

Smartspender – designing a stylish app for tracking your spending habits - Felecro
http://www.infinum.co/the-capsized-eight/articles/smartspender-designing-a-stylish-app-for-tracking-your-spending-habits

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leoedin
Someone designed (ie didn't even make) an expenses tracking app. It's barely
novel. Maybe it looks a little better, but the thing only has about 3 screens
to it.

It strikes me that the part that makes expenses tracking hard isn't how pretty
your app is, but forcing users to regularly and consistently enter expenses. I
know that I've never managed to track expenses for more than a month before
starting to slip and eventually giving up. What you need is a zero-effort
workflow.

I think perhaps the ideal expenses tracking app would link into your bank
details (via Yodlee or similar), perhaps use your location history to identify
shops you went to, and then try and do as much heavy lifting as possible to
give the user a very easy daily task of aportioning the cash they withdrew
recently to the shops they visited.

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levosmetalo
Maybe it's about the tools? I could never bother myself tracking my expenses
in any application I tried until I started using plain old ledger (actually
hledger) from the command line. Only then it started to feel almost
effortless.

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grantlmiller
A master's student posts an Upworthy headline to HackerNews, you won't believe
what happened next...

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zumzumzum
Not trying to sell the whole platform (although I love it), but for me, the
YNAB mobile app is the gold standard for functionality. I can track my
spending in the time it takes the cashier to print my receipt. It
automatically learns how to categorize each payee, and geo-locates each
transaction to find or suggest the right payee. What they've done should be
the bare minimum.

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roeme
Not sure what I expected, but maybe someone could point out to me what's so
outstanding about this? I mean, it looks good, it's KISS, principles on how to
create a solution to a problem/a software were followed... Genuine interest
here.

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tempodox
A guy took a dump on a toilet for his master's thesis. The details is not
visual identity but makes the design. Got it?

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rjbez17
So Mint? You can do nothing but manual expenses with Mint if you want...

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cliveowen
"Slick looking"

That's debatable.

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devanti
so a master’s thesis in graphic design is just.. a quick project?

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cseelus
Didn't try it. Quite satisfied with 'Saved' for iOS and Android:
[http://lentor.io/saved/](http://lentor.io/saved/)

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jcrei
Can you even try it? I mean, I didn't see any download link to any app store.
I think he just "designed" it.

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AshFurrow
"A guy" <\- I don't know why his gender is important. Headline could easily
have read "Someone designed ..."

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Geee
Because he's male? The title might as well be "Something happened", going by
your logic.

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AshFurrow
Don't be obtuse. My point is his gender isn't important to the story.

~~~
Zikes
Then why did you bring it up?

