Young adults want to manage their money better but existing tools either shame them with charts or bury them in financial theory. Motivation dies in week two.
The solution
A gamified mobile app that turns money management into small goals, streaks and lessons that fit into a normal week.
Timeline
4 months (2024)
The team
Cala Largacha – Product & UX Designer
Two multidisciplinary teammates
Young adults from the target audience as co-creators
MoneyMentor gamified financial education app mockupDrop image here
MoneyMentor — key screens.
How might we make building financial habits feel like progress instead of homework?
MoneyMentor was built with its audience, not for it. We ran co-creation sessions with young adults and designed around the emotional side of money, not only the mathematical one.
🏢 Business problem
Financial-education products lose users fast; retention beyond the first month is where the value — and the business case — actually lives.
👤 User problem
Young adults feel judged by finance tools, don’t know where to start, and lose momentum as soon as the app becomes a chore.
Money habits feel overwhelmingSmall, motivating next steps
🎯 My role
I led design end to end: research, concept, interaction design, UI and prototype testing.
•Facilitated co-creation workshops with young adults
•Defined the goal, streak and lesson model with the team
•Designed the onboarding and goal-setting flows
•Built an interactive prototype and ran usability tests
•Set the visual language: friendly, encouraging, never patronising
User research
“Shame is the main reason people close finance apps.”
Interviews and workshops surfaced a consistent emotional pattern: users avoided apps that made them feel behind. Progress needed to be visible even on bad weeks.
MoneyMentor research and workshop boardDrop image here
Journey map
“Curiosity, setup, first week, drop-off.”
Mapping the habit journey showed the cliff at the end of week one. Everything after onboarding was designed to give a reason to return: a next step, a small win, a nudge.
MoneyMentor habit journey mapDrop image here
Product thinking
“Goals broken into weekly moves.”
A big goal — a trip, an emergency fund — becomes a series of weekly actions sized to the user’s real income, so progress is always within reach.
MoneyMentor goal model diagramDrop image here
“Learning attached to a decision.”
Micro-lessons appear when they are relevant to the action being taken, instead of sitting in a separate academy nobody visits.
MoneyMentor lesson flow diagramDrop image here
Design + iterations
“From dashboard to next step.”
The first concept opened on a dashboard. Testing showed users froze, so the home screen was rebuilt around a single suggested action.
MoneyMentor wireframe iterationsDrop image here
“Encouraging, playful final UI.”
Illustration, rewards and warm colour carry the gamification without turning the product into a toy or hiding the numbers.
MoneyMentor final app designsDrop image here
Outcomes and impact
In prototype testing, participants set a goal and completed their first weekly action unaided, and described the app as encouraging rather than judgmental — the exact shift we were after.
Personal reflection
Designing for motivation taught me to treat emotion as a requirement. The maths was the easy part; making someone come back on a Tuesday was the design problem.
Want the full walkthrough?
Happy to walk you through the research, the iterations and the final screens in detail.