FreshStart: A College Budgeting App
The Hefty, Quarter-Long App Process Begins
"Create an app that would be helpful for students."
That was our prompt for our five-person team for the entire Fall quarter for one of my classes. FreshStart, the budgeting app for incoming college freshman, began its construction.
The Early Stages
From low-fidelity sketches to fake user personas and competitive analysis, FreshStart went through the early stage ringer.
The FreshStart 15
From there, the middle of the assignment was all about what I like to call "The FreshStart 15"; we were required to have five fully designed frames, with five interactive components, and five or more user tasks for testers to have, totaling to a number of 15 requirements.
The Arduous Stretch Known As "Prototyping"
The final phase of creating FreshStart was definitely the hardest: making it work. While we didn't have to create this for desktop as well, what was in store was definitely making up for it. A couple of assets that I needed to prototype were something that none of our classes had taught before...
FreshStart Teaches Typing
A textbox component.
The hardest thing I had to learn how to prototype, in all of my freshman year in college, was how to create a textbox that can type.
I taught myself how to design, program, and key bind a keyboard to this Figma textbox component, so that in this fake app, users could freely type their budgets into a calendar and the app would "save" their information.
The Hefty, Quarter-Long App Process Beings
"Create an app that would be helpful for students."
That was our prompt for our five-person team for the entire Fall quarter for one of my classes. FreshStart, the budgeting app for incoming college freshman, began its construction.
The Early Stages
From low-fidelity sketches to fake user personas and competitive analysis, FreshStart went through the early stage ringer.
The FreshStart 15
From there, the middle of the assignment was all about what I like to call "The FreshStart 15"; we were required to have five fully frames, with five interactive components, and five or more user tasks for testers to have, totaling to a number of 15 requirements.
The Arduous Stretch Known As "Prototyping"
The final phase of creating FreshStart was definitely the hardest: making it work. While we didn't have to create this for desktop as well, what was in store was definitely making up for it. A couple of assets that I needed to prototype were something that none of our classes had taught before...
FreshStart Teaches Typing
A textbox component.
The hardest thing I had to learn how to prototype, in all of my freshman year in college, was how to create a textbox that can type.
I taught myself how to design, program, and key bind a keyboard to this Figma textbox component, so that in this fake app, users could freely type their budgets into a calendar and the app would "save" their information.