venmo
venmo
Preview
The Context
Venmo has established itself as a leading peer-to-peer payment platform, making it easy for users to send and receive money with friends and family. However, a gap exists in the platform’s functionality when it comes to managing group expenses, which are common among social circles, especially for activities like group trips, dining out, and shared living expenses.
The Problem
Competitors like Splitwise show strong demand for group expense tracking. Integrating this into Venmo could enhance user experience, reduce third-party app reliance, and offer a seamless solution for managing expenses. This feature would attract new users and boost engagement by addressing a key pain point, strengthening Venmo's value proposition.
The Objective
Develop and integrate a group payments feature into Venmo that allows users to easily split bills, expenses, and payments among multiple participants. The feature should provide a seamless experience for users to track, manage, and settle shared costs, similar to the functionality offered by Splitwise.
The Solution
The Process
1. Emphasize
Competitive Analysis
A SWOT analysis of competitors revealed a market gap for a mobile platform for settling group expenses. Although some apps offer comparable features, they frequently lack seamless functionality and struggle to maintain consistent user engagement.
User Interviews
Affinity Mapping
From the interviews, I mapped out common themes together. These ones are the top categories I decided to focus on for this project:
Top 3 Research Findings
2. Define
User Persona
Claire and Jake were created as two different users from different age groups who can potentially utilize Venmo’s group split expense feature. My interview insights and the top categories of my affinity map helped me come to this persona. I kept both of these users as a reference throughout the creation of this new feature to guide me on important design decisions.
3. Ideation
Feature Set
User Flows
From the prioritized features and the user persona, I assembled user flows to demonstrate and test how a user might complete creating a group, entering expenses, and settling debts on Venmo.
4. Prototype
Low-Fidelity Prototyping
The user flows served as a foundation for designing the low-fidelity prototypes. These key screens focus on creating a group and entering a group expense.
Low-Fidelity Testing
After designing the three key user flows for the group expense feature (creating a group, adding and splitting expenses, and settling balances), I conducted usability tests with participants. These 1-on-1 sessions, held over Zoom, allowed me to observe how users interacted with the screens and navigated the workflows. This approach provided valuable insights into the clarity of instructions and highlighted areas of confusion while completing tasks.
Key Findings
High-Fidelity Prototyping
With the branding finalized and insights from the low-fidelity usability tests analyzed, I created the first iteration of high-fidelity wireframes. These wireframes represent key screens from the user flow and were used for further testing with users.
5. Test
Usability Testing
Key Usability Testing Findings
6. Iterate
Prioritizing Revisions
My goal for the next prototype iteration was to make key tasks easier for users to navigate. Guided by feedback and insights from the high-fidelity usability tests, I focused on implementing revisions that would provide the most significant user benefits.
1st Revision - Pay/Request Page
For each version, I explored different ways to showcase where the group feature would be incorporated.
Ultimately, I decided to create two separate pages, allowing users to toggle between the tabs, as shown in version 3.
2nd Revision - Group Main Page
Button bars were updated and wording was revised to improve clarity for the user.
“Add an Expense” button was replaced with a more intuitive and straightforward symbol.
3rd Revision - Onboarding Page
Aligned the onboarding page with Venmo’s branding and adjusted the paragraph spacing for better readability.
4th Revision - Help Page
Redesigned the help page as a tooltip feature, accessible via a button. This approach lets users easily view feature explanations directly within the interface, minimizing confusion compared to instructions on a separate page.
5th Revision - Group Splitting Variations
Added labels to enhance clarity and identify elements more effectively.
Adjusted the price display to a larger format, aligning with Venmo’s current UI design.
