RE:CEIPT 🌱
RE:CEIPT is a comprehensive mobile application that helps users develop sustainable consumption habits while making sound financial decisions.
You're not alone!
Our research shows that we are more inclined to spend because of external social pressure, or internal impulses and happiness gained from the act of spending money.
A combination of these three categories creates a sustainable lifestyle.
To achieve a fully sustainable lifestyle, we believe that it starts with your financial habits. This idea and research empowered us to create our product, RE:CEIPT.
College students lack a centralized platform to develop environmentally-sustainable financial habits.
Without financial guidance during this formative period, behaviors like overconsumption and excessive waste generation can persist through adulthood, leading to a large carbon footprint.
The Solution: RE:CEIPT
RE:CEIPT is a comprehensive mobile application that helps users develop sustainable consumption habits while making sound financial decisions.
It also won us the Newbie Track Award at Cornell's Design-a-thon! Here’s how it help solve our sustainability goals.
1) Analyze your dashboard and receipt
RE:CEIPT provides information for users to track spending and patterns through a receipt
Users gain a sustainability score, the higher the better, to gamify the experience
2) Recommendations for alternatives, powered by incentives
Coupon incentives are provided in partnership with eco-focused companies
Eco-Insights alert users to view recommendations and to shop eco-friendly alternatives
3) Community-based and Social Visibility
Being sustainable is cool!
Join challenges with friends, and encourage each other to be sustainable for personal tracking and social proof
Research and Planning Phase
To define our idea, we utilized Google Forms to survey 39 anonymous college students aged 18-24, to learn about their financial habits and needs for a sustainable financial tool.
Research Findings
We then utilized our findings, to create user personas that made up our demographic. This helped us ideate and pinpoint pains that we wanted to solve with our features.
User Personas based on our user data
Key Design Decisions
We knew taking on 3 different types of sustainability was ambitious.
With creating a product that was solving many of our user's problems, we made sure to stay aware of scope creep, and plan clearly for what was feasible within the time constraint of 72 hours. We stayed organized in the Figma file by outlining each flow with requirements.
Using tone and messaging to uplift other to be sustainable, rather than shaming them into it.
Education Carousel
Designing an aesthetic that was experimental and focused on Gen-Z.
While our UI Design aesthetic was a lot less traditional than a lot of the other participants in the Design-a-thon, we made the decision to cater our design towards the aesthetics that appeal to Gen-Z, through gradients and dark-mode design.
Style Guide
Wireframes
To reach our final prototype, we went through lo-mid-high fidelity prototypes.
Final Prototype
Pitch Deck and Video
Watch our video to gain a full overview of the product, or read into the pitch deck more in-depth information on our research and features!
Voiceover: Priya Singh / Editing: Casey Lee
Final Thoughts
This project was extremely fun to do with my partner, Priya, who's been one of my childhood best friends and now partner in design. This design-a-thon challenged us to work with what we know, and I admired how strong her analytical and design skills.
Looking back and thinking about what I would change, I do not know if this design aesthetic was the right choice. We had received judge's comments that the UI design was weaker than others, which I agree. I would like to go back and push the contrast even more, and play down the gradient and noise. Rather than focusing on a product that catches your eye, at the core, usability and accessability are of the utmost importance in today's age.
All in all, I am super proud of the work we did which brought us to win an award at my first ever virtual design-a-thon, and look forward to the next experience I have with my partner!