Design Rationale

We arrived at our overall approach and design rationale by looking at overarching questions, design options and criteria and making a principled decision based on the conclusions. Here are the underpinnings for the design rationale for the My Money Calendar.

Questions, Options and Criteria

Questions:

• Which incomes and expenses should be tracked?
• What time horizon would give the user enough time to understand their current cashflow scenario?
• What is the most efficient way that the user can enter their incomes and expense?
• What strategies would be the most helpful to the user in trying to improve their weekly cashflow?
• Should the user be able to complete their work in one session or should they be able to return later to continue their work?

Options

• enter initial inputs through a progressive series of screens
• enter all inputs directly into the calendar screen.
• Keep an on-going calendar with actual calendar months and weeks that holds the user's inputs for later sessions.
• Offer a "worksheet" that represents any month.
• Offer a focus on monthly cashflow.
• Offer a focus on weekly cashflow.
• Offer a few larger categories of expenses and incomes to give a higher-level view of their cashflow.
• Offer more categories of expenses and incomes to give the user a more nuanced view of their cashflow.

Criteria

• CFPB is a trusted agency and the expectation is that no PII will be saved for any user on any server.
• CFPB uses a robust Design System that includes guidelines for typography, color palattes, iconography, page layout and other UI elements.
• CFPB is committed to a Style and Content guide that we need to adhere to in our content choices.
• CFPB is committed to accessibility and we need to implement these guidelines into the design.
• works well on their mobile device
• easy to use
• fast to use
• gets to the reward (strategies and a weekly picture of their cashflow) quickly.