The Broke App

What is the Broke App?

The Broke App is a mobile, personal finance application for banks to reach and teach college students how to build wealth for the future based on their current spending habits.

For more information you can check out our website.

The Broke Process

Ideation, Customer Discovery, and Participatory Design

First mockups and feedback from the New York Innovation Trek

+100 Customer Discovery Interviews with potential users, banks, and financial literacy experts

Affinity wall about 1/4 of the way done that we built at DTX

User Personas and Scenarios Created

Lo-Fidelity Prototyping and Feedback

Hi-Fidelity Prototyping and Feedback

Testing hypothesized product values as determined by the customer discovery process

MVP Development and working with Channel Partners for Launch

Broke @TechTown Detroit

For my internship in the summer of 2015, I participated in TechTown Detroit's DTX Launch program, which is a 10 week student accelerator program on customer discovery. During my time in TechTown and TechArb, where The Broke App incubates, I completed the following:

Awarded the 'Get Set' award from TechTown and Bank of America for diligence in the customer discovery process
Created a viable business canvas model
Completed over 100 interviews with students, banks, financial literacy experts, investment firms, and other entrepreneurs in the FinTech space
Pitched weekly to members of the New Enterprise Forum of Michigan to receive feedback and refine business canvas model
Created and tested lo-fi and hi-fi prototypes (Sketch) to verify value provided as given in customer feedback

Our affinity wall of customer data. It's about 1/4 of the way complete in the picture:

You can learn more about the DTX Launch Program here:

Here's the Twitter feed of the DTX Launch event the night I pitched and we won the 'Get Set' Award from TechTown:

Broke @ UMSI

The Broke App began when our team met at the New York Innovation Trek and formed around a passion for financial literacy. Since New York we've been a lot of places pitching, iterating, and adapting the idea to feedback received. This video created by the University of Michigan School of Information shows our journey up through the Summer of 2015.