Fin-Jam: A home accounting app for Indian households

(This project was done as part of the post-graduation program in UX design at IDC School of Design, IIT Bombay)

Problem statement

Managing finances in a digital age for Indian households

Context

Smartphone penetration in India is high, with over half of families owning one.
Demonetization, UPI adoption, and post-pandemic hygiene concerns have significantly increased digital payments.
Small businesses are readily accepting digital transactions.

Challenge

The shift towards digital payments creates “invisible money,” making it difficult for families to visualize and track their spending.
Traditional cash-based budgeting methods become ineffective with intangible transactions.

Impact

Difficulty in managing household finances effectively.
Potential for overspending or poor budgeting decisions due to lack of visibility.
Reduced ability to save and plan for the future.

Current Solutions (Gap)

Existing payment apps and expense trackers lack integration for holistic financial management.
These tools primarily focus on spending tracking, neglecting saving and budgeting functionalities.

Opportunity

Develop an innovative app that seamlessly combines spending, saving, and budgeting tools for Indian families.
Leverage the data generated by digital transactions to provide real-time insights and improve financial awareness.
Empower families to take control of their finances and achieve their financial goals.

The team

During my PG program, I honed my UX design skills by collaborating with a team of 4 designers across India on a 6-month project.

We wore all hats – researchers, information architects, interaction designers, and visual designers.

User group

We targeted middle-class families (both upper and lower) in urban India. This demographic:

Balances income and spending: We focused on those who actively manage their finances.
Adopts digital payments: They’re comfortable with the technology for user research.
Has smartphone access: Urban areas have higher smartphone penetration.

Contextual inquiry

For a comprehensive understanding, we interviewed 15 participants from 9 Indian states, encompassing a variety of urban and suburban backgrounds.

Research goal

How do people in urban Indian middle-class families track and analyze their household expenses?
What challenges do they currently face?
What are their spending vs. saving habits?
What methods do they use to keep a track of their expenses?
Are these methods effective?
How have these methods evolved over time?
What role does family dynamics play in the process?
How do family members collaborate?
And how is the work divided?

Interpretation and ‘work models – a language for seeing work’

Following contextual inquiries, we developed cultural, flow, artifact, and sequence models to analyze user interactions. These models provided valuable insights into user behavior, interpersonal dynamics, challenges with physical materials (diaries, invoices), and the workflow for managing monthly household expenses.

Insights

Through Affinity mapping, we distilled the data into meaningful clusters and categories.

1. Users have different accounting approaches.

One of the key findings from our affinity was that users have different accounting behaviors.

Conscious spenders – “Instead of tracking my expenses, I would rather spend cautiously.”
Fixed budgeters – “I fix my monthly budget to avoid overspending”.
Free spenders – “I don’t plan before spending because I believe, you only live once.“
Post analyzers – “I spend first and analyze later to find unnecessary expenses.”

When these different spending behaviours and accounting approaches exist within the same family, it may create a conflict.

2. Striking a balance between transparency & privacy among family members is a challenge.

The above point is a big challenge in home accounting. While users wanted the process to be more transparent so that all the family members can seamlessly coordinate with each other and manage their expenses together, they did not seem comfortable with sharing all their financial information with their family. This especially holds in families where there are multiple earning members with a generation gap.

“If your parents can see your expenses in real-time, you wouldn’t be comfortable. You don’t want to involve them in day-to-day transactions, like disclosing exact salaries and how much are you spending where.”
– User 1 (Working professional brought up in a conservative household, but holds modern values)

3. Communication gap & unequal distribution of work within a family is a challenge

We also found that unequal distribution of work and communication gap within the family members makes home accounting inefficient and challenging.

“I have to remind my husband time and again to pay the electricity bill on time.”
– User 2 (Homemaker who doesn’t like constant nagging)

4. Collaboration makes home accounting more efficient. Young members bring in their digital expertise while elders bring in their years of experience.

Through our contextual inquiry, we realized that the process of home accounting is more efficient in families where family members bring in their expertise. Young members in the family often bring in a fresh perspective and teach elders new ways of doing things like helping with digital payments or finding cost-effective ways of shopping. On the other hand, elder members bring in their years of experience, discipline, and encourage savings in the household.

“My mother has a fixed fruit ‘waale bhaiya’ (vendor) who she buys fruits from because she thinks he’s more reliable. But there are much more affordable options for buying fruits like Instamart, Big Basket etc. that she wasn’t aware of until I told her about it.”
– User 7 (25-year-old daughter)

5. There are inefficiencies in the current accounting processes

Lack of an integrated platform for recording hybrid (online & offline) expenses – In most cases, cash payments & digital payments are recorded separately, which makes keeping a track of expenses challenging
Current data entry methods are time consuming – Users use different methods to track their expenses and each of these methods have their own set of challenges.
Difficulty in analyzing expenses – Users face difficulty in analyzing expenses due to scattered data and undefined categories.

6. Financial Literacy among the youngsters from their early ages is important

Another interesting insight from our finding was that most of the young parents that we interviewed understand the importance of financial literacy and want their young children to learn the “value of money” early on in their life. And they feel taking part in home accounting is a great starting point.

“Managing money, salary negotiations etc. is never taught in schools in India. Financial literacy is a big issue”
– User 1 (IT professional, whose cousin is currently facing the same problem)

Issues discovered after analyzing the artefacts collected from different users

Saving invoices

Loose papers might get misplaced.
Over time, a lot invoices get accumulated. Organizing and storing is a challenge.
Revisiting expenses from past month is difficult.

Recording in a diary

Categorizing of expenses under buckets is difficult.
Analysis is a challenge.
Physical constraints.

Tracking through an app

Absence of integration from other payment apps.
Recording expenses is not automated.
Increased screen time.

Maintaining excel

Absence of a pre-existing template makes data categorization difficult.
Absence of integration from other payment apps.
Recording expenses is not automated.

Personas & scenarios

Through the lens of personas and their scenarios, we demonstrated how our solution would deliver tangible benefits and solve real-world challenges for our users.

Mrs. Kusum Khanna

Home maker, 50 yrs, Delhi
Novice smartphone user

A diligent homemaker, she maintains a meticulous record of household expenses to effectively manage her family’s finances.

Goals & Motivations

Get a clear picture of where her money is going
Reduce communication gaps & make home accounting more transparent
Improve collaboration within the family and make kids more financially aware

Problems & Challenges

She often forgets to record petty expenses in her diary
She has to keep reminding her husband & kids to do household chores like order grocery/ pay electricity bills
She doesn’t have the time to analyze expenses to find where the family is overspending.

How Finjam (our solution) fits into the life of Mrs. Kusum Khanna

Scenario 1: Adding Expenses

Every morning Mrs. Khanna goes to the flea market to buy fresh fruits and vegetables. She pays the vendor in cash.

Step 1:
She opens Finjam and tap “Add Expenses”.

Step 2:
She quickly adds these expenses to the household account so that she doesn’t forget to add it later.

Scenario 2: Setting reminder for family member

Mrs. Khanna’s husband often forgets to pay the electricity bill on time. She uses Finjam to set a reminder for him and the app reminds him to make sure he doesn’t miss the deadline (due date for the bill).

Step 1:
Mrs. Khanna taps on “Set More Reminders” from the home screen.

Step 2:
She creates reminder for Mr. Khanna to pay the bill on time.

Scenario 3: Control access

Mrs. Khanna always wanted her kids to understand the value of money. She uses this app to involve her son Rahul in the day-to-day process of home accounting so that he learns how to spend money. She also has an option to control how much of access does she want him to have.

Mrs. Khanna reaches family profile page and tap on ellipsis menu(more) right after Rahul’s profile. She taps on control access.

She then turns off access for a particular category (budget overview) for Rahul’s profile.