Venmo

Mobile payment service app

Client- Personal project

Role - UX Designer

Research Tools used- Figma

Venmo is a mobile payment service owned by PayPal that enables users to send and receive money from friends, family, and businesses.

Problem

Venmo is used in almost every household these days as even teachers collect money via Venmo for parties etc at school and even college kids pay their friends via Venmo. The problem that I noticed and have come across is it doesn’t have the ability to split or share a cost like some other apps such as Splitwise. This feature I think would enhance the app even more as it would make it easy to split bills with family, friends and no one would have to wait for their funds.

Goals

Providing a working high profile prototype that enables users to split bills or expenses with friends and family on Venmo.

Constraints

  • Less than 80 hrs to complete the project. 

  • Also working on a design that already exists and incorporating the idea in that design.

Methodology

The methods I used were ➖

Competitive analysis- In this case a competitive analysis for Venmo involved comparing its market position, features, user experience, fees, security, market reach, and innovation against its competitors to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement.

Interviews- Here the interviews for Venmo offered a valuable insight into user needs, preferences, and feedback, helping me to understand what users want and prioritize feature development. Also by asking about specific features or functionalities, interviews can reveal which aspects of the app users value most and which they consider less important.

User Interviews

I was able to interview 4 people for my research and some of the main goals are listed here:

- Determining the technical feasibility of implementing the Split Share feature within the existing Venmo framework.

 -  Identify any challenges in developing and maintaining this feature.

  -  Gathering  feedback through usability testing and interviews to assess the efficiency of the feature.

  -  In between all this I think the security and privacy of the users must be kept in mind as multiple users will be involved here.

Then came the Affinity mapping. This helped me get a better idea of what all the users wanted.

User Flows

User flows for Venmo helped me in identifying pain points, streamline navigation, inform feature prioritization, ultimately enhancing the user experience and driving business growth. I think creating these helped me in making sure user needs and expectations are met.

User flow for making a payment

Low Fidelity Wireframes

Low fidelity wireframes provided me with a visual representation of the split payment feature in Venmo, focusing on the key steps involved in initiating, confirming, and completing a split payment transaction. Also how I would incorporate that in an existing design. After sketching, it became easier to identify where improvements could be made to enhance user usability.

Wireframes

In this scenario, mid-fidelity wireframes were unnecessary as the existing design provided a foundation. The focus was solely on integrating a new feature into the existing framework. In this case, the mood board wasn't required since the design elements like colors, buttons, and fonts already existed within the app. The goal was to integrate the new feature seamlessly with the existing design framework.

Testing

User Testing Results

When conducting user testing for adding a "Splitting Payments" feature to Venmo, it was crucial for me to gather feedback from a diverse group of users to ensure that the feature meets various needs and preferences. Here are some potential user testing results and insights that I discovered :

  • Ease of Use -

Positive Result: Users find the "Splitting Payments" feature intuitive and easy to use. The age group of users here ranges from 18-45 years.

Negative Result: Some users struggle with the navigation or understanding how to initiate and complete a split payment. This is the age group of users over 50.

  • User Interface (UI) Feedback -

Positive Result: Users appreciate a clean and straightforward UI design that is easy to understand with the existing Venmo layout.

Negative Result: Some users may find the UI confusing, suggesting a need for design improvements.They needed a confirmation screen which I have added as per the users.

  • Feature Discoverability -

Positive Result: Users quickly discover the Create a group feature, through the way it was placed. 

Negative Result: Some users may overlook the feature, since they never used such a feature and were used to the old screens they used.

Customization Option -

Positive Result: Users appreciate the ability to customize split amounts, categories, and other details, enhancing the flexibility of the feature.

Negative Result: Some users may find the customization options overwhelming or unnecessary, suggesting a need for clearer guidance.

Overall Satisfaction -

Positive Result: Users express overall satisfaction with the creating a group and splitting payments feature, indicating its value in simplifying expense management.

Negative Result: Some users may express frustration or dissatisfaction due to unresolved issues or difficulties in using the feature, or they may not use the feature often.

Final Designs

After receiving feedback from the users, I made some changes to the design and worked on some modifications as well. The users were happy with the changes and it gave me satisfaction to add a feature to Venmo as that is something I would personally use as well.

Takeaways

After conducting user interviews and research following the prototype stage, certain questions arose that warranted further exploration and consideration. This prompted a deeper dive into how to incorporate these ideas into the app effectively :

  • Can we include users who don't use Venmo in the group to split payments? If so, how would we do this?

  • Can certain group expenses be paid by specific users rather than evenly split among all group members?

  • How will new users, added later, split previous payments already made?