How To Budget As A New Student During Fresher's Week

Challenges, Problems and Issues:

1. Getting out of bed
2. Finding your way to university
3. Managing your money
4. Losing your keys
5. Losing your swipe card
6. Confidence
7. Beating the traffic
8. Organisation
9. Wearing the right clothes
10. Knowing your way around the building
11. Learning names
12. Journey Planning
13. Taxi/Buses
14. Needing a computer
15. Loans
16. Wasting money
17. Staying awake
18. Faulty systems
19. e-Studio
20. Remembering passwords
21. Finding good places to eat
22. NUS Card
23. Library books
24. Fitting in
25. Blogging
26. Public transport
27. Eating properly
28. Big enough bag for everything
29. Trusting your flat mates
30. Lack of space
31. Alcohol insumption
32. Smoking too much
33. Noisy neighbours
34. Not getting enough sleep
35. Stress
36. Running out of toilet roll
37. Stationary
38. Cost of everything
39. Washing your clothes
40. Visiting home
41. Seeing your friends
42. Presenting work in front of everyone
43. Rail Card/Bus Pass
44. Up to date with all of the latest software
45. Affordable gym
46. Sports team
47. TV license
48. Council tax
49. Deposit on a house
50. Finding time to meet everyone outside of university
51. Written work
52. Weather
53. Workload
54. Deadlines
55. Creative block
56. Meeting people from other courses
57. Sharing the studio with 2nd and 3rd years
58. Doctors
59. Signing in on time
60. Digital camera
61. Hiring out equipment/library books
62. Balancing work and university
63. Hair cut
64. PAT testing

As a group, we were to think of as many challenges, problems and issues with being; a new student, at LCA on the BA (Hons.) Graphic Design course. Once we had generated enough, we narrowed down our selection to the main 10. These were then passed on to the next group who narrowed down the selection again to the main 3. We ended with:

1. Surviving without student loan
2. Designers block
3. Not having enough time to do anything but work

Each group was then given a randomly selected question to work with. We were given 'How To Budget As A New Student During Fresher's Week'.

After discussing our choices as a group, we decided to design an App that enables students to calculate and keep track of their spendings throughout the week.

Background/Considerations:
Who needs to know?

• New students/first years
• Future/Current students
• Students that live at home or away

What do they need to know?

• Price of tickets for events
• Food essentials
• Taxis/Public transport
• Material essentials
• N.U.S card

How will you tell them?

• Social media
• Smart phone App
• Web page
• Business card
• Flyers
• Email

Where will they look?

• Freshers pack
• Student halls pack
• Enrolment
• Open days

How will you know its working?

• Amount of downloads
• Rate the App
• social media comments/likes

How will they interact with it?

• Smart phone-App
• Computer-Web page

What is the tone of voice?

• Down to earth
• Experienced
• Light hearted
• Informal
• Calming
• Reassuring

Name Ideas:

• Fund your Freshers
• Freshers Fund
• Fresh Funds
• Fbudget
• Fudget

We decided on the name 'Fudget' for our App. It's a play on words combining 'Freshers' and 'Budget'. This name was chosen due to it being short and catchy as well as sounding like a actual App name.

App Content:

• App logo
• Main character
• Home page
• Map/Level
• Information screens
• Budget display

We assigned each member of the group a different job to ensure we could complete the brief to a high standard and on time. I was in charge of creating the App store page as well as a notification menu.

Logo Development:

Will decided he best suited designing the character to work throughout our App. These are the various stages of his work.

 

Inspiration for the character came from the iconic golden owls in front of the civic hall in millennium square, linking the App to the surrounding area.

Logo ideas:

James was in charge of using Will's character to design the logo which would be what people see when they are looking for the App etc.

These are his initial sketches and ideas which he used to generate further designs and define his ideas.

We decided to include the pound sign symbol just to make it clear the App is about finances.

This was the final design. I really like this design as it has a fun, quirky side which will draw in peoples attention when looking through the App store etc. The colours are all fairly bland apart from the pound symbols which are green, making them stand out much more thus making the financial side of the App much clearer and more apparent even at a glance. The font we decided to use was a typical font of App's, making it much more believeable as a legitimate product.

Home Page:

This will be the first page that people see when they open the App. Here, they will have to enter in their budget for the week. James put together a design using the owl character and elements of the map that he was working with.

Having the full bodied character with dialog works well and creates an over all more friendly vibe. It also suits the general illustrative style and direction the App is going in.

As James continued to work on the map, certain aspects of it were added to the homepage design to keep continuity throughout the App.

 Map Development:

Our idea was to design a 2-D map with various points of interest that we think should cover all costs during Fresher's week; these included Public Transport, Shopping, Nights Out and University. There would be a bar at the top of the map that indicated how much of your overall budget was remaining.

These are the components to go onto the map.

Basic map design

James created this rough draft of the map on illustrator to take to our progress crit.

Progress Crit:

These are the visuals we used to present to our peers.

The feedback from the crit was really useful. The main points raised were:

• App was good due to it being portable
• 'Plus' buttons need enlarging
• Branch out on where and what money could be spent on
• More options, links to websites etc
• 'Make your own map'
• Bank balance on-screen
• Restrict spending
• Premium version of the App that isn't free
• Notifications
• Online history

Some of these suggestions would only really apply if the App was for a long term budget, but as it is designed specifically to cover the Fresher's week budget we decided against them. However, some of these ideas were useful and we altered certain aspects such as creating a history page as well as enlarging the size of the 'plus' buttons.

Final Map:

We decided to change the river to a train track and add lots of buildings to represent the city centre.

We decided to mount it in a iPhone for a more professional finish.

Home Screen Final:

Information Screen Finals:

This is the food screen that Amy has designed. Here, you would select how much you have spent so that the amount is taken off of your budget. It also contains hints and tips to help save money, as well as links to various websites that could also help with saving money.

We thought it would be a good idea to design a history page so the user can quickly view what they have spent their money on. To access it you click the budget bar at the top of the map. James decided that there was a need to be able to delete certain purchases which I think was a good idea.

App Store Page:

This is the App store page that I constucted. I wrote out a description to promote our App as well as putting my design into the iPhone template to get a sense of how it would look. James thought that adding a 'Rate the App' section would be a good way of analysing the App's success which I thought was clever.

Business card:

Front/Back

This is the business card that Bobby has designed. The QR code on the back would send the user to a page where they could buy an N.U.S card with a £5 discount, further promoting the App and giving some incentive to download it.