Making financial management more approachable through AI.

College students are often encouraged to budget, save, and invest, yet many lack the financial knowledge, confidence, or motivation to put those habits into practice.

Existing financial tools can introduce more complexity through unfamiliar terminology, overwhelming data, and manual processes that make budgeting feel like another responsibility.

We wanted to explore how a more intuitive, personalized experience could help students understand their finances and take meaningful steps toward healthier financial habits.

We explored how college students approached budgeting, spending, saving, and investing to better understand their behaviors and motivations.

Through literature reviews, user interviews, competitive analysis, and collaborative workshops, we examined both the practical barriers to budgeting and the emotional relationship students had with their finances.

What we uncovered.

“I get way too much anxiety trying to sift through my own account and make a budget.”

— Workshop participant

Our initial direction explored helping students get started with investing. While participants expressed interest in investing, conversations with financial experts challenged whether it was the right starting point.

Without a foundational understanding of budgeting, introducing investment tools risked adding complexity before addressing the more immediate need.

We shifted our focus toward helping students understand their spending habits, establish budgets, and build financial confidence first.

From investing to budgeting

This shift gave us a clearer problem to solve and a stronger foundation for the product experience.

With a clearer product direction, we used co-design activities to explore what students would actually find useful in a budgeting tool.

Participants sketched ideas based on their own financial habits, frustrations, and motivations. We used these concepts to develop two potential directions.

01 — Receipt scanning & cashback

A concept that encouraged spending awareness through receipt scanning and cashback incentives.

While participants liked the simplicity and rewards, the experience depended on users consistently remembering to save and scan receipts.

02 — AI budgeting assistant

A concept integrated into an existing banking experience that could use financial information to support personalized budgeting and provide actionable guidance.

Participants saw value in reducing manual effort, although trust in AI accessing sensitive financial information remained a concern.

Why we moved forward with AI.

The AI budgeting assistant offered a stronger opportunity to address the barriers identified throughout research.

By building on existing financial information, the experience could reduce the effort required to create a budget while making financial insights more accessible.

Rather than asking students to manually manage every expense, we explored how AI could do more of the work and help users understand what actions to take next.

The concept also aligned with participants' preference for having budgeting support within their existing banking experience.

We translated our selected direction into an AI-assisted budgeting experience designed to make financial management feel more intuitive and less intimidating.

The proposed experience centered around personalized budgeting, visual spending insights, and AI-generated guidance, allowing users to better understand their financial habits without navigating complicated tools.

We developed low- and mid-fidelity concepts to evaluate how students understood the proposed budgeting experience and which direction best addressed their needs.

Concept testing helped us compare the receipt-scanning and AI-assisted approaches, understand participants' reactions, and identify potential barriers before moving further into design.

What resonated

• Participants appreciated having spending information presented visually.
• Users saw value in a more straightforward budgeting experience.
• The AI concept offered a way to reduce manual effort and make budgeting more accessible.

What needed more consideration

• Users expressed concerns about giving AI access to sensitive financial information.
• Certain interactions and elements of the proposed experience created confusion.
• The experience needed to communicate how AI recommendations worked and why users could trust them.

Convenience alone wasn't enough.

For AI to be useful in personal finance, users needed transparency, clarity, and confidence in the recommendations being made.

This reinforced the importance of designing AI experiences that not only reduce effort but also help users understand and maintain control over their decisions.

We completed an AI-assisted budgeting prototype and presented our final product direction and recommendations to KeyLime Interactive.

The project translated months of research, collaborative exploration, and concept development into a tangible experience demonstrating how AI could make budgeting more accessible for college students.

What we delivered

• Research-backed product direction informed by student behaviors and financial expert perspectives
• Two explored concepts and a selected AI-assisted budgeting direction
• Interactive budgeting prototype
• Final design recommendations informed by concept testing

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Look at the full slides here.