TY FOSTER
Work
About

LOOKOUT

Lookout
Project
We believe making the right decisions with your money can be simple and should be private.
What we started with, Moneypath
When I joined, the two co-founders had already built an MVP called Moneypath. They wanted feedback from users on what they built and whether it was valuable and intuitive.

I reached out to friends, colleagues, social media and gathered 25 people from all different walks of life. High-schoolers, college grads, retirees, unemployed, looking for jobs and employed people in tech.

Here is what I was given:
Original designs that we tested with
Build first. Talk second.
This was the problem we uncovered. Overall, there was some generally good feedback. They liked the colors and the “sections” were easy to understand.

That’s where the positive feedback stopped. 

There were a lot of issues around data relationships, trust, verbiage, where they were suppose to be focusing on, and feeling of a little overwhelmed.

A lot of respondent, well, all of the people I talked to had a strong emotional relationship to their finances. No one felt great about it. Generally, everyone had a sense of stress or dread when thinking about their finances. Interesting.Here is what I was given:
What I was hearing from customers
I signed up for a financial advisor but i left and felt very overwhelmed. i just want to know if i am fu**ing up or not.
Little tweaks.
Big improvements.
Over and over, the themes we were pulling out from all of our conversations were:
  • Ignorance is bliss. I’d rather not know then know and stress out
  • Terms are confusing. Standard terms used were confusing and overwhelming
  • TLDR. I want to know what to stop and what to start doing
Thinking through all the feedback and all our research we’ve decided to focus on:
  • Simplify the UI.
  • Focus on simple, personalized insights
  • New north star: “How do I know if i am on the right path?”
The all new Lookout.
Making sense of your dollars and cents.
We tested our new designs and simplified features with our customers. The feedback was unanimous that we are on the right track, but whether or not that will lead to increased sign-ups and MAU is yet to be seen. We’ve begun small marketing campaigns and we’ve fairly successful with our CTR.
Expenses
We’re really focused on leading indicators to help people understand whether they’re on ‘track’. Quick snapshots like ‘where you’re spending’ allow this tool to dovetail nicely with a lot of our users who use budgeting tools.
Just tell me what to do.
We walk a fine line between insightful suggestions and financial advice. Our insights are driven directly from people’s spending behaviors.

Such as, spending increase in a category, increase in recurring expenses (e.g. Netflix increased their monthly fee) or high interest rates on credit cards that someone might not be aware of.

A lot of this might seem simple. That’s because it is. Reducing fees, eliminating high-interest loans, and building a $400 emergency savings puts you in better shape than most Americans.
Personal insights examples that show the different types available on the website
Transactions
Simple way to view holistic transactions. Intuitive to edit, split, hide, or create rules.
Accounts
See all your accounts—debts and assets knowing none of this information will be shared.
What I was hearing from customers
I like the simplicity and i it’s comforting that i can connect my accounts and know that my data isn’t being sold. i can’t wait to see where this is going.
Additional work and thoughts.
We still have a lot of work to do. There are only three of us working on this as a side project. We have some excellent ideas that we’d love to implement like a command menu functionality, giving users more flexibility. Currently, we’re also working on a financial roadmapping tool.
Building with a small team is a wonderful give and take. We move quicker around decision making and prioritization, but longer during the implementation phase.

CHARLES 
SCHWAB

Next project
Re-imaging the Rep experience