Web apps

Andook

A privacy-first personal finance toolkit: we turned a tangle of accounts, transactions and bills into one dashboard people can actually understand.

Category
Web apps
Our role
UX research, information architecture, UI design, design system, brand mark

Overview

Andook is a privacy-centric personal finance toolkit that lets people view, track and manage their whole financial life in one place, comfortably and securely. Our design team created the Andook web app as a minimum viable product, from information architecture and research to the interface, design system and brand mark, based on the stakeholders' requirements.

Results

From research to a complete MVP design
3 months
The account structure came from users, then was confirmed in usability tests
Card-sort led
A brand and product built around keeping financial data unknowable
Privacy-first

The story

The challenge

Everyone organises money differently. Bank accounts, cards, loans, cash and services like PayPal had to live in one dashboard that makes sense to every user, without exposing their data.

Our approach

We started with research instead of screens: open card sorting showed how people group their accounts, and usability tests decided the final structure. Then we designed onboarding, account connection and transaction management around that structure, backed by a complete design system.

The outcome

A clear, privacy-first MVP: customisable dashboards, all-in-one account management, expense tracking and bill management, delivered in three months and giving stakeholders clarity at a very low cost.

01The problem

Money is personal. The structure has to be universal.

Every person manages their money differently, but Andook had to organise every account, asset and debt in a way anyone could understand at a glance.

The hardest part was not visual: it was deciding what goes where, and what to call it.

02Research

We asked users how they think about their money

We ran an open card sort so participants could group accounts and name the groups in their own words. That gave us a structure and labels based on real mental models, not on banking jargon.

  • How should many different accounts be organised in one dashboard?
  • Which labels best describe each asset and each liability?
  • Is cash its own category, or part of equity?
  • Is a PayPal balance an asset, a liability, or both?

Even people online were asking the same questions. If users are unsure, the interface has to decide for them, clearly.

03Information architecture

From many opinions to one clear layout

Participants produced several versions of the categories. We compared them, tested the strongest candidates in usability sessions, and settled on one structure with clear, concise labels.

  • Assets and liabilities grouped the way users expect
  • Plain-language labels instead of accounting terms
  • One place for every account type, including cash and wallets

04Onboarding

An onboarding that shows, not tells

The onboarding introduces Andook's features step by step and shows how to use them. Each step is driven by an animation of the Andook logo, so the brand and the walkthrough feel like one experience.

05Connect accounts

Adding accounts without guesswork

Bank accounts, credit cards and loans are all added through the same unified journey, so users never have to wonder which path to take.

06Manage transactions

Tables that people can actually control

Transactions are filled in automatically, and users can view, edit and manage them in a table they can customise with filters and sorting.

A Split feature breaks a single payment into meaningful purchases, so spending reports reflect real life.

  • Auto-populated transactions
  • Custom filters and sorting
  • Inline editing
  • Split one payment into several purchases

07Design system

One system for every screen size

To keep quality high across a large, table-heavy product, we built a complete design system for Andook: typography, colours, components and breakpoints for every screen size.

08Brand

A mark that says security first

The Andook logo was designed to carry the brand's promise of being a security-first financial toolkit: your data should be known only to you. The same mark later came to life in the onboarding animation.

How we got there

  1. Discover

    Stakeholder requirements, the MVP scope and the core questions about how people organise their money.

  2. Research

    Open card sorting to learn users' mental models and the words they use.

  3. Structure and test

    Candidate information architectures, validated through several rounds of usability testing.

  4. Design

    Onboarding, account connection, transaction management, the design system and the logo.

Key features

Customisable dashboards

Users arrange their own overview of balances, spending and bills.

All-in-one account management

Bank accounts, cards, loans, cash and wallets in a single structure.

Expense tracking

Auto-populated transactions with categories, filters and sorting.

Bills management

Upcoming bills in one place, so nothing is missed.

Split transactions

One payment broken into meaningful purchases for honest reports.

Privacy-first

A product and brand built around keeping financial data private.

Reflection

Andook was a rich playground: a large, table-heavy product where information architecture and labelling decided everything.

Next time we would streamline the components even further with auto layout, to cut the workload as the product grows.

Next step

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