LocaShare

Problem Statement

Keeping track of spending is tedious and error prone, especially for cash items where nobody helps you keep a history of your spending. Receipts are still the most common way of tracking spending, are almost universal, and many organizations still use receipts for reimbursement.

Physical receipts, though, are extremely tedious to keep track of and hard to manage. Is there a better way to organize, manage and analyze a user’s weekly spending in order to enable the user to more efficiently handle their finances?

User Analysis

We interviewed three people:* 22 y/o male, MIT Grad Student

• 22 y/o male, NYU Student
• 22 y/o female, Wellesley Student

with regard to how they track their spending and finances, in order to find out what the prospective users would want.

Keep track - not in detail - dont use cash often, but when he does, he keeps track of how long it takes for him to use the amount he withdrew
Keeps track to prevent fraud - but not for analysis - does not keep track for small amounts - wants analysis in excel if there was one

Interviews

We interviewed three people:* 22 y/o male, MIT Grad Student** Keeps track of money spent, not in detail, but keeps track of weekly expenses

• • With regards to Cash spending, doesn’t always use cash, but when takes out a specific amount and keep track of how long it takes me to spend it.
  • Keeps track using banking websites.
• 22 y/o male, NYU Student** Keeps track to prevent Credit Card Fraud, not for Analysis or Budgeting
  • Would want application to provide data in the form of excel sheets, for use in other personal finance tools
  • Would use application if it integrated well with other available tools
• 22 y/o female, Wellesley Student** Keeps track of both card and cash spendings
  • Tracks them on Excel sheets
  • Categorizes her spending (food, rent, school, etc), track store name, and price
  • Attempts to do it weekly, but ends up being every other week.

Conclusions

From these interviews, we conclude that people typically use excel to manage and track their finances. We also found that people generally do not closely track and audit their spending.

Proposal

A receipt tracking app that allows you to photograph your receipts and use voice recognition or manual input to record down the quantity spent.

Images of the receipts will be saved in the user’s Dropbox for future reference, as will a consolidated report of the user’s expenditures.

Expenditures could be easily sorted on the spot into different categories

Task Analysis

Track - Photo taking

Our app will allow a user to easily photograph and store digital copies of their physical receipts, thus freeing them from having to physically manage them.

Organize - Categorization

The user will be able to categorize each expenditure immediately at point of spending, according to a list of tags. Users can add/modify the tags to better fit their needs

Analyse - Statistics

Once the user has built up a spending history, the app will perform basic analytics on the data set, allowing the user to view his spending patterns in terms of time, location or the various categories (tags).

Possible Features

- A tasklist based feature for paying off bills or keeping track of future payments.  It allows users to keep track of future bills or payments they have to pay. As the user pays it off the amount is added to their statement.
- Detailed analysis of user’s expenditure
- GPS tracking of expenditures by geographic location

- Time

Group Members

• Sharon Paradesi
• Scott Greenwald
• Yu-Han (Tiffany) Chen
• TA: Katrina Panovich, kp@mit.edu

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Problem Statement

There are two main types of location data sharing today. The first is done in a way that is largely invisible to users -- when an app is installed, it may request to collect location data. The user generally does not keep track of which apps track information, and also has no idea what this data is used for. The second way is through services such as Foursquare and Latitude, which allow users to explicitly share particular location data. The user’s options are very specific -- share your specific location right now with other users, or do not. Both of these types of location data sharing suffer from a lack of user control over how information can be regularly shared, with whom it can be shared, and how it can be made more granular, so as to share only at a level of detail which is relevant for the purpose. They also do not take advantage of the potential for companies to provide incentives to users for sharing location data with them.

GR1 - Project Proposal and Analysis

GR2 - Designs

GR3 - Paper Prototyping

GR4 - Computer Prototyping

GR5 - Implementation

GR6 - User Testing

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