Beacon is a gamified budgeting app that helps users establish better spending habits, keep track of their spending, and work toward paying down their credit card debt.

With the growing market share of Millennials, Citi Ventures wanted to explore ways to appeal more to this essential audience. Consumer research showed that Millennials were often concerned about debt and had trouble trusting big banking institutions. We set out to create an app that would change the perception of the brand by providing users with a practical tool to learn how to better manage budgeting and help gain control of their finances.

The Beacon app consolidates the user's finances in one place and surfaces spending trends. Users engage in weekly challenges to change habits and make small savings wins. Those savings are then immediately applied toward existing credit card debt.

My team and I worked directly with the founders at Citi to understand their vision. It was our job to research, concept, and execute a new app that would not only engage this new audience through user experience but also refresh a brand that did not resonate with them.

We took Beacon through a rigorous, formal validation process to get to market. Before even a single line of code was written, the idea was tested with potential customers. Based on their feedback, the team rapidly iterated upon the solution to address existing pain points.

Throughout the development lifecycle, Beacon's features and functionality drew directly from customer input and internal expertise. We engaged multiple teams across Citi, including technology, design, marketing, and research, to help define the solution.

The outcome was a test-and-learn platform that continuously provides a more holistic understanding of one of the most valuable user segments for Citi.