🔍 Project Overview
Several couples struggled to stay aligned on spending, saving, and long-term goals often because traditional budgeting tools are built for individuals and not couples. Pairwise solves this by offering a shared financial space where couples can collaboratively track expenses, set joint goals, and make informed decisions without confusion or conflict.
Uncovering the Truth Behind Couples’ Finances
✦ User interviews revealed that tension between couples were caused by lots of financial assumption. As a result, each partner often managed their own accounts separately, checking in only when a specific issue appeared. It was the lack of proactive communication and financial planning that often caused tension for these couples.
✦ 36% of couples were not actively tracking shared finances nor were they tracking their goals together in any consistent way. Without structure, clarity, or a shared tool, it became incredibly easy to assume alignment rather than confirming it.
The Limitations
Relationship Dynamics & Finances
The user interviews mainly featured heterosexual couples and a majority of them had 2 income streams.
One of the participants is in a same-sex marriage and their response was slightly different. This made me consider how relationship structures affect financial habits.
How do financial dynamics differ for same-sex couples, long-distance relationships, or couples with only 1 stream of income instead of 2? This limitation highlights the need for designing with greater inclusivity and flexibility to better accommodate diverse relationship structures in the future!
The Problem
The Challenges of Financial Dynamics in Couples
Many couples struggle to manage shared finances effectively due to the lack of joint tools, structured habits, or visibility into each other’s financial patterns. What looks like a simple budgeting issue is often rooted in tools not being built for “two.”
Financial conversations between couples are often avoided or only brought up when an immediate need arises. This reactive approach can lead to misunderstandings, lack of proactive planning, and ultimately unmet financial goals and alignment.
Couples need a simple, non-intimidating way to align on finances as they often assume they’re on the same page without checking in regularly.
Couples undergoing major lifestyle changes often face uncertainty around how to adapt their financial habits, responsibilities, and goals. Without support for this transition, misalignment, and financial stress can rise.
Inefficient methods for financial tracking, budgeting to reach financial goals, and tracking.
The Challenge
✦ How might we make tracking finance easier, simpler, and more manageable?
User Persona
🤝 Meet Our User
Competitive Analysis
📊 What does the competition look like?
The competitors:
✦ You Need a Budget (YNAB)
✦ Monarch
✦ Honeydue
Insights based on analysis…
There is no existing budgeting tool built for couples.
No feature to set shared financial goals.
Transactions are entered manually which can interrupt the flow and delays users.
Users of these existing applications have no way to categorize their savings.
🖌️ Crafting the Experience — The Design Process in Action
Sign Up/Sign In User Flow
Core Navigation User Flow
Concept 01: The Dashboard
What do users want to see in their dashboard?
✦ What information truly belonged on the Dashboard screen. What kind of information would be useful to users? How will this be organized? To solve this, I needed to understand the purpose of the other screens and how the entire app experience would flow.
✦ I wireframed the dashboard and organized the Activity, Goals, Transactions, and Spending Categories into a bento box style. I wasn't the biggest fan of this layout as I realized the spacing was not utilized to its best ability.
✦ Additionally, the side navigation proved to be an inefficient use of space. Through this exploration, I realized that all primary navigation destinations could be accessed directly from the dashboard. This insight led me to remove the side navigation entirely and instead leverage the dashboard as the central hub for navigating through the entire application.
Before and After
Concept 02: Goal Creation
Goal planning would consist of a CRUD function (Create, Read, Update, Delete)
Version 01
👎 The initial goal creation form occupied the entire screen. During usability testing, participants consistently shared that the full screen layout felt overwhelming and overly "boxed in," making the process feel more rigid than it needed to be.
Version 02
👍 A single screen modal with a progress indicator to reduce cognitive load and guide users through creating a goal.
👍 However, some participants still questioned whether breaking the form into multiple steps added unnecessary friction to a relatively simple task.
Version 03
✦ Based on this feedback, I arrived to a hybrid solution: a modal that presents all essential fields on a single screen. This maintained the open, light weighted feel users preferred without adding the extra steps that did not support the flow in a meaningful way.
What do users want to see in their dashboard?
✦ Designing the Goal Details screen felt like piecing a puzzle together with no picture on a box. I started off with the idea that users required to see these overall details first:
01
A clear snapshot of their progress
02
Users' contributions
03
Overall financial activity of shared goal(s)
✦ Presenting all of this risked overwhelming users if the data was not going to be presented in a digestible way. To keep the experience manageable, I broke the challenge into micro-interactions where intentional decisions about what should be visible and how each piece of information behaves.
The essentials
This led me to on 3 goals:
01
Urgency and progress
Represented as a simple countdown to show “X days left” with a progress bar to give an immediate sense of accomplishment or nudge to keep going.
02
Partner transparency
A space for each user's savings and activity.
03
Category breakdown
To give users a closer look at where their money was going within that specific goal. This level of detail would empower users to understand exactly how each dollar of their savings will be used.
✦ It was interesting to see how colors shaped users’ perception. The simple placeholder portion of the Category wheel was represented by the grey slice just to “complete” the circle, but users immediately assumed it was a real category at a glance. This showed how easily people assign meaning to any visual element, even when it is not intentional.
✦ Additionally, it was surprising that the placement of the wheel as well as the category list was important to users. A majority of users in the user test stated how the layout felt imbalanced to them because the wheel circle caught their eye first and it should be in the middle of the screen.
✦ ✦ ✦
The fix to this was to remove the grey placeholder color of the wheel and utilize negative space. By leaving that portion empty made the Category wheel more honest and prevented users from misinterpreting the information and design at a glance. It was a small detail, but a strong reminder that every visual choice communicates something.
Additionally, I moved the Category wheel to the middle of the screen to give the layout a more balance feel while guiding the users’ eyes to the middle of the screen first.
Concept 04: Contributions Modal
Users can view a breakdown of their contributions alongside their partner's while also creating their own unique goal amount.
Version 01
👎 Used a single progress bar to display both users' contributions towards their shared goal.
👎 The usability test revealed confusion as users could not map the numbers to a person or target.
Version 02
👍 The redesign now includes a per contributor progress bar and clarified number labels (saved/target).
👍 When tested again in the next round, usability participants (5 people) were able to fully understand each user's contributions and their own individual goals.
Summary
01
Goal Creation (Modal -> Hybrid)
Results: Post-change testing showed participants described the flow as "quicker" and "less intimidating.
Implementation estimate: 2 sprints
Next Steps: A/B testing the modal vs. single-screen design in production
02
Category Wheel: Removing the grey placeholder
Results: Removing the grey slice reduced misinterpretation in testing from 9/12 participants to 1/10 in the subsequent round.
Implementation estimate: 3 sprints
03
Contributions Modal: Separating bars per person
Results: Per user progress bars eliminated confusion and improved comprehension during task scenarios. users could interpret contributor in subsequent tests.
The Final Design
Reflection
✦ Through this project, I learned to elevate my visual design approach and deepened the way I translate research into actionable design decisions. Through competitive analysis, I examined common finance patterns to understand why certain design choices worked and where existing solutions left gaps.
✦ Visually, I refined layouts by building stronger hierarchy, improving contrast, and spacing while creating a more cohesive pattern across screens. I was able to balance research insights with intentional UI execution to strengthen my ability to connect strategy with design.
✦ Most of the features shown in the project followed standards CRUD patterns, but these areas required more nuanced decisions about information prioritization, interaction flows, and how to communicate progress without overwhelming users.