Cash Hound Windows Phone app
Overview
Cash Hound was a Microsoft Windows Phone app that helped people make informed spending decisions. I designed the app in November, and by January it was available for purchase in the Windows Phone Store.
Challenge
Cash Hound was one of five winners of the international Core77 Fast Track to the Mobile App Design Challenge, and represented my first foray into Windows Phone app design. The competition asked designers to come up with business-focused apps, then supported them with extra marketing and promotion from Microsoft and Core77.
An idea
I chose the idea of mobile cash flow management because at the time, I was a business owner who thought about cash flow forecasting on a near-daily basis. I wanted Cash Hound to be the easiest and most enjoyable way to keep tabs on money going in and out.
And go!
Due to the contest, we had to move fast with two months to get to market. After the initial design concepts were done, my partner got to work building the app's back-end services and technical architecture. This provided me with a realistic understanding of the app's actual capabilities, as opposed to first drawing it all out in a design program, which could risk the timeline. The Windows Phone GUI also gave me a big headstart.
User research
I've learned from experience that you can have great looking software in a design program, but it may not hold up to real-world use. Instead, I prefer to design a little up front, then build as quickly as possible so people can test and provide feedback. Informed by user research, I then apply more polished design and interaction layers to evolve the product.
Award-winning
I designed Cash Hound around features and information that were personally important to me; quick data entry, detailed charts and dynamic updates so users could stay on top of their finances. The result was an app that was featured by Microsoft on all of their Windows Phone devices at Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona, Spain. This success also led to us making two more Windows Phone apps.