A revision of Venmo's platform that eases people's abilities to share experiences.
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A revision of Venmo's platform that eases people's abilities to share experiences.
Individual
4 weeks
I have used Venmo before, especially after going somewhere like a restaurant with friends. Oftentimes, we get many different items such as unique items per person and shared dishes, splitting the bill at the end of the meal. However, when it comes to actually billing each person, I have found that it is tedious to keep making individual Venmo requests, having to often consult other apps like Apple Notes to keep track of each person's dues. I think that when it comes to this use case, Venmo can be optimized.
I developed a high fidelity prototype for a new feature appended to Venmo's existing information architecture. This feature, dubbed Venmo Split, automates tab splitting in use cases such as multiparty dining. The feature effectively handles complex payments across multiple people all within the app — no other resources needed.
As an extremely popular payment platform, Venmo has and continues to broaden its presence. At this time, Venmo has 3 client-facing services: the Venmo app, Venmo debit/credit cards, and online/business checkouts.
I conducted a full review of Venmo's mobile platform, and come to the following discoveries/conclusions.
From a feed of friends' transactions, to the flexible transaction naming system (often leading to creative titles), to of course the ability to pay/request payment from others, Venmo is a very socially-oriented platform for the service it provides.
Now offering debit and credit cards, as well as facilitating payments with external businesses, Venmo is diversifying their products to not just interface payments between friends, but also more broadly between people and the economy around them.
Venmo credit card, courtesy of Venmo
I decided to conduct interviews with Venmo users to discover more about their experiences with the app. After conducting them, I organized them through the Affinity Diagram below.
Looking over the interviews, I developed Activity Notes for each interviewee and preliminarily organized them based on where they occurred in the interview.
In a second pass of the Activity Notes, I organized them based on their content and cross-commonalities. Using these clusters, I identified key moments defined by Insights.
After composing and analyzing the affinity diagram, I identified 5 insights from the information provided by the interviewees:
When people use Venmo, it is likely in the context of a food-related event like a lunch or dinner, where one person is likely to pay with the expectation that others reimburse.
Venmo is used more when a group of people is involved, implicating multiple people in a single transaction series.
In the event of needing to add tax or tip to a split payment, other resources such as cameras and calculators are used to record payments for later or help with expediting the creation of Venmo transactions.
People find making multiple Venmo payments to be time-consuming, leading to their preference to fulfill Venmo payment requests when possible, and highlighted that lack of visibility in the interface made it difficult to find functions they were looking for
There was consensus that Venmo's out-of-app provisions are not significant enough to positively impact their Venmo experience. The benefits and incentives of Venmo credit/debit cards are inadequate for those with such cards already, and Venmo's store/online checkout systems are not encountered regularly.
Following the creation of Insights, I developed a Persona to embody these Insights and provide a user for whom my solution could help.
Rafael is a 21-year-old Economics student who lives with 3 of his close friends. He uses Venmo when going out with them, which is predominantly to restaurants in Collegetown.
Growing up with 4 siblings, Rafael is altruistic and often assumes responsibility when in a group.
Additionally, since he works an on-campus job and is actively accruing money in his bank account, he often volunteers to pay for everyone's food with his credit card, expecting that his friends will swiftly fulfill his requests for dues afterwards.
After developing the Insights, I derived 4 general Requirements for the interface that would need to be fulfilled to serve Rafael's needs:
The system status should be clearly visible as users select certain features based on their needs.
The interface should provide accommodations for users at all steps of the payment creation process.
The feature enhancement should align — aesthetically and functionally — with other parts of the Venmo mobile app system.
Users should receive overt feedback for actions they have taken or have yet to take in the interface.
Ultimately, research and user interviews indicate that the use of Venmo's external products is low, while there are improvements to the main app to be made. Therefore, I thought that dedicating efforts to enhance Venmo's mobile app user experience would help users who either do not know about or decide not to pursue other Venmo services.
Many people have used Venmo before and have gotten used to the system despite a recent update with architectural and aesthetic overhauls. To understand where my solution could fit into their current system, I drew out the current Information Architecture of Venmo.
Right now, Paying and Requesting require the same user journey with the exception of the very end where the decision takes place. While this makes the flow of Venmo very fast and easy to get used to, little error recovery is provided to users after a decision to Pay or Request is made. Selecting either option locks the user in their choice, and the only way to change it is to Cancel the Pay/Request prompt altogether.
When thinking of how users would get to Venmo Split in the first place, I thought of 2 potential entry points after leaving Venmo's homepage.
Entry 1
Decide to go with Venmo's default Request or Split in isolation
Entry 2
Decide to go with Venmo's default Request or Split while seeing users to add
How items were being split across people had to be clear while not cluttering the interface too much. These were 2 iterations of the design:
Interface 1
Use dots (of different colors) to represent each item and be placed under each person that item is split between
Interface 2
Place small versions of each person's profile picture next to the items they received / split with others
When thinking of the user flow, I also created low fidelity mocks for enabling camera access for scanning receipts, editing items in the case that they should be added, removed, or changed, and splitting tax and tip.
Rafael can select whether he wants to Pay someone or Request payments from someone, then subsequently choose to send either a Default or Split Request. In a Split Request, he can choose who is included, and then use his camera to scan his receipt for items to split.
With items to split, Rafael can select them and then pick the people who either got that item alone or split with others. The cost of each item is evenly divided across everyone who is selected to have received or shared that item.
By editing his items list, Rafael can add items by providing a title, cost, and optionally the people who received or split that item. He can also remove or edit information on existing items if desired.
Rafael can insert the tax and tip of the order, as well as choose how the values are split amongst the party. After this, he can make final decisions regarding who will receive a Request and add a memo as icing to the cake.
Venmo Split and its functionality lies within a version of Venmo where Pay and Request result in different user flows to increase error recovery and constraints on the system in general. Users can continue to Request as they currently do, but Split Request enters as an optimized multiparty payment system.
Parsing Venmo's in-house and contract branding documentation, as well as eye-dropping elements from their mobile user interface, I identified a color palette and fonts to use in my own designs. Additionally, using elements from Venmo's current design and recent graphic revamp, I sought to preserve components when possible while adding new user interfaces to accommodate Venmo Split.
Given the entry point in the user flow for making a Split Request, I used Venmo's Switch component to allow a user to choose between the current (Default) method of making a Request, or choosing the Split method.
The choice is now made from the get-go, and to create a screen worthy of this significant moment in the user flow, I used Venmo's Card screen to inspire the large tiles and splash of illustration (by Sebastian Curi and Koto Studio).
Users can enter tax and tip, choose how they are split amongst everyone and whether they are included in that calculation, and see everyone's grand totals. These functions are accommodated by Venmo's existing Input, Selector, and Pill Toggle components across their interface.
At the end of a Split Request, users will be able to see the money being Requested by everyone, as well as make last-minute decisions regarding who to send the Requests to. After checking this, they are ready to write a memo and send their Split Requests with the familiar blue button!
After finishing the high-fidelity prototypes, I conducted user tests to evaluate the effectiveness of the design.
While users seemed to have a pleasant user experience while using Venmo Split, they offered some feedback during the usability studies. Some feedback, which became changes implemented in the final stage of designs, included:
Status:
A little bit after I finished the UX case study for this project, I set out to develop a fully-functioning prototype of the main bill-splitting functionality I originally envisioned.
The site is hosted on Firebase here.
If you notice any bugs or would like to suggest improvements, please contact me!
I decided to pursue this project as personal exploration during my last winter break in college. Being someone who only a few months ago decided to pivot to technology UX/Product Design, I wanted to bolster my portfolio with a work of my own from start to finish. I also wanted to choose an app I currently use and explore its users to design a potential addition to not only their service, but also to the expression of their mission and identity.
I had fun with this project in the sense that I appreciated the constraints I set upon myself to create a novel offering on Venmo's platform. Having a color scheme, fonts, and UI components partially provided through Venmo's current products, I wanted to create something new while keeping the overall Venmo experience consistent.
Last, I gained experience as a User Experience Designer by adhering to the Human Centered Design process throughout the project. I spoke with users, identified insights/requirements, designed/prototyped, and evaluated my designs through user engagement. All of these skills were exercised through the completion of this project, and I am happy that I embarked on this journey in the time I had before my last college semester.
While the timeline was short and I felt my process led me to my goal, there is always room for trying (and evaluating) more design possibilities.
Since I last wrote here, I have noticed that Venmo has updated their app, not only aesthetically but also functionally. I am eager to have a moment to update this case study with observations and evaluations from their newest product look-and-feel, and see if my proposal stacks up with what Venmo themselves have developed!
