Joule
The central payment app for all household utilities with a gamified incentive system.
Meet the Team
Kathleen Yang
Joanne Liu
Sunny Yang
Leesan Sun
Problem
When living independently for the first time, college students must learn to navigate utility payment systems (water, gas, electricity) by themselves and often face unique challenges related to their newfound financial responsibilities. These challenges can consist of everything from determining the most suitable utility providers to ensuring timely payment of their bills. Our project seeks to enhance their overall experience throughout the entire process.
Our user group consists of those who:
1. are college students
2. live independently (away from home)
3. directly pay bills to utility providers
Solution
We prototyped a user-friendly app that consolidates various utilities, enabling college students to pay all their bills conveniently within one app. We also aim to introduce a gamified element to promote timely payments and sustainability. This app is designed to cater to the unique requirements of college students living off-campus, differentiating it from existing solutions such as paying different bills separately online or paying in-person. This app consists of 6 main functions:
Login and Onboarding
Home Screen and Bottom Navigation Bar
Utility Payment
Utility Usage
User Profile
Virtual Pet Game
Onboarding
This is the login screen users will first see when opening the app. New users will signup for an account and go through an onboarding process that guides them to link their utility accounts.
Home Screen
After logging in to the app, users will be greeted by the home page. Here, they can manage the various widgets they want to include on the home page, including a daily usage goal chart, a monthly usage chart, the appliance in their home that is using up the most energy, and the in-game Pet with the user’s current score. Users can customize which widgets they want on the screen as well as the layout.
Utility Payment
Users can view the amount due and payment due date for each utility they have linked in the app. At the bottom of each utility block, users can either click to view more details of their billing statement or click “Quick Pay” to begin payment. After they click “Quick Pay” users will be brought to a screen that shows the amount due and different payment options . Users can also manage their digital wallet and add new cards to their account.
Utility Usage
Users can choose to see how their usage is displayed, the timeframe of their usage, and how much energy their appliances are using. They can also see how they are doing in usage-wise compared to their personal usage goals. Goals are edited by dragging the sliders on the screen. These changes will affect the estimated total price of their utilities. Users can also edit the demographic information to generate an accurate estimation of the price based on the user’s living situation and area.
User Profile
The top section of this screen displays the user's name and profile image. Below, users will find a list of their utility providers, each with a "go to their website" hyperlink that allows users to visit the provider's website or a "Contact" option for accessing the utility provider's contact information. Users can change their settings by modifying their location, selecting a preferred language, enabling notifications or dark mode, and accessing help or log out from their account.
Virtual Pet Game
Research
We conducted 2 research methods: surveys and 4 user interviews. We had a total of 44 survey responses from college students, both undergraduate and graduate, who live independently. Of those, 24 respondents (M=21.8, SD=3.04) pay bills directly to utility providers through the company websites and thus are our target users. This survey provided quantitative data about our target users' experiences. We conducted user interviews with 4 of the college students who filled out the survey, ages ranging from 21-25. We found three shared behavioral traits among the users.
Task Analysis
We took our findings and identified the top 2 tasks when using the utility systems: making a payment and keeping track of usage. Some key insights are:
People preferred online payments and receiving notifications prior to payment date.
Having flexibility within payment methods including auto-pay, credit/debit, online banking, in-person payments, etc.
Setting a daily usage limit and receiving notifications when overuse occurs.
Checking daily usage so it reflects the billing statement and there are no abnormal activity/billing.
Concept Refinement
Using the SCAMPER technique, our group collectively came up with 40+ ideas. Voting among the team, we narrowed down the list to 10 initial concepts. We then derived 6 metrics to rate each idea. Using a radar chart, we concluded on two concepts: central payment system and rewards/game system.
User Flow
We created an initial user flow which was later refined with our wireframes and prototype. The user flow consists of managing accounts, viewing and paying utility bills, tracking utility usages, and game with rewards system.
Wireframes
After our sketch process, we created wireframes to explore various layouts and flow. While the pages held all the necessary information, we realized we had a lot of room to clean up the interface and make it unique. For example, we felt that the bottom navigation bar took too much space while certain fonts were too large.
Branding
We aimed for a clean and gender-neutral approach for our branding.
User Testing
We designed our own evaluation methods by combining both user testing and interviews in one session, as we believed this to be a comprehensive approach to improving our project based on real user experiences. We conducted our user testing with 5 graduate students living in an off-campus apartment and pay utility bills to their apartments. We found 5 primary findings:
App’s general navigation intuitive and aesthetically pleasing but suggested improvements to the clarification of text, icons, and actions.
App interaction attractive and appreciated the level of customization available.
More motivation, suggesting that features such as a display of the amount of money or number of trees saved will enhance their engagement .
Minimal time investment on the app, emphasizing importance of finding a balance between an enjoyable experience and a serious approach.
Some users expressed privacy concerns with the Add Friends feature.
What is next?
After our user testing, we will proceed with more design iterations derived from the feedback we received. Once we go through two more rounds of design and user testing, the app will be ready to be developed!
Reflection
Our team quickly adapted to an efficient method that allows us to get things done without having too much burden from deadlines or project quality. For optimized results, we divided tasks based on everyone’s strong suit and what they were interested in doing.
While our overall project flow was positive, there were definitely aspects our team could improve on. One difficulty we encountered was starting off our project too narrowly. We went in with an idea of what our solution was going to be which, in hindsight, could have caused us to miss bigger picture ideas. We had to take a step back and reevaluate our ideas before proceeding with one solution to ensure we encapsulated all requirements. For our research methods, there were many things we could improve on for our survey. After sending it out, we discovered issues that could have been addressed if we practiced going over the survey prior. We also could have been more active in sending the survey out, such as putting it in online forums, to increase the number of quality survey responses.