Expendia

💡 Inspiration

Most people don’t learn how to manage their personal finances, as our parents or education system don’t teach it to us.
However it is crucial for the future generation to be more financially literate than us.
So I thought that an educational application to teach young women, from elementary to high school, on personal finance.
We wanted to focus mostly on females because, according to investgirls.com, 12% of girls feel confident about making financial decisions. I wanted to provide an application that can help empower them to feel confident while making financial decisions.
Topics I wanted to include were managing finances, setting up a credit card, budgeting, opening a savings or checking account, investing, and any other topics we wish we knew about at a young age.

💻💰 What it does

Expendia allows women to learn about personal finance in a gamified environment.
There are three sections for money management: spending money, using money at the bank, and working for money. *Expendia starts you off with some cash in the bank and some debit money on your account.
It alerts you when you’ve made unhealthy financial decisions by giving you tips, such as checking your expense journal for possible overspending or checking external resources.
When you make healthy financial decisions, it rewards you with badges. Badges allow you to level up and make more advanced personal finance decisions.

🔨 How we built it

Technologies Used

Google Docs & Draw

We used google docs during the ideating & brainstorming phase.
We used Google draw to map out features & MVPs.

Figma

We made the design system & branding on Figma (color, typography, etc.).
Then, We made wireframes.
Lastly, We made low & high-fidelity.

Design Process

Problem: We don’t learn how to manage our personal finances from our school or parents, making us lack confidence when making financial decisions.
Question (HMW): How might we improve the way we learn & understand financial literacy concepts?
We will need to: Bring an application that allows us to practice financial decisions in an easy-to-understand and fun way.
Solution: An educational application that allows women to learn how to manage their personal finances in a gamified way,
Impact: The future generation will be more financially literate & confident strengthing our overall economy & general way of life.
User Personas: See Slides
Main audience: Females, ages 10-18
How our app meets the needs of the various audience: For females -provides them a fun and easy-to-understand application to inform them on a plethora of financial topics. For parents -provides an easy way to help their kids to learn how to manage their finances without them, as parents, lifting a finger. For general public -the upcoming generation is financially literate strengthening the general economy.
Design System: The user interface was made aesthetically simple, but included trendy characters and emojis for our target audience (10 - 18-year-old girls).

😤 Challenges we ran into

Finding teammates to create a project with.
Trying to learn code and implement my designs into code.
Working on the hack alone, as I am a beginner.
Time constraints

🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of

Completing a useful & impactful project on time despite the challenges stated above.
Completing all screens on time and by myself.
Making my prototype fully clickable.

📖 What we learned

We learned more about user personas & user research
We learned more about app design and UI
We learned about using my research to create the UX
We learned about design systems (typography, color, branding, etc.)
We learned a little bit about HTML & CSS even though we weren’t able to implement them during this hackathon

🚀 What's next for Expendia

Expendia does not & will not stop at the end of this hackathon! It will continue with the help of developers & investors. So if you, judge, or hackathon participant know anyone wanting to join in the creation of an educational finance app, let me know! Here's our launch plan:

Part I: