MoneyTank
A budget-tracking app using an animated fish pet and tank to help users observe their spending patterns, recover from setbacks, and stay engaged over time, by taking care of their fish and meeting their goals. The fish’s health, tank’s cleanliness, and water level all respond to spending decisions within the user’s predetermined parameters.
Stack
Figma
Scope
Research, UI, Visual Identity, Product Design
Timeline
6 Weeks
Industry
FinTech
Platform
iOS, Android
Year
2026
Core Question:
Why do people abandon budgeting apps?
Upon research, I discovered that users become intimidated by complex charts, overwhelmed by lack of guidance despite a learning curve, punitive design, and hesitation to trust handing over sensitive information.
MoneyTank resolves these setbacks that interrupt users from celebrating and continuing their efforts.
Goal
“People budget to be stress-free. If the app makes you stressed,
what’s the point?”
- Interview participant
The real problems in four classes
Problem behind the problem
Through semi-structured interviews with 8 participants (ages 24-35) across tech-literacy levels; including active budgeters, and users who had tried and abandoned apps, I was listening for points of abandonment, feelings of exasperation and shame, even the pains that are casually said. I know to take “I don’t know, these apps are so boring,” seriously, seeing that no matter how valuable a software can be, barriers persist.
Defining design principles and solutions
First, I want to foreground that I located problems through affinity mapping and grouped them into four classes. Each class generated a design principle with actionable design solutions. Just as boring = need delight = colorful + fish metaphor, the diagram below maps every user pain and created features that are on the prototype today.
USER PAIN
INSIGHT
PRINCIPLE
FEATURES
Class I:
Welcoming, informative, and straightforward design
Class II:
Non-punishing and encouraging through gamification
Class III:
Data display and information streamlining
CLASS IV:
Budgeting is better with friends
Why a Fish Tank?
Delight = solution!
Although style can simply be like flavor: subjective and with a number of alternatives, I decided that it had to count for more than that.
What is delight and what makes it so important?
Delight seems to me a feeling of surprise fused with charm and emotional resonance. We get there with personality: surprising ease in interactions, humor, and rewarding users. When something is liked, reciprocity can be triggered as users can hear the app's voice and be more forgiving: this last one is important for MoneyTank, especially when users are dealing with a high volume of data and charts.
Logic
So, a metaphor.
Metaphors simplify and make meaning last with its simplification. I declared this the ultimate thing to do!: a system that is like the real thing but more easily visible and emotional. It's easy to decide to want to take better care of finances, but when the method has a voice and personality, the execution feels natural.
Logic behind the prototype
User Journey
Research crafted personas, whose pain points are logically resolved by the designed features, therefore creating a user flow and navigation hirearchy to continue complementing those logical solves. These are reflected in the current prototype, which can be tried here!
Game and Reward Logic & Notification System
However, I felt that more questions had to be answered to complete the user flow, ones that the created personas would ask: “Well, what happens if I go over budget?” “What if I forget to log for a day or two, or even a week?” “What if I don’t meet the goals of a friend quest and feel bad?” and so a Notification System table and Coin Mechanism flows were made to straighten these rules out.
Seen here is an example of a coin mechanism flow. By defining these sequences, the logic of the metaphor takes stronger shape and eliminates cognitive hesitation in users.
Example of an established rule: a user will consistently be given a certain amount of coins whenever they meet their goal at the end of a budget cycle, but will receive less when they don't.
Reflection
As of today, these aren't cognitively bulletproof yet, but its points of missing logic have been defined. It's important that the reward system for each fish is narratively sound, so the user can feel appropriately rewarded when they're meant to, and never confused about how the system adapts to their behavior.
Current tensions in logic
Negotiating opposing thresholds
When users miss days, fish can be a little hungry. When users spend beyond their goals, the water gets murky. But how far? One of the more interesting tensions from testing was how drastic overspending consequences should be: some want no reward, and some want less reward. Whatever it is, it still has to continue motivating the user by not being too punishing, but also by holding them accountable.
Necessary guardrails
With gamification, there are risks: Meeting coin rewards or quests can cause anxiety. I am mitigating by making all rewards cosmetic with no real financial implications, and keeping things encouraging instead of competitive: awarding overspending cycles still because showing up counts, and so does any evidence of effort throughout personal and friend quests.
Another risk is that someone may use the app only as a game and not a budgeting tool, and I am still researching to motivate otherwise, and at the same time researching if that can be beneficial still, perhaps by making this app inevitably educational even without reflecting real finances.
Testing Results
& Future Considerations
Big-picture decisions
I’ve done two rounds of testing and have worked on feedback in the design and interactivity areas, but there are more to work on, especially with the tensions in logic:
To Resolve
Visibility of information
As this is an app with a lot of information, users would like to be reminded of what some decisions they had made were, so a constant display of how far along their cycle users are, how long it is, and how much under or over budget.
Metaphor logic
What 'water refills' mean and what happens when they overspend. What happens when people forget to log?
Reward system
How many 'decorations' are there, can users collect them all, or are they seasonal and limited? Is inventory unlimited?
More guidance
Further demonstration for quests and shop, having an 'info' button peppered throughout.
Community
How many friend quests can happen at a go?
Data transposition
Yearly summaries charted.
Visual
Can the dashboard colors be personalized?
Premium vs. Free
What else can premium offer, besides luxury decorations and more skins?
Every project is fun
Takeaways
Logic de-conflicting hurts my head but put that alongside neat-designing and mass component-churning, and suddenly I’m smiling. Closing off with a snap of my prototype flow!
