BN

Mixed-Methods UX Researcher

Sage · Stanford Design for Behavior Change

Sage

Role
UX Researcher, team of four
Timeline
7 weeks
Owned
Study design, synthesis, assumption and usability testing
Methods
Literature review, comparative analysis, two diary studies, assumption and usability tests
Impact
Derived insight that informed structural redesign to increase clarity of platform functionality based on user testing
Illustrative daily loop
01Problem

Impulsive spenders needed an effective way to manage spending.

Current financial management platforms focus on budgeting or expense tracking, not the emotional and contextual factors that drive impulse spending.

02Methodology

Literature Review

Main insights
  • Environmental Triggers: Impulse spending is influenced by environmental cues (e.g., product proximity, sales notifications, or social media exposure, emotional cues (e.g., feelings of FOMO, boredom, and negative mood), psychological needs, and social needs (Thorndike, 1937; Wood & Neal, 2009; Rodrigues et al., 2021; Jafri et al., 2025; Nguyen, 2025)
  • Designed Spending Environments: Retail ecosystems are intentionally designed to encourage impulse purchases by reducing friction through features like discounts, social influence, and intentional refund policies. (Moser et al., 2019)
  • Effective Interventions: Research suggests a number of intervention approaches to curtailing impulsive spending behavior. This included proactively strategizing, encouraging reflection, imposing spending limits, and enforcing delays before purchase. (Moser et al. 2019; Peetz & Davydenko, 2021; Davydenko & Peetz, 2024)
  • Personalization: Identifying a user's emotional needs is critical for creating reflective interventions that address the root cause. (Thorndike, 1937; Peetz & Davydenko, 2021)
03Biggest impact from insight

Interface design repositioned the app's AI financial coach to be the primary screen so that morning logging of planned purchases was intuitively the first action from a user.

This project wrapped up after the first round of usability testing, so the impact of our major change was not measured.

More…

There was lots of work put into this project. For more details on the interface development, how research informed branding, successes + failures along the way, and more, don't hesitate to reach out!

LinkedIn

AI logging/coach was not clearly established as the primary functionality or central interaction point based on the visual design.