Project Overview
Technology Innovation Fellowship Course
Created as part of BU Spark!, a selective innovation lab bringing together designers and developers. As the lead UX Design Teammate, I partnered with software engineers over a single semester to build a financial tracking app, taking the product from initial user research all the way to a working prototype.
DEMO DAY 2026
Problem
College spending is unpredictable.
Students struggle to understand and control their spending because traditional financial tools are time consuming, intimidating, and disconnected from their real daily behavior
Research
User Interviews and Pain Points
To gather early design insights, test evolving concepts, and capture real-time feedback as our prototype progressed we
CONDUCTED
26
user interviews in three stages throughout development
SURVEYED
51
college students and recent college graduates on their budgeting habits.
POLLED
60
college students on how they currently track their finances.
Together, this mixed method approach gave us both depth and scale, grounding our design decisions in real user behavior while validating patterns across a larger audience.
INSIGHT
College students aren't seeking out budgeting apps or looking to save their money long term. They want to have experiences and enjoy time with their friends while they can.
However, they could benefit from saving short term to stretch their money throughout the semester instead of blowing through it at the beginning. Spent transitioned to be a financial tracking app that could help students gain awareness of their spending so they could make healthier financial choices aligned with their current lifestyles.
A student’s college life is constantly changing. Each semester brings new classes, new routines, new expectations, and new people. The financial habits from the previous semester are outdated to today’s reality. Spent helps college students understand their shift in financial habits in real time.
Solution
Leveraging Gamification
Spent is a predictive financial tracking app that helps college students understand their spending habits to make smarter financial decisions through a gamified experience.
I created an interactive mascot in Rive, where the pig's accessories and mood directly correlated to users spending habits.
Features
Predict Your Spending Like the Weather
Spent is a gamified financial tracking app that helps college students understand their past, present, and future spending in real time.
Tools
The Design Stack
The core tools leveraged to craft the app's visual system, custom vector assets, and dynamic animations.
Figma
Designed the full UI layout, color palette, typography hierarchy, and interactive prototypes.
Adobe Illustrator
Vectorized custom playful icons and crafted background illustrations for the app screens.
Rive
Animated an interactive pig mascot using state machines to dynamically reflect spending habits in real time.
Design
Color Palette: Transforming Anxiety into Approachability
Traditional budgeting applications often rely on dense, corporate hues like dark navy or aggressive shades of red and green, which can amplify financial stress. To counter this, the color system uses a light, pastel-driven palette designed to evoke calm, clarity, and optimism.
Custom Icon Design + Function
Our use of icons was a key iteration that improved both usability and brand recognition. Instead of relying heavily on text or inconsistent logos, we introduced simple, distinct icons that users can quickly scan and recognize while swiping through cards. This makes interactions feel faster and more intuitive, especially in a flow where users aren’t reading every detail. Over time, these icons also help build visual memory, allowing users to associate certain symbols with specific locations or spending habits, while creating a more cohesive and recognizable identity for the product itself.
Dashboard Design
The dashboard was engineered as an inviting, central hub that transforms complex financial data into a glanceable, stress-free overview. Positioned at the top, the dynamic pig mascot offers an immediate, emotional snapshot of financial health before diving into numbers. Directly below, a streamlined calendar contrasts predicted versus actual spending in real time, accompanied by a category breakdown of month-to-date expenses.
Deliverables
Deploying to TestFlight
We uploaded the app to TestFlight so a small group of college students could download it on their iPhones and test it in real life. This helped us test the location-based tracking and ensure the pig mascot reacted properly to daily spending logs. Having a fully functional build on TestFlight also meant that during Demo Day, judges and attendees could hold the app in their hands and watch it work live in real time.
Watch the demo here
DEMO DAY 2026
Demo Day
Pitching to the Judges
The presentation emphasized that college students don't open traditional budgeting tools, they open apps that evoke emotion. By showcasing how Spent bridges the gap between college freedom and post-grad financial confidence through gamification and real-time context, the pitch resonated strongly with the panel, proving that financial awareness can be both highly effective and fun.