As for Moodoh, there’ll be another post later this week, but Matt & I are still knee-deep with the day jobs, so progress has been limited. Having said that, I spent most of the flight to New York for Finovate sketching out screen designs for our first Moodoh app, so on paper at least, we have some dynamite stuff (according to the Exec from BT who I was sat next to)!

Really interesting reviews, thanks. I’m a long-time Quicken user and am desperately trying to avoid going onto MS Money. Wish Intuit would launch Quicken online in this country; I’d pay them well for it.

Do you know of any similar online offerings for personal money management etc?

Really enjoy the site, and am interested in moodoh progress. We met briefly at the IFP conference, you may remember.

Cheers

Pete

Mike — The teams are exploring the next direction for MyMoney and other complementary Fiserv products even as I write this. As soon as we’re ready to roll, we’ll make certain we set up a briefing for you, and to get your feedback. Does that work? Thanks again for your interest.

- We just rolled out a new version of the Starter Roadmap and we presently have a manual QA process where we review the document before we approve it to be sent out. In the process, we’ve found some ways to make the algorithm even more accurate for certain use cases (young savers, high income spenders, etc.). Part of this is having to explain the results, so for someone making $200k/year, but only saving 4% a year, we have to caveat their result and describe why we’re giving them a yellow light. Once we feel confident that the evaluation system we’ve set in place works for all the use cases, it will be a fully automated system (while the Professional Roadmap will always be a manual process where Certified Financial Planners™ prepare the plans).

- Part of what you’re experiencing on the Dashboard/Your Plan with the different sections reloading is our integration of our older html pages that had embedded Flex with the new all Flex interface. We’re working on fixing that.

- I agree that there might be other more impactful ways to simulate “What If” scenarios. Maybe a cash flow chart based on the time period defined in the popup.

- Your other UI comments are valid and we’ll look into them. Thanks for taking the time to go into so much detail.

Sure, we’d still like to talk. Feel free to respond back to Jon’s email when you’re ready.

Thanks for your coverage of Finovate. We enjoyed the show, too.

Just wanted to follow up on a couple points in your note. Re: our decision to target the Facebook platform to launch the MyMoney application … you’re right to call out that the product doesn’t have to be limited to Facebook. As we explore new directions for MyMoney, we may well expand it to include other platforms and capabilities. Our research showed that Facebook was a good place to start due to its popularity with younger generations and its viral nature that helps banks and credit unions leverage the platform to connect with customers/members. But as you say, we’re certainly considering the “brighter, shinier” platforms that are growing, too.

Re: your disappointing experience in the networking session – I do believe this was a misunderstanding and nothing more sinister. The personnel working the session are equally passionate about the MyMoney product and love to talk about it. Our table was deep with Finovate attendees engaged in conversations, so if you felt slighted, it certainly was inadvertent and the team apologizes. We’re more than happy to schedule an individual conversation at your convenience to answer any of your questions.

For the record, I am still interested in what BoulevardR has to offer, and I think the B2B focus will certainly get some attention here in the UK, so I’ll be in touch, if you’ll still talk to me! LOL

Now, the “execution” issues: yes, I have been using the site, and have found a few things that I’m just not a fan of…

First off, I found the clock graphic which takes over my cursor when the app is loading to be a bit irritating and gimmicky. I also found the side panels that appear in the goal-setting wizard distracting, particularly when they changed without warning. Also, I changed all the values on the assumptions being made about my goals, but the panels still kept appearing – once completed, I felt they should have disappeared from view. At one point, I wanted to go back to check an input value, but when I hit my browser back button I ended up back at the sign-up page; it wasn’t what I expected…

When I got to the results page, I liked the simple shortfall presentation, but that ‘downsize your car’ tab just seemed so out of place, particularly as this was the first time there had been any mention of my car! Again, I found this unexpected and distracting.

I really liked the way that BouelvardR asks for the minimum of personal information at the most opportune time, i.e. on sign-up AFTER you’ve shown me that you’re worth signing up to, but I was expecting my Starter Roadmap to be available immediately, and not have to wait 24 hours.

Other UI irritations: the ‘loading’ of the app occurred several times in one session which got on my nerves after a while; I almost missed the accounts capture mechanism as it wasn’t obvious what I had to do (when there aren’t any accounts present, surely the label should be ‘create’ not ‘update’?), and the table of accounts appeared below the fold on my laptop; the truncation of the navigation labels in the left-hand accordion was another annoyance.

When I accessed the What-if section, it wasn’t immediately obvious what the effect of any of the scenario changes was. This is one place where the shortfall graphic device didn’t really work as the change in shortfall amount wasn’t sufficiently large enough to register with me (I was simulating losing my job, and not having an income for 3 months), and the shrink/grow animation effect lessened the impact even further!

I also clicked through on the “death of a spouse” graphic, but then got the option to simulate either my own death plus that of my spouse; confusing – I’d already made my decision about what I wanted to see, the additional option was yet another distraction!

I accessed my profile, and found that the left hand navigation style had changed markedly; I was momentarily confused about how I should exit. When I finally worked it out and clicked on the Dashboard link, I had to wait for the app to load again. AAAAARGH!

At this point, I’d had enough. I left the site with the nagging suspicion that my Starter Roadmap was already obsolete before it had arrived because I had subsequently input details about a number of my savings accounts!

Initial impressions? Poor usability, graphical & interaction design; flex technology getting in my way; nothing tangible to show for my efforts (have to wait for a report); and an overwhelming sense of frustration borne of the realisation that BoulevardR has probably got a good planning engine in the background, but the front end and supporting processes let it down. I’m also wondering why I have to wait for my Starter Roadmap; if there’s a compulsory offline element to this proposition, I’d be really worried about scaling and localising into other markets. I’m mystified as to why the report isn’t produced immediately.

So, that’s the long and short of it in terms of my ‘execution’ issues. I’d welcome your thoughts on the points I’ve raised, particularly if you feel that I’ve done you a dis-service (again!)

PS. I have actually tried the pressure-presenting thing, and you’re right, it’s bloody difficult. I found that, once I’d got over the embarrassment of it all, rehearsing in front of a mirror, or even going so far as to video myself for later review, was incredibly useful in identifying potential banana skins (and irritating gestures I didn’t even realise I was making!) Oh, and rehearsing with as much of the tech kit you’ll be using on the day is vital, too; IMHO it’s usually the tech that sets the dominoes tumbling.

Some light relief at the end of a long reply:

My most terrifying experience in front of an audience? Aged 16, playing my trumpet in a brass quintet, on a small stage right in the centre of a packed Royal Albert Hall. And just to up the ante, there were another 4 million people watching live on BBC TV. To this day, I cannot recall a single second of that performance, although I remember that, immediately afterwards, I used some colourful language in shouting through the applause to tell the tuba player when to bow to the royal box, and then realising it’d all been picked up on a nearby mic… …whoops!

Thanks for the honest critique of my Boulevard R demo. I’m generally not accustomed to demoing in front of 400 and trying to cover all our functionality in less than 7 minutes. You should try it some time, it’s not easy.

Boulevard R has members- the people who register with us. Since we ask about what they do for work, we also know that some are small business owners.

What we launched at Finovate was a site specifically for those small business owners, with appropriate content from financial planners. They have the option to get a free Professional Roadmap if they want. Advanta is one of the best small business credit cards out there. I’m not sure if you caught this, but this is not a personal credit card, but exclusively a small business card so your point on consumers getting into debt is lost on me.

To clarify, we use zip code data to adjust the calculations for cost of living, since someone living in San Francisco is going to have a very different cost of living than someone living in Cincinnati.

I’m not clear on your execution issue. What exactly are you referring to? The article you sited is over 10 months old and if you read the first comment on that story, you’d see my response. The back story is that the reporter’s editor called to apologize for how she reported it. Regardless, the issue with the buy a home calculation has been fixed. I’d like to hear more about our execution deficit. Are you speaking from personal experience?

You had sounded interested in how our approach might work for a client you have in the UK.

In fact, we’re moving from a B2C model to a B2B model, since we’re getting a lot of demand for white labeling our solution. In light of what’s happening in the market, consumers are really looking for independent, expert advice.

We’d be happy to talk with you about how we can be helpful, but in light of your comments we won’t be holding our breath.