Venmo
Mobile App: Introducing a new feature
A mobile payment service with a new feature to help users track, manage and customize splitting bills
A mobile payment service with a new feature to help users calculate, track and customize splitting bills with groups, friends and more.
Platform:
Duration:
My Role:
Deliverables:
Mobile application
4 weeks
UX/UI Designer, Researcher
Research, User flow, Prototype, Usability testing
THE CHALLENGE
Socializing with friends, meeting new people can be so much fun. While exploring new restaurants, bars or concerts can be exciting but not so much when the bill needs to be settled? It's an awkward situation for many to split a bill among several people who you may not know or with those who had a feast while others who just had a drink.
THE SOLUTION
Currently, users are using multiple apps to calculate, track and split bills/checks. To solve this, i am going to introduce a new feature to a widely used app, Venmo, to help them perform all these actions in one app. The goal is to do this without the awkwardness or math!
01 Empathize
CREATING THE RESEARCH PLAN
Competitive Analysis
4 companies
Identified 4 top competitors, did a SWOT Analysis and also identified gaps to identify opportunities in the market.
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Survey
17 responses
To get insights about Venmo in comparison to other payment services​ and understand correlation with different factors including demographics of users, applications used for tracking and settling bills.
User Interviews
6 participants
Found 6 participants who use a peer to peer mobile application regularly and are above 21 years of age.
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LET'S DEFINE THE RESEARCH
Research Objectives Defined:
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Understand the need and situation for when users need to split a check
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Understand if users have any tools to enable tracking and splitting a check
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Understand how checks are settled among trusted group of friends
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Understand how checks are settled among a new set of folks
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Understand the process of who decides how the check should be split in a group
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Uncover user’s thoughts and experiences with Venmo and other competitor apps
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Discover opportunities for improvement in the process of splitting and settling a check
Assumptions:​
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We assume that people have a hard time to do calculations for splitting bills in a group setting and find it cumbersome to open another application to do calculations. Switching between apps when trying to settle bills can give rise to human error.
02 Define
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Identified Venmo's top 4 competitors and performed a SWOT Analysis in order to identified gaps which would turn into opportunities in the market.
AFFINITY MAP
Initial Affinity Map
After creating a ton of post it's with vital pieces of information from the users, i started recognizing patterns and created themes.​
Themes included "apps used", "uses", "device type, "scenarios of splitting", "wishlist", "dependancies" for tracking and splitting bills and finally doing money transfers.
PAIN POINTS & INSIGHTS
Pain Points
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There is a lot of dissatisfaction when you are paying more than you consume and it happens frequently.
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It’s frustrating when you are paying more than you consume and it could be for several reasons including a mix of singles and couples in a group or someone not drinking but still end up splitting the check equally.
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Users find it awkward to remind their friends to settle up the check especially when the splitting happens after the fact and over text/email.
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Calculations can get complex for several reasons and users hate figuring out the math for unequal splitting of a check in a group setting.
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There is a sense of worry and concern if people will pay their portion especially when one person pays it all.
Insights
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Most users started using payment apps through word of mouth and based on what others have. Payment process has almost become a commodity and people would sway to use other apps easily.
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Most users are unsure of how secure Venmo is but still use it due to the simplicity of the app, fun and casual UI and mainly not having to share bank account details.
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All users don’t like doing the math and find it especially more challenging to do it while at the event and wish there was a better solution for that rather than using the calculator app and then switching to payment app to complete the transaction.
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Bill Split decisions are made on the level of comfort and closeness of a relationship with who the transactions are shared with.
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In an ideal situation, everyone would like to split the bill fairly and on consumption. If it is a large amount/impact, most have a feeling of awkwardness when it comes to it and avoid confrontation on this topic.
User Personas
Gathering insights from the user interviews and research, i created user personas to represent our target audience for Venmo.
Venmo feels like a social network and i like the emojis attached to payments - it makes it fun.
I am private and don't like the social aspect of Venmo as its TMI about who's paying who and for what.
Everyone has Venmo so makes payments and transfers easy.
03 Ideate
Prioritizing the Roadmap
I focused on the "Must Have" as it included key features to make Localite a minimum viable product and showcase the potential possibilities of the product.
#1 USER FLOW & TASK FLOW
I created the user flow first to discover the various paths a user could take to create a shared tab, track and settle expenses.
User Flow #1: How to create a shared tab with existing friends
Then i created a task flow to design the happy path that a user would take to optimize the number of steps.
Task Flow #1: In this task, i focused on how a user would create a new shared tab and add friends from their existing contact list to keep track and settle expenses.
#2 USER FLOW & TASK FLOW
User Flow #2: How to add an expense to a shared tab and customize splitting the check
Then i created a task flow to design the happy path that a user would take to optimize the number of steps.
Task Flow #2: In this task, i focused on how a user would perform a customized split check. The user has to add an expense to an existing shared tab where one of their friends has to pay for 2 shares as they are paying for another friend while the rest pay for their individual share which would be 1.
Sounds complicated? This task flow makes it really simple!
04 Prototype
User Flow 1: Lo-fi to Hi-fi Wireframes to Prototype
User flow #1: How to create a shared tab with existing friends
LO-FI DESIGNS
Shared tab Created
Venmo Homepage
Pay/Request tab
Create Shared tab
Select 1 or multiple friends
After doing the lo-fi designs, I designed the hi-fi wireframes to create prototypes to perform usability testing.
1st PROTOTYPE
User almost missed seeing the "Enter Tab Name" due to the greyed out box. For most users, their eyes were immediately drawn to the search box for adding friends first instead of naming the tab.
HI-FI DESIGNS ITERATIONS
Once you click on "Create Group", i changed the order where it lets you add friends first instead of creating the group name.
Select friends
Select multiple friends
New Shared Tab
Enter Group Name
Shared tab created
Venmo Homepage
Pay/Request tab
Add friends
FINAL PROTOTYPE
Checkout the userflow to see "how a user would create a group"
User Flow 2: Please do the math
User Flow #2: How to add an expense to an existing shared tab and split the check. In this user flow, there are 2 scenarios that i worked on, one to split a check by person and the second was to customize splitting a check by item.
Imagine you are out with 3 of your friends at a restaurant and you need to split a check equally by person. However, one of your friends, Shreya brought another friend so she needs to pay for both of them. Each person's share would be 1 except for Shreya, where it would be 2.
Let's see how it's done!
Imagine you are out with 3 of your friends at a restaurant and you need to split a check equally by person. However, one of your friends, Shreya brought another friend so she needs to pay for both of them. Each person's share would be 1 except for Shreya, where it would be 2.
Let's be fair now!
05 TEST
USABILITY TEST LEARNINGS
From the usability testing interviews, i consolidated a list of themes that i learnt across all users:
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things that worked
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friction points
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ideas
Identified 12 Friction points and 9 ideas and gave each one a priority level and narrowed down to work on those points that were highest priority. Priority to each friction was an accumulation of the level of impact it had on the user and the number of users who faced this issue.
I decided to work on the friction points that had the most impact on the user keeping in mind the time and effort involved to make those changes should be justifiable to the project to meet the deadline.
06 Retrospect
Coming from a finance background, i was filled with excitement for this project as it brought my analytical and creative background to a junction of productivity. When i started this project, i thought my idea was so simple but why has it not been implemented yet? This question still remains true for Venmo but not other companies like Splitwise who have realized the value of being a one stop shop of tracking and settling expenses in one application.
If i had more time, i would have liked to focus more on:
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the language of what "bill" and "check" mean to a user as there was some lingering confusion on what a "bill" could mean.
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how to make it more easy for the user to understand what customizing a check entails.