SPND
Give every dollar a role. Spend with confidence.
Outcome
The bucket-allocation model made spending decisions clearer and calmer. In beta, users reported a 60% reduction in financial anxiety and a 45% increase in consistent savings engagement.
Year
2025
Role
Lead Product Designer
Duration
3 weeks
Platform
iOS and Android
Overview
Most budgeting tools are report-first: they tell users what happened after money is gone. SPND is intent-first: it captures purpose at the moment money arrives.
As Lead Product Designer, I owned onboarding, wallet architecture, allocation, deposit and transfer trust flows, and the SPND Material 3 design system for implementation consistency.
The Problem
The core issue was context loss. Users saw one total balance without knowing how much was already committed to rent, bills, and essentials.
Discovery with frustrated budgeters showed the highest-stress moment is right after paycheck arrival: money lands, but there is no reliable map for where it should go.
“The dominant failure mode in personal finance is not irresponsibility. It is lack of context at decision time.”
Approach
I designed intentional onboarding to establish the model before asking for data. Each onboarding step does one job and reduces cognitive load.
I structured allocation into a staged flow from inflow to assignment to review, so users feel control instead of form fatigue.
I designed trust-first deposit steps with explicit review language so users always know source, destination, and what happens next.
onboarding flow
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Solution
The wallet home makes ambiguity visible and actionable: total balance, unallocated money, and purpose-based bucket cards are shown together.
Allocation is handled through a progressive flow where users assign values, watch unassigned money drop in real time, and review a final breakdown before committing.
Goal detail screens surface progress, funding pace, and activity so users do not need mental math to understand if they are on track.
Safety Gap Resolved
Safe-to-spend visibility reduced anxiety created by a single misleading total balance.
Trust Through Preview
Deposit and allocation confirmation screens improved confidence before irreversible actions.
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Design System
SPND Material 3 was built as a soft-fintech system: calm palette, large radii, card-first hierarchy, and high readability under financial stress.
The component set covered metric cards, bucket cards, tabs, form controls, auth states, and step CTAs, enabling fast feature expansion with visual consistency.
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Reflection
Financial clarity is not about showing more data. It is about answering the right question at the right time: where should this money go, is this safe, and am I on track.
A future iteration will add suggested starter allocation templates to reduce blank-state paralysis for first-time users.
Have a product, website, or store that needs to convert better? Let's talk.
I'm currently taking on SaaS, website, WooCommerce, Shopify, and ecommerce projects.
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