database with almost no layers of abstraction in between.
Requirements of Desired Solution
- Super simple user-interface - Should not take more than a few seconds to input a debt or payment of debt
- Approvals - When another person places a debt on Shawnhim, he wants to be able to approve it so that people do not make up claims for money.
- An actual "system" instead of just an interface for a database.
Lessons learned from Sally Smith - Busy and Occasional Lender User
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The PennyPincher application will attempt to perform three main the following tasks
- Adding people (people who owe you money or you owe money to)
- Add transaction (Users are allowed to say that another person owes them X amount of dollars)
- View all transactions (like a credit-card bill)
- Disputing transactions (for potentially incorrect charges)
- Discreet payment schedules for fixed payments (also like a credit-card bill)
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