Roles and Time
Lead all strategy, management, design, customization, and development decisions.
Overview
This project is to help offset housing costs by helping lower cost of living to residents by guiding them to affordable options fitting any budget lifestyle. Also, could appeal to visitors who might be on a tight travel budget looking for an affordable “locals style” vacation.
Challenge
Rents have risen in recent years and the median rent for a two-bedroom unit would cost almost half (47%) of the income of a typical city renter.
The city median income ($41,604).
The average annual income of restaurant and hotel workers in New Orleans was only about $25,000 before the pandemic.
One-third of residents were identified as severely cost burdened, meaning they spent over 50% of their income on housing.
The combined Louisiana and Orleans Parish tax rate is 9.45% on sales. There is an additional 0.245% rate in the French Quarter Economic Development District totaling 9.695%.
Key Takeaways
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Time and interest in given deals/coupons are an important factor to how often they are searched for on the internet.
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There is an unclear method as to how to save money or incorporate money saving into a daily routine.
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Spending is cut back in areas not seen as a necessity to save for short/long term goals.
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Paying off debts (school, medical, or credit cards) is important, but there’s a lack of understanding how to lower these debts and pay them off without income increase.
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Saving money is important but not spending a lot of time on searching for a way to save money is more important.
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Deal Hunters vs. Money Budgeters. Not always the same user.
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Necessity vs. Luxury Items
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Many offers were seen as something not necessary; therefore, they didn’t want to spend money on the offers.
Process
Focus was to establish a baseline of potential users and what attitudes people have about saving money. Then explore how the navigation should be created. Also, listening to what areas of priority the site should take by speaking to potential users one-to-one and narrow down technology, digital media, and features. Artifacts were then created to continue exploring ideas for the site that would be beneficial on a low budget.
Unmoderated Open Card Sort
Participants: 22
Recruited through OptimalSort’s recruiting service.
Screened to only include participants with money saving habits.
Findings
An open card-sort was created with 30 cards. There were 22 completed card sorts .
Survey
Participants: 82
Confidence Level: 95% with 11 margin of error
Recruited By: Survey Monkey’s recruiting service
Screened to ensure participants have used money saving techniques in past
Findings
Top 3 areas participants felt they needed to save money the most were: groceries, clothing, and restaurants
Income wasn’t a deciding factor on saving money.
The highest % of participants were extremely interested in a web site (32%) that contains a list of discounts for the city they live in. And a mobile app (27%) being next.
There was a relationship between participants who visited a web site on a regular basis to save money and an interest in a web site for a specific city but not as much interest in a mobile app and/or email.
Informal 1:1 Interview
Participants: 5
We asked participants questions about their:
*shopping habits
*feelings while trying to save money
*money saving routines
Participants wanted more “quality” items. These quality items were usually items specific to the participants’ needs and desires.
More quality options wouldn’t feel like they are filtering through spam and are finding an experience more important to them which would be worth their time.
Majority of participants cut back on groceries and clothing to allow for raising rental costs.
Findings
Interviews were broken down in an Affinity Diagram where synthesizing helped emerge four major themes:
Time and lack of interest in given deals/coupons are an important factor. More likely to search for deals more often if know there will be more “quality” items fitting their specific interests found.
“I’d use coupons more when I go shopping but I either forget to look or find it a waste of time because I rarely find what I want. If I had more time and knew where to look I might do it more often” ~ participant 4
There is an unclear method as to how to save money or incorporate money saving into a daily routine habit.
“I just want to pay off my school loans and hopefully save some money for retirement. I have some money in a savings account, but that’s it for now.” ` participant 5
Trust is an issue when looking for deals. Participants would spend more time looking for deals/coupons on a site if they knew they could trust it.
“I don’t spend a lot of time looking for coupons because I don’t know what sites to trust. They all seem a little spammy and unsafe to me.” `participant 3
Progress on money saving ventures to help see the worth of a site and to motivate them to keep saving money.
“I’d love to see how much money I’m saving a month when using coupons. That way I’d know it was worth using and would make me want to use it more if it’s a large amount. Right now I have no idea how much money I save using coupons. Unless it’s right after I shop looking at the receipt. Because most receipts show you.” ` participant2
Preliminary Site Map
Site Map created from standardized data obtained in Open Card Sort. Also, included some insights gained from 1:1 Interviews and Open-Ended questions on Survey.
Persona
Personas were created from pattern demographics collected in Survey, open ended questions in card sorting, and interviews.
These artifacts were used as reminders during the design journey and a base to explore where further research may be needed to refine target audience/users.
Content and Visual Design
Content Strategy
The survey helped provide ideas for content for our potential users. This would include deals for: college, family, senior citizen, singles, and pets.
Food was a prominent money saving area in participants’ lives in all research.
Wireframing
I’m using WordPress as the platform but wireframes helped me be able to secure design decisions that could be easily moved. Also, to tie in my design decisions to all the work I had been doing with annotations as the “why” and “how”.
