Perspective

Inspiration

There are no products on the market that give us a full view of all our finances on an easy to understand dashboard with educational tools and content that demonstrate why we need to pay attention to our finances. We wanted to keep things simple, providing an aesthetically pleasing user experience, and giving users a clear picture of what steps to take to make sure their finances are where they need to be.

What it does

The application first gathers the user's demographic information and uses it to create a Perspective Profile. The process is simple - answer the questions as the application guides you through the completion of your profile.

After your Perspective Profile is generated, the user will be taken to the Perspective Dashboard where they will see three lists - Current Situation, Goals, and Achievements.

Current Situation is a snapshot into the user's profile based on the responses given at profile creation. Goals are the next steps that the user needs to take with their finances. Perspective provides the initial set of goals that pertain to the Perspective Profile, but the user can add additional Goals that align with their own financial aspirations. Selecting a Goal on the Perspective Dashboard will take the user to another page with tools and information pertaining to that specific goal and why its important. These tools range from interactive graphs that simulate financial scenarios to informational articles with helpful tips. Achievements are the Goals that the user has completed.

How we built it

We built Perspective using the popular javascript framework, AngularJS. It allowed us to quickly bootstrap the application and get a solid working product to expand upon.
We used Google's material design specifications to design the user experience, which was greatly simplified through the use of Angular Material.
Firebase was used to store the Perspective Profile and host the application.

Challenges we ran into

We weren't completely familiar with all the technologies we used (Flexbox, Firebase)
Flexbox - The layout paradigm is very different than the current popular grid frameworks like Bootstrap
Firebase - We probably waited too long to integrate with the API, so there were some pains converting from mock services to live services and schema design differences

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We completed a working application
The user experience is clean and fresh
We were able to utilize some bleeding edge technologies

What we learned

We learned that by keeping your idea simple, its much easier to execute within the short timeframe of the competition. Keep it simple and focus on the user experience.

We also learned a lot about the new web technologies (Firebase, Material Design, Flexbox)

What's next for Perspective

We would have liked to integrate with some third party services to track account data, credit score, or other assets. That would give the Dashboard a more real-time feel instead of having to manually complete out goals or update their Profile data.