Steady

Household financial visibility for couples

Kevin Gao · Product Designer

2

"Can we afford a trip to Japan this summer?"

Three seconds of silence.

Not because the answer is no, because the number doesn't exist.

This isn't a budgeting problem. It's a visibility problem.

3

The visibility gap

Scattered

Money lives across 4 bank accounts, 3 credit cards, and 2 Venmo accounts. No single view exists.

Individual tools

YNAB, Monarch, and Copilot treat money as personal. Honeydue shows two separate views, not one household picture.

Avoidance

Without a clear number, couples skip the conversation. Financial decisions get made on feeling, not facts.

Core insight: Couples don't need another budgeting app. They need a single, shared picture of where they stand.

4

RESEARCH

Understanding how couples navigate money

01

Diary Study

6 couples tracked moments when they wanted household financial clarity for 1 week

Capture real triggers in context

02

Couple Interviews

Joint sessions with all 6 couples to explore diary entries and observe partner dynamics

See the two-person interaction

03

Affinity Mapping

Clustered diary entries + interview quotes into patterns that drive design decisions

Find the design-driving insights

5

DIARY STUDY FINDINGS

Three patterns emerged from daily entries

📅

Planning triggers

Conversations about trips, big purchases, or moving surfaced the gap, "we realized neither of us actually knows our total."

5 of 6 couples

🔔

Surprise triggers

Seeing a partner's purchase notification and wondering if the household budget could absorb it, but not having a number to check against.

4 of 6 couples

🚪

Avoidance endings

Most moments ended with "let's figure it out later" instead of opening 3 apps to piece together the picture.

6 of 6 couples

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COUPLE INTERVIEW INSIGHTS

What I heard when couples talked together

The transparency paradox

Every couple said they want transparency. But when asked "would you let your partner see every purchase?" Most hesitated. Privacy isn't about hiding. It's about trust.

"I want to know the big picture, not judge her coffee habit."

→ Privacy must be a shared agreement, not a setting

Same number, different feelings

Showing couples a combined monthly spending total: one partner said "that's fine" while the other said "that's too much." The same data triggers different emotional responses.

"When I see red numbers, I feel like I did something wrong."

→ Numbers need emotional context, not color judgment

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SYNTHESIS

Three design-driving insights

1

Visibility first

People don‘t need a budget tool, they need one picture. See the full household, then decide what to do.

2

Privacy as trust

Privacy isn't "hiding." It's "I trust you don't need to see my every purchase." A shared agreement, not a toggle.

3

Gentle numbers

Raw numbers trigger anxiety and blame. Context, trends, ranges, plain language. Lets couples interpret together without judgment.

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DESIGN STRATEGY

Three pillars from research to product

01

One Picture

A unified household dashboard, see everything in one glance

02

Agreed Privacy

Personal spending budgets set together, only totals shared

03

Gentle Numbers

Contextual, neutral data presentation mirror, not scorecard

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ONE PICTURE — ONBOARDING

Inviting your partner in

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AGREED PRIVACY — SETUP

Setting boundaries together

Not a settings page, it’s a conversation.

Propose → Respond → Agree

One partner suggests an amount, the other confirms or adjusts. Both must agree before it takes effect.

Mutual, not unilateral

Either person can change the amount anytime, but the other gets notified and must re-agree.

Total visible, details private

Your partner sees how much of your personal budget you've used. Never the individual transactions.

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ONE PICTURE — DASHBOARD

Dashboard — first approach

Standard financial presentation

This initial version used conventional financial app patterns: red for negative, green for positive, percentage-based comparisons.

Red net worth

−$2,802 displayed in red with "You owe more than you have" badge

Green/red split

Assets in green, debts in red, immediate moral judgment on the numbers

+23% vs Feb

Percentage comparison invites "who spent more?" instead of "where did it go?"

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ONE PICTURE — SPENDING

Where the money goes

Household-level categories

Both partners' spending merged into shared categories. "Food $682" includes the Whole Foods run, the Costco trip, Uber Eats — all under one total, not split by person.

Smart auto-categorization

Uber Eats was initially categorized as Transportation. The system detects food delivery merchants and recategorizes automatically — shown with a "Moved from Transportation" note so users can verify and correct if needed.

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AGREED PRIVACY — PERSONAL SPACE

Your money, your details

The privacy boundary in action

Your view

Full transaction history: Blue Bottle Coffee $6.50, Uniqlo $52.42, Steam $29.99... every detail visible.

Partner's view

Summary only: "Kevin — $184.20 of $300 used." No transaction names, no amounts, no judgment.

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GENTLE NUMBERS — INSIGHTS

Mirror, not judge

Weekly summaries that inform, not alarm

"Dining out was up this week" plain language that tells you what changed without implying you did something wrong. Compare to "ALERT: Food spending exceeded budget by 23%!"

Traditional

⚠ You overspent by $200!

Steady

Dining out was up, about $200 more than last week

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Testing the emotional response

Method

Prototype walkthrough with realistic financial scenarios

Participants

3 couples from the original diary study

Focus

Dashboard number presentation + personal spending privacy boundary

Scenario

Household with negative net worth and above-average monthly spending

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TESTING FINDINGS

Red numbers trigger blame, not action

2 of 3

couples

When one partner saw the red negative net worth, they became defensive: "That student loan isn't my fault." The color turned a shared number into a personal accusation.

+23%

triggered

The percentage comparison ("spending up 23% vs Feb") made couples immediately ask "who spent more?" instead of "where did it go?“, the opposite of what I wanted.

3 of 3

preferred

All couples preferred seeing context ("slightly above your 3-month average") over judgment (red/green, up/down arrows). They wanted a mirror, not a report card.

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ITERATION

From judgment to context

Before

After

→

Red → neutral dark

→

"You owe more" → "Improving — up $340"

→

+23% badge → "Slightly above average"

→

3-month range bar added

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GENTLE NUMBERS — FINAL DASHBOARD

The iterated household view

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OUTCOMES

What Steady achieves

9 → 1

Visibility

Four banks, three cards, two Venmo accounts, scattered with no single view. Now one screen shows the full household.

3/3

Privacy comfort

All tested couples accepted merged viewing with the personal allowance mechanism. Trust-based boundary, not forced transparency.

0

Defensive reactions

After iteration, zero couples showed defensive behavior seeing their household numbers. Down from 2 of 3 with v1's red/green approach.

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Sunday night, revisited.

"Can we afford Japan this summer?"

Open Steady. Three seconds later:

household net worth, spending trends, and where the money's going all on one screen.

The conversation continues with a real number this time.

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REFLECTION

With more time

Real negotiation friction

The personal allowance agreement was pre-set in prototyping. In reality, negotiating "how much personal spending is OK" might be its own source of tension. A longitudinal study would reveal whether the mechanism helps or hurts.

Plaid categorization accuracy

Auto-categorization works well in prototypes with clean data. Real bank transactions are messy, "UBER TRIP" vs "UBER EATS" distinction requires ongoing ML refinement and user correction loops.

Visibility vs. surveillance

There's a fine line between "we can see our finances together" and "I can monitor your spending." Designing guardrails like the personal space boundary is essential, but I haven't tested long-term dynamics over months of use.

Longitudinal validation

Does Steady actually change how couples communicate about money? 2-4 weeks of real use would show whether financial conversation frequency and quality improve, or whether couples revert to avoidance patterns.

Thank you

Kevin Gao

huawengao@gmail.com