Connecting your finances to your experiences.
Role
Product design lead
Prototype developer
Timeline
June - July
2025
6 weeks project
Team
2 product designers
Skills
Interaction design
UX Research
Interning at BIDV
Summer of 2025, I had the honor of working at one of the largest banks in Vietnam - BIDV (Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam).
As part of my training, I was ask to conduct user and market research to pitch a project relating Vietnamese users’ financial habits.
Our journey
We had a 6 weeks design sprint for Research, Iteration and Design.
The challenge
Design a personal finance management application for users to reach “financial independence”.
That’s pretty broad, so let’s narrow it down
Managing and tracking your money is the first step to financial independence.
Core Feature
Finance Management Dashboard with High Interactivity
Manage you bank accounts, credit cards, track your finance trends all in one place.
Core Feature
Easily Editable Bank Transaction Management
Editing your transaction name and category straight from your notification.
Core Feature
Create Memories With Your Expenses
Attach your spendings to experiences, know what you spend on and keep track of your money.
Initial Research Goals
We can identify users trying to reach “financial independence” as those who are in their late teens to mid-twenties, finishing school and starting their career.
User Research Goals
• How are the target users currently managing their finances? What are their money habits?
• What are their goals?
• What are the painpoints?
Market Research Goals
• What are the popular competitors in the Vietnamese and international markets?
• What are their most-liked features?
• How can we improve them to better suit the Vietnamese users?
UX Research: 6 in-depth interviews
Users typically use multiple accounts and credit cards at once.
Young Vietnamese people are conscious about saving, they use multiple bank accounts, credit cards, and e-wallets to manage their spending, savings, and investments.
Expense management are a draining process.
5/6 interviewees said they keep tabs on their expenses using applications, bank statements, excel spreadsheets etc., but mentioned that close monitoring can be very exhausting.
Difficulty in reviewing transactions due to diverse payment methods.
Because Vietnamese users rely on multiple payment methods, bank statements may lack sufficient detail.
User Empathy Map
Market Research
Popular apps in Vietnam focus on manual expense tracking or e-wallet payments.
Misa MoneyKeeper
Cashew
Momo E-wallet
Expense tracker
Money Lover
Popular application overseas have high level of automation, but not yet aligned with the market and user needs in Vietnam.
Cashew
Cashew
Cashew
Cashew
Identifying and solving user needs
We decided to focus on 3 main user needs that could affect how the user perceive the experience of managing their finances.
1. Oversee multiple bank accounts and credit cards at once
2. Easily manage and edit transaction details
3. Effectively review banking transactions.
Challenge 1: Building graphs users want to look at
Iteration
I want the chart to show my daily spending as I interact with it.
“I want to be able to see all types of charts right when I enter the homepage.”
“I want to compare my spending with my income.”
The charts are not sufficiently interactive and doesn’t provide information users need.
The colors and information layout lack strong recognizability.
Navigation to charts isn’t clear enough.
Final Design
Adjust the chart by day to track finances.
The charts are gathered and distinguished by corresponding colors.
Help users understand financial trends; could expand into detailed analysis.
Challenge 2: Minimizing the effort to manage expenses
Design Exploration
Use images to add transaction details.
Hypothesis
Uploading images reduces user effort when editing transaction details.
However,
Usability testing results show that uploading images for transactions requires significant effort from users.
Solution,
Use notifications to help users stay aware of spending and edit information if needed.
Hold down on the notification to access options, then enter a new transaction name
Auto-categorize based on transaction name.
The original transaction name is stored in the transaction details.
Challenge 3: Designing a transaction page with clear hierarchy between collections and independent transactions.
Design decision
Applying visual hierarchy to distinguish grouped transactions.
Iteration 1
Expandable rows risk overlooked data and user misunderstanding.
There’s no clear distinction between single and grouped transactions.
Iteration 2
The amounts of transactions within the group are lighter in color and use smaller font.
Differences in size and position disrupt the alignment of the list.
Iteration 3
Replacing icons with bullet points helps restore list alignment.
The color recognizability of transaction categories is reduced.
Final Design
Enhance recognition using colors.
Clear distinction between single and grouped transactions.
List items are properly aligned.
Impact
Pitch our work
Getting feedback from the amazing designers at BIDV opened my eyes to aspects I haven't considered in my designs, and greatly broadened my horizons! If you want to hear more about the many explorations I took for this project, contact me at lammy@umich.edu.