GR1

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- Project Proposal and Analysis

Interviews

We interviewed three people:

• 22 y/o male, MIT Grad Student** Keeps track of money spent, not in detail, but keeps track of weekly expenses
  • With regards to Cash spending, doesn’t always use cash, but when doing so takes out a specific amount and keep track of how long it takes him to spend it.
  • Keeps track of spending using banking websites.

Conclusions

From these interviews, we conclude that people typically use excel to manage and track their finances. We also found that people generally do not closely track and audit their spending.

Proposal

A receipt tracking app that allows you to photograph your receipts and use voice recognition or manual input to record down the quantity spent.

Images of the receipts will be saved in the user’s Dropbox for future reference, as will a consolidated report of the user’s expenditures.

Expenditures could be easily sorted on the spot into different categories

Use Cases

The expected user in all cases is someone who still keeps physical receipts for various reasons, and would prefer not to.

Personal user

This user keeps track of receipts to monitor expenditure and detect credit card fraud. They may use some consumer software (a.l.a mint.com), or they may simply spreadsheet their expenses under excel and cross-reference against their credit/debit charges and cash-withdrawals.

This user currently keeps physical receipts, and every so often (fortnightly) takes the built-up stack of receipts and digitizes them into excel, discarding the physical receipts. The user does not digitize them immediately due to the excessive friction of digitizing each receipt as it appears.

Requirements

1. This user wants convenience above all else. Since it is for their own personal usage, there is no need for the anti-forgery properties provided by physical receipts or scans.
2. Data available in standard format (e.g. Excel) for importing into other tools, such that the user is not forced to immediately abandon his existing workflow to use our tool.
3. Low-friction method for scanning and tracking expenses, in order to encourage maximum compliance and thus accuracy.
4. Basic analytics functionality, so the user can use our app to discover easily common usage patterns and insights without the need for tedious calculations.

Solutions

1. The app will be on their phone, and thus will be constantly available
2. The app will place the data in a variety of formats (xlsx, csv, etc.) directly in the user’s dropbox, making it trivial for him to take it and import it to another program
3. The app will require a minimal number of clicks for each receipt to be digitized
4. The app will provide basic analytics in the data it leaves in the user’s dropbox. For example, .xlsx spreadsheets will have some useful aggregate data already calculated.

Business User

This user keeps track of receipts to monitor expenses on behalf of a business, organization or client. This user keeps receipts both in order to track expenditure as well as to justify his expenses to his client or organization, in order to be properly reimbursed.

This user keeps physical receipts for expenditures on behalf of someone else, and every so often hands off these receipts to the client/organization for their auditing, in exchange for reimbursement.

Requirements

1. This user needs some sort of difficult-to-forge evidence of each expenditure, in order to justify to a third party that the expenses were really made and were justified
2. The evidence have to be easily exportable/transferable to third parties, together with the consolidated data (which has to be in a standard format like Excel), such that the third party can quickly cross-reference the photos with the data to audit the expenditure.
3. The data will have to be kept private, as the third party (business/organization/client) will most definitely not want their expenditure records leaking out to the public!
4. The service must be completely reliable. The user cannot afford to lose the records of his expenditure

Solutions

1. The app will take photos of the receipts. These are essentially equivalent to scans, which are in some places already accepted as proof-of-payment
2. The app will leave the photos taken nicely categorized in folders in the user’s dropbox, making transferring the photos to a third party trivial
3. The app will alert the user when the data has been securely placed in the user’s dropbox, such that he knows when the process has been completed and it is safe to discard the physical receipt. Once in the dropbox, the data is securely backed up and version-ed, making data-loss extremely unlikely.

Task Analysis

The following are the basic functions that the application will perform.

Track - Photo taking

The user will want to easily store digital copies of their physical receipts in order to free them from physically managing them.

The user will want to still keep this method as a reliable source of proof of payment (hard-to-forge, no transcription errors, no omitted info). This feature should, for the user, give all the benefits of keeping physical receipts except without the physical hassle.

Organize - Categorization

The user will most likely have expenditures from various venues/domains. Therefore, they might want to be able to have some way of organizing the different expenditures based on the different places/locations/venues where the expenses where made. In some sense the user wants something that allows them to remember where they spent that money and organize these expenses.

The user will want to categorize and organize their expenditure as-it-happens, rather than having to do after-the-fact categorization of large batches of receipts. This is beneficial as it is much easier to categorize on the spot, as opposed to 3 weeks later where the memory of the expenditure (not to mention the receipt itself!) would have faded.

This feature needs to be powerful enough that the user will not need to post-process their expenses later to add in data that could not be added on-the-go, and yet fast enough that categorizing your expenses does not get in the way in the moments immediately after a user has made an expenditure.

Analysis - Statistics

Should the app perform basic analysis on the spending history data set, the user will want to see his/her spending patterns in terms of time, location or the various categories (tags).

It seems likely that many users will not need anything more than the most basic analytics: spending breakdowns by category or by times. By saving the data, by-default, as an Excel file, this allows more advanced users to use the spreadsheet capabilities of Excel in order to perform other analysis not pre-packaged with the app.

The most advanced users, who use high-powered financial applications, will be able to simply import the provided Excel file into their preferred financial software to manipulate and analyse. Hence users of all levels will be able to utilize our software.

Possible Features

• Tasklist: For paying off bills or keeping track of future payments. ** Allows users to keep track of future bills or payments they have to pay.
  • As the user pays it off, the amount is added to their statement.
• Debt tracking: Take a photo of a group receipt, along with the quantity you owe as an individual and the person it is owed too
  • I owe you
  • Who owes me

• User expenditure analysis: A detailed analysis of the user’s spending habits during a specific period of time
  • GPS tracking of expenditures by geographic location** Displaying on Google Maps how much the user has spent
  • Time** Graph of how much on average the user spends during the day

Change of Scope

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Problem Statement

Dorm management staff have difficulty conducting smooth operation of dorm resident inflow/outflow, as well as physical maintenance of the dorm; the necessitated use of paperwork and decentralized tools make these tasks inconvenient.

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Group Members: Viet-Tran Nguyen, Sumit Gogia, Daniel Martelly

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User Classes

• Dorm Manager
  • Hired from outside of MIT to manage two buildings including Next House (primary) and Tang Building
  • Keeps track of housing condition, desk workers, maintenance
  • Using software provided by campus housing
  • Tasks involve using both web application and paper
• Desk Worker
  • Hired from outside of MIT to work approximately 8 hours a day at a dorm
  • Tend to be in their late twenties
  • Comfortable using computers   

Breakdown of Some Common Tasks

1. Physical Maintenance 

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Basic breakdown

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1. Dorm management is alerted to maintenance requirement.
2. Management files maintenance report.
3. Dorm management sends request to staff for maintenance.
4. Staff makes repairs to affected parts of dorm.
5. Staff informs management of issue and resolution.
6. Management files report on maintenance conduction.

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Key points of communication

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• Management informs maintenance staff that maintenance is required.
• Maintenance staff informs management of maintenance conduction.

2. Moving in to a room

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Basic breakdown

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1. Room must have been cleaned before new resident is allowed to move in
2. Dorm manager sends email to desk workers giving the all clear
3. Resident receives email saying they are cleared to move in
4. Resident physically meets desk worker to check in and receive key
5. Resident moves in
6. An email is sent to resident after a week to check up on them

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Key points of communication

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• Room is cleaned
• Room is available for moving in
• Room has been moved in to
• Check up email has been sent

Interviews

Users include the classes mentioned as interview subjects. Essentially, they are all people who need to keep track of dorm facility availability, usage, and maintenance, as well as living conditions of the various residents, though at varying levels.  

Dorm Manager

The dorm manager is hired as a full-time employee to manage a residential dorm. His primary tasks are to maintain the dorm's physical condition, and oversee the moving of long-term students in and out of the dorm. He does this by recording information in paper reports, as well as using decentralized software tools for communications with staff and updating building information.

Requirements

1. Prefers to have centralized tools to manage his house/dorm including keeping track of student move in/move out during school year
2. Prefers a modernized and visual display instead of dense text, spreadsheet, or paper-based documentation. 
3. Want an alternative way where students can supply pictures to report problems with facility to make it easier for him to identify the problem.
4. Wants a way to keep track of all the current maintenance being done in the dorm.

Desk Worker

This desk worker is hired to help house management by aiding the house manager in his tasks, except serving as a more accessible liaison. Typically, they are the one that dorm residents come into contact with first when initiating moving in/out, before the manager is contacted, and also manage information when the house manager is busy conducting various other tasks, such as by checking students' move statuses, exchanging their keys, and toggling card access. 

Requirements

1. Needs a visual tool for looking over room occupancy information.
2. Needs an organized, electronic tool for keeping track of which students are moving where.
3. Needs a way to notify management and be notified by management of student move process.
   1. Example Key exchange
4. Needs to be able to file reports on maintenance in absence of manager.

From these interviews, we conclude that dorm management staff typically want to have a centralized location to view and update information about the living condition of residents of the dorm, as well as view and update information about the physical maintenance of the dorm.

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