Product Design
2025
Overview
Buckaroo turns weekly spending into a small, friendly ritual. Instead of charts and guilt, it gives you a wallet, a weekly tip, and a running sense of how you’re doing — designed to feel closer to a tamagotchi than a bank statement.
Approach
I started from the question of why budgeting apps get abandoned in week two. The answer shaped everything: progress had to be weekly, wins had to be visible, and numbers had to stay small. The visual language leans warm and tactile — buttery yellows, rounded cards, and celebratory moments when a week closes under budget.
Outcome
The result is a budgeting app people describe as “cute” before they describe it as “useful” — which is exactly the point. Testers checked in more often, and the weekly-tip mechanic became the anchor of the whole product.