User Analysis
"Thrift-ster" User Persona
Mr. Spend Thrift is a recent college graduate and now full-time employee in the "real world." He has always been particular about where his hard-earned cash goes. If given the opportunity, he will always choose the budget option; tap water instead of bottled or soda, fill up on complimentary restaurant bread to buy a smaller-portioned and cheaper-priced entree, redeem 30-cent coupons at grocery stores, and pay exactly 10% for tip. Thus when there comes a time when he must dough out cash for a buddy, Thrift is relentless in making sure that his buddy pays back in a timely manner. Thrift's primary concern is that the app is effective (just as if not even more than himself) in "harassing" his dependents to pay up. With every cent being important in the eyes of Thrift, he would like to see PennyPincher be an accurate and reliable app that is also suitable for harassing those that owe him money. Thrift quotes, "It's not very long that someone has an outstanding balance with me. Could this app harass people for my money as well as I do?" clearly highlighting his monetary priorities.
"John Doe" Heavy Lender/User Persona
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. According to him, "the less complexity and options there are in a program like this, the more I'd want to use it."
Busy and Occasional Lender User Persona
Sally Smith is a small business owner who has been running her bakery in the "real world" for around 15 years. She lends out money to friends and relatives, but since she is so busy managing her bakery, she often forgets who she lends money to when it’s not related to business. She would use this app to help her keep track of who she lends money to, and to keep a record of who pays her back. She hopes that this app would allow her to worry less about the money she lends to her friends and family.
Lessons learned from User Personas
Current Solution for Debt Tracking
- 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
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 Shawn, he wants to be able to approve it so that people do not make up claims for money.
Task Analysis
The PennyPincher application will attempt to perform three main 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)
1. Adding People
Goal: Allow users to register a two-way connection with people that owe them money.
Subtasks:
- Searching for user by username
- Adding user by username
- Removing user
Preconditions:
- User must have an account with PennyPincher
Postconditions:
- User establishes a connection with another user and can now add transactions
How often used? - Depending on the user, but should be used fairly infrequently as users usually only incur debt with friends
2. Adding/Approving a transaction
Goal: Allow users to input an amount that a particular person owes them
Subtasks:
- Set the amount that another user owes them
- Input the name of the transaction (what it was for)
- Send the transaction
- Approve transaction
Preconditions:
- The two exchanging parties must have an established connection.
Postconditions:
- A transaction will be sent from one party to another.
- Approval message will be displayed to the person who owes money
- Upon approval, net balance between the two parties will be updated
How often used? - This task will be performed very frequently as its the core of PennyPincher
3. Viewing Transactions
Goal: Allow users to have a complete review of all posted transactions. This will emulate what a credit card statement might reflect; providing information about charges applied against a user (other people posting that a user owes) as well as transactions that are credited towards the user (a user claiming that other people owe him/her).
Subtasks:
- Ability to arrange transaction order depending on various parameters including but not limited to:
- type (credit or charge)
- person of transaction origination (who posted the original transaction)
- denomination (the size of the credit or charge)
4. Disputing Transactions
Goal: People make mistakes; when there is a transaction against the user that he/she deems incorrect, it may be disputed. Upon dispute, that transaction will be flagged for in-person or alternative settlement.
Subtasks:
- Flag the transaction that a user wants to dispute
- Flag the complimentary transaction that a user wants to dispute (the transaction as posted on the other person's account)
Preconditions:
- Transaction must have already been successfully posted prior to dispute
Postconditions:
- Disputes should have the ability to be retracted if the transactions are settled.