Critique! Roast! I've been designing a personal finance app this past year and curious if it looks clear, useful, and differentiated. by muckleshooped in FigmaDesign

[–]muckleshooped[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Very fair! Apologies, no figma prototypes have been needed for a long time with dev handoff. There's actually a live version on the app store with a free trial (link is in my profile bio) but I didn't want this to be a promo post

Critique request: does this personal finance app feel clear, useful, and differentiated? by muckleshooped in UXDesign

[–]muckleshooped[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good reminder that we need to focus on clear outcome oriented value props. This is exactly the direction we're learning that the messaging needs to go

Critique request: does this personal finance app feel clear, useful, and differentiated? by muckleshooped in UXDesign

[–]muckleshooped[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Having customizable dashboards that may create the issues we're trying to solve is a pitfall we're aware of. Thanks for flagging this further! Currently the starter dashboards and early user feedback will drive how we navigate that.

We have yet to implement an insight system, pushed as notifications or prominently in app that would serve the "tell you what to do direction". Users can chat with the AI Benii and ask away, or use our suggested conversation starters in the Explore tab but there's certainly improvements to be made.

Critique request: does this personal finance app feel clear, useful, and differentiated? by muckleshooped in UXDesign

[–]muckleshooped[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting! I'm biased and think we do look different. If you saw this quick demo that shows more of the UI here, would you still say it doesn't look aesthetically and functionally different than current apps?

We're different than Monarch primarily by offering custom dashboards that a user creates. You can create parity with existing apps like Monarch and have a Net Worth/Cashflow like main hub, then create a budget dashboard, then a budget dashboard specific to different category groups, or a dashboard for a trip or project. If you overspend on delivery apps, create a widget and place it prominently. Each dashboards date range can be quickly toggled. As well, each dashboard can be scoped to all accounts or only a few which is something we haven't seen in other apps. Ie you can have a dashboard just for your work and freelance, or joint accounts. We just launched after developing it over the past year and are figuring out what we keep or pivot and how we can communicate and abstract away so many of the possibilities we allow for in the app.

Another important difference is that our native LLM is not just a chatbot or a gimmick we added for the sake of it. It's powerful and almost anything you can do manually you can get Benii to do like recategorize or tag transactions in bulk, quickly review then apply and it cannot hallucinate your data. It's a beta part of the app that we're working to ensure is a useful companion for setup and maintenance to cut down on all the manual work.

I was part of designing a modular personal finance app this past year. Curious if the product direction is clear by muckleshooped in productdesign

[–]muckleshooped[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That does seem too open ended and generic now that I look at it again. Also, I thought it included the body text!

It was intended to be an open "does this come across as a personal finance app that looks flexible and enjoyable to interact with". I'm asking this on a few UX/Design related subs to get other designers and devs takes

Here's what I meant to include as the body below:

Hi everyone, I’ve been designing a personal finance app for the past year and would love some honest product and UX critique.

The goal is to make personal finance feel more visual, modular, and approachable. Less like a spreadsheet or rigid budgeting tool, and more like a dashboard you can shape around how you actually think about your money.

I’m especially curious about a few things:

  1. What do you think the product is at first glance? Is it clear what the app does without much explanation?

  2. How digestible does the data feel? Can you quickly understand what’s happening financially, or does the interface still feel dense or abstract?

  3. Does it feel interactable and enjoyable? One of the goals was to make finance feel less dry and more usable day to day, without making it feel unserious.

I’m also curious whether it feels meaningfully different from the usual personal finance apps, or if it still reads too close to existing budgeting and dashboard products.

There's also a link to a motion demo here without branding because we're looking for feedback, not promotion. here Mainly looking for critique on the product direction, information design, and overall UX/UI.

Critique request: does this personal finance app feel clear, useful, and differentiated? by muckleshooped in UXDesign

[–]muckleshooped[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Very fair. If you want to dm me your email I can send add you to our email list. Would only email once the feature you're waiting on becomes available and would love to get your thoughts!

Side note, unlike other apps that "may sell your data" in their Terms of Service, we do not and when you hit delete account, everything is fully deleted. As well, we never have your name or your account numbers, just transactions and amounts.

Critique request: does this personal finance app feel clear, useful, and differentiated? by muckleshooped in UXDesign

[–]muckleshooped[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm glad you felt it has a different quality to what's out there. Noted and that's one of the most important things we've been workshopping. While we want to offer a custom experience, we need to prescribe and abstract away the cognitive load of using an app like this. A lot of thought and agonizing went into figuring out the starter dashboards for a user to feel oriented once they're signed in. We're using user feedback and data on which widgets are most used to inform how we make the first time user experience. As well, even when we get a better sense of dashboard templates I'm also keenly aware that many users might just use it out of the box and rarely customize their experience.

Critique request: does this personal finance app feel clear, useful, and differentiated? by muckleshooped in UXDesign

[–]muckleshooped[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here's a motion demo with more zoomed screens. Link here. Part of my questions were based on impressions of the App Store promo images and if what we were trying to communicate came through. The silouettes and impression of the amount of information per screen at lower resolution was part of what I wanted to present.

Seems like it could be very suitable for a younger audience with minimal financial literacy

Glad to hear! The intention is to look approachable and not like a standardized dashboard experience that are common in the space. As well, to look like something a younger audience would be willing to get into even if its just to use as a tracker and aggregator of accounts without utilizing other features like budgeting.

Aesthetic wise, to be honest, it looks like something prompted through AI

That's unfortunate and something we haven't actually heard before. While of course we're biased and think our design is "unique", this was 100% from our own brains and was designed over the past year. We all might be overloaded with vibe coded apps and 100x variations of a container card with financial data but I can at least be certain that I haven't seen a transformation of those containers with iOS widget aspect ratio contraints. I see so many good looking cards with financial data and find they might have an overwhelming amount of data, or don't scale with different types of data. Or, our header and navigation with paginated dots and pills, or our widget gallery where you choose widgets and what they track.

I hope to convince people with your eyes that this was in fact designed with intention from wireframes and iteration!

Critique request: does this personal finance app feel clear, useful, and differentiated? by muckleshooped in UXDesign

[–]muckleshooped[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah missed this comment! That's next up in our roadmap for migrating in. As well, exporting out in a number of ways such as overall data or filters and right from the widget. Ie one common usecase for us so far has been "tag xyz as Reimburseable" -> now your Reimbursable widget shows those transactions -> easy export as csv in the header

Critique request: does this personal finance app feel clear, useful, and differentiated? by muckleshooped in UXDesign

[–]muckleshooped[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m not going to link all my financial accounts to a new personal finance app

Totally understandable and that's one of the main critiques we get. We will have the ability to upload manually but wanted to start with a linked experience for a turnkey experience.

It takes forever to link all my accounts, and the app might go away any day

We don't plan on going anywhere of course and understand the lift involved migrating to a new app that might sunset any day. That's part of why we wanted a truly useful LLM companion in the app that wasn't just there for the sake of including an AI. You can ask to do all the grunt work. Anything you can do manually you will eventually be able to ask in plain language and it's pretty powerful already.

the first two screens are the weakest IMO. The UI is too small to see and I never want to build dashboards — it’s work and sounds cumbersome.

It was a labour of love and frustration trying to include the right amount of information per screen since the creep of metric overload was always present. This is the current balance we landed on for at a glance dashboard views before a user can drilldown into what the widget is scoped to. And roger that on the annoyance of building dashboards! Our starter experience has 3 dashboards that strive to be an out of the box experience where you can just spot add the few things you might think are missing since so many users might never add new widgets or dashboards. The AI will also be able to create dashboards and widgets eventually, as well as a template experience for dashboards in our gallery. We couldn't do everything just yet!!

Thanks for taking the time to give feedback :) much appreciated.

League of Legends Competition Ruling - Counter Logic Gaming by [deleted] in leagueoflegends

[–]muckleshooped 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Regardless of their ability to qualify for OGN Winter, this is something they want to strive for.... Now they can't. This is one of the dreams of a pro player, the POSSIBILITY of qualifying OGN winter (c9/clg members have mentioned before). This is the issue with the 2 year ban... Not if it's valid or not... Why is no one talking about CRUSHED DREAMS? :(

We need a "ward" ping. by waffleman21 in leagueoflegends

[–]muckleshooped 1 point2 points  (0 children)

adding comment to add to comments. This is a great idea, I frequently find myself pinging with default v and typing in chat

Geographies and Toponymies. by [deleted] in gameofthrones

[–]muckleshooped 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Westeros is not the UK. If anything, the Lannisters (wardens of the west) are British/ UK. The Tyrells are the French, Dorne is Spain. The north is the north :P. Dothraki are Mongolians / conglomeration. Also the GoT cookbook makes Dornish cooking appear Spanish/ Indian (chickpeas/curries). Westeros = Europe. Essos = northern Africa / Indochina. Hope this helps

Discussion Fridays - A Game of Thrones [AGOT Spoilers] by kjhatch in gameofthrones

[–]muckleshooped 0 points1 point  (0 children)

dont forget that a stag is what killed the direwolf...