Ideation: 

From the beginning we agreed as a team that we sought to build an ambient device that leveraged servo and light in combination to present complex information. 

From here, the group brainstormed a variety of monetary related ideas and presented visions for how those differing ideas could be manifested. These ranged from alcohol spend tracking to budget monitoring to foreign exchange conversion to ultimately stock tracking. 
Once we narrowed in on a problem area we sought to address, the team conducted brief but effective user research into what data indicators were key to our target market (this involved a combination of personal experience and advice outreach to friends and family) and what data indicators were readily available online and could be combined with IFTTT to build a working prototype. Through this process we zeroed in on real-time changes in stock price, which shows short term directional changes in the stock that could be of interest to someone closely tracking their position, and average analyst ratings which reflect consensus views of the stock's long term prospects. While price fluctuations happen on a daily and minute-by-minute basis, changes in analyst ratings are far less frequent and worthy of attention when they occur.  
After IDing these two variables, we began ideating on form factors to present this information and quickly narrowed in on a non-digital symbolic indictor to represent a particular stock (Bird = Twitter, Apple = Apple, Soup Can = Campbell's) with light indication for price. This seemed less intrusive to display in a conspicuous position like a bookshelf or desk and similar in our minds nature to a paperweight. A Campbell's Soup Can was chosen because of availability and is a subtle reference to CMU alumnus Andy Warhol's famous pop art.