Week 2 (30th-5th, February, 2017)

The development of ideas continues and work began on designing a logo for our product. Branding and an investigation into the necessity of branding was our main focus this week, coming to the conclusion that the most valuable brands in the world today owe a large portion of their success to the effectiveness of their branding. The brand, to a large extent in many companies, is more important than the commodities they peddle. Examples like Google, Microsoft, and even smaller ones like BMW or Aldi, show how effective a simple name and logo can be. Saying those names and seeing those logos we, as consumers, know immediately who they are and what they sell. Another case of effective branding being of the utmost importance is with websites such as comparethemarket.com, Go Compare and other websites that compare prices for bills and insurance etc. quite often the websites comparing different car insurance policies are more recognisable than the car insurance companies themselves.

In addition to the investigation of branding we decided to shave off the feature set of our app that involved connection to bank accounts. Banks would never agree to a third party app being involved with their clients money so we thought it sensible to strip that idea.
Instead we thought it would still be important to feature the finance element of the app, however focus mainly on an income and/or student loans. This way the user can set up the total amount when their income or loan has come in, so the app is still efficient and can provide help budgeting the money the user has without involving a third party company.