A budgeting app designed around trust, clarity, and user control, reducing financial anxiety by letting users explore and transact without fear.
Most budgeting apps ask for bank credentials before they've earned a single second of trust. We wanted to flip that, give users real value first, and let the relationship deepen on their terms.
We conducted desk research across leading budgeting apps and interviewed 50+ users. The same three failure patterns showed up repeatedly, not in attitude, but in observable behavior.
Persona informed by user interviews and desk research. Sarah represents the young urban professional who genuinely wants financial clarity, but whose trust must be earned before any sensitive data is shared.
We conducted desk research on leading budgeting apps and interviewed 50+ budgeting enthusiasts to understand early trust barriers and sources of financial anxiety. Across tools and research, a consistent pattern emerged: many budgeting apps prioritize data collection and automation over user understanding.
In interviews, participants described feeling overwhelmed by dense dashboards, hesitant to link bank accounts early, and unsure whether apps helped them understand their money or simply track transactions.
Users with financial anxiety won't connect bank accounts to an app they haven't experienced yet. Asking for credentials on day one is asking too much.
People don't need every financial metric, they need the two or three numbers that tell them whether they're okay this month, glanceable in under five seconds.
Participants wanted to feel ownership over their data. Features like goals and manual entry gave them agency; automation felt like surveillance.
EasyMoney was guided by three core principles: trust before automation, clarity over completeness, and progressive commitment. Users can explore the app and manually add transactions before linking accounts, helping them build confidence early on. The interface prioritises understanding over displaying every possible metric, while users are gently guided forward without being forced into irreversible steps.
Users explore the full app and manually add transactions before linking any accounts, building confidence before sharing sensitive data.
Every screen shows only what matters right now. Dense dashboards with 12+ numbers were explicitly cut from every iteration.
Users are gently guided forward, bank linking, goals, and deeper features appear only when the user is ready, never as a gate.
Settings are clear and shallow. "Revoke access" is one tap. Users are always reminded they are in control of their data.
Research-backed design that transforms anxiety into confidence.
| Barrier | Solution | Outcome | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 68% hesitate to link | → | Manual entry first, before bank linking | → | Users gain confidence |
| Dense dashboards | → | Single Budget Overview on Home | → | Instant clarity |
| Users want control | → | Linking & goals optional until ready | → | Users stay in control |
18 years as a greeting card illustrator taught me that great visuals remove friction. For EasyMoney, every icon was drawn from scratch, no stock libraries, to feel warm, clear, and instantly recognisable.
Hero illustration, designed for the app's welcome screen
"Good illustration does the same job as good UX: it removes friction between a person and an idea. After 18 years of making greeting cards that had to communicate emotion in a single glance, designing icons that feel clear and warm felt like a natural continuation of that work."
