Venmo
My Role
UX/UI Designer
Team
Individual Project
Tools
Figma, Figjam, Whimsical
Venmo Bill Split Feature
Project Duration: January - March 2022
User Research · Persona · A/B Testing · User Flows · Wireframing · Prototyping · Usability Testing · UI Design
Creating a more convenient experience for Venmo users that need to share a bill by adding an itemize and split feature to the Venmo app.
Overview
Venmo is a mobile platform and digital wallet that allows users to seamlessly send and receive money to each other by directly linking their bank accounts. Its users are friends and family who wish to split bills and necessities in a fast and convenient matter, by bypassing the inconvenience of physically exchanging bills.
I look to understand problems that users may encounter on the platform and ultimately add to Venmo’s preexisting design to meet and alleviate users' needs.
The Problem
Although users used Venmo to enact the final step of sending or requesting money, many users supplement Venmo with other applications to itemize and calculate splitting bills.
Simple Interface
While Venmo’s simplicity of sending and requesting bills is what draws users to it through ease of use, it leaves users to rely on other tools to break down and calculate payments.
Through ethnographic research, I hypothesized that this is the main drawback of Venmo and where it lacks in terms of aiding its users in splitting bills.
Speculative Needs
Although crypto may become even more integrated with our daily transactions as of right now, buying and investing in crypto within the Venmo app strays away from Venmo’s main use of peer-to-peer transactions.
Venmo seems to be speculating what Venmo users may need in the future instead of focusing on improving upon what they need now.
Unwanted Features
Through the years Venmo has added features that users feel are a waste of space on the app and strays away from the main use of Venmo
Venmo debit/credit cards: although beneficial to the company to sell their products to the users, users end up ignoring this addition to the app.
Venmo can build upon its original focus of helping friends and family split expenses as a way of separating the service from its competitors, increasing its overall users. Currently, platforms such as Cash App do not have a feature to address this problem.
I conducted interviews to find out how I can help users get the most out of Venmo by making splitting bills even more convenient and a one-stop destination that fulfills users’ needs.
User Interviews
To learn about potential areas that Venmo could improve on, interviews were conducted with users that use payment transfer apps.
The goal of my research was first to understand the context of where and how people use these apps. I first wanted to see if there were features that other competing apps have that Venmo is lacking and if the user used Venmo, what were their pain points and needs while using it.
Research Objectives
Understand user pain points while using Venmo
Understand the context of when/where these issues arise
Demographics
5 Interviewees
Age 20-35
Frequent user of payment transfer apps
Smartphone User
Main Takeaways
1. Venmo is used mostly for bills and personal expenses
All 5 participants used Venmo to pay and request personal expenses such as restaurant bills, and home-related expenses such as rent/utilities. Users found that Venmo is the most common in their circles but also mentioned using Cash App for similar reasons.
2. Difficulty with footing the bill and splitting accordingly
Four out of five participants mentioned the inconvenience of having to foot the bill and keep track of everyone's spending in the restaurant setting. The process of calculating who owes what, and having to send separate requests for everyone causes inconvenience.
3. Other apps used to aid the process of calculating and requesting different amounts
Users reported using several apps to aid in itemizing, recording, and calculating bills when receiving a shared bill. Apps include Facebook messenger, calculator, Splitwise, and Excel.
4. Most desired feature is something that could aid in splitting the bill
Three out of five participants wanted a way to itemize a bill and request accordingly.
The Solution
Automating the itemization process and allowing users to request different amounts based on their specified items to alleviate the pain points that users brought up in the interview.
A preview of my final solution
The solution is to look at the functions the program's users are using outside of Venmo and figure out how to create a feature within Venmo’s current design that would allow users to accomplish splitting the bill just within Venmo. The addition of this feature will strengthen Venmo’s main purpose of creating a painless and convenient way for the peer to peer payment transfers.
The following sections consist of the steps I took to get to my final solution.
Persona
After conducting interviews, I synthesized my research to create a persona, allowing me to pinpoint exactly who this feature would be for and what their particular needs are.
This gave me perspective on how to create the user flow. I realized there are two sides to the solution — how the flow works for the users in charge of requesting everyone, and how the Venmo request looks on the receiving end. For this project, I focused on the requester and tackled the user flow next.
User Flow
I replicated Venmo’s current user flow to understand where this feature could fit.
Venmo’s current user flow without the added feature
At this point, I saw a number of ways this feature could fit within Venmo’s flow and wasn’t sure which path would make the most sense. I decided I needed more information and conducted a low-fidelity usability test with other designers who were familiar with Venmo. With some thoughts on how I can create a feature to solve the need to split the bill, I decided to ask these two questions and how they would influence where the user would expect the new feature to be.
The first question doesn’t specify how the new feature would work or that there is any scanning involved, therefore most participants clicked on the new icon created in place of the old credit card icon. However, when specifying that you could scan a receipt it makes sense that it draws people's attention to the already existing scan feature. Because of this, I built in the feature to stem from the scan button since I wanted this feature to heavily rely upon that technology and aspect of Venmo.
Venmo’s user flow with the Bill Split feature.
Confident in the new user flow, I was able to start wireframing and creating solutions for what the feature looks like.
Wireframing & Prototyping
Preserving Venmo’s Interface and adding the new feature
I created wireframes that would fit within Venmo’s UI kit. While creating this feature, I learned the limitations of working within a preexisting product. I noticed Venmo does not use certain touch gestures such as swipe to delete, so I made sure that this Bill Split feature would fit within these constraints. The challenge was to take this complex idea and boil it down to as few steps as possible, creating a seamless and intuitive experience for the user.
Usability Testing
Understanding the User Experience and Iterating based on Feedback
After a few rounds of iterations and adjustments, I was able to round five individuals to test the prototype and make further adjustments based on feedback. I synthesized research and focused on any issues users ran into during the usability test. Success for this prototype would be if a majority of users said they would use this feature if Venmo added it to their current app. Overall, four out of five users said they would use this feature since it provides a fast and efficient way of itemizing and splitting a bill.
Final Product
Introducing Venmo’s new Split the Bill feature: itemize your receipt in seconds by scanning with your camera. You can assign your friends to their respective items, calculate the breakdown, and request everyone without creating multiple charges.
Scan Receipt & Edit
Scan any receipt by pointing the camera at the items. If something is off or you want to add/remove items, you can edit the itemized receipt after scanning.
Add Recipients and Assign Items
Add multiple people to split the bill with by searching or scanning their QR code. You can assign these people to any item on the receipt including if items were shared. Venmo will automatically calculate the breakdowns for everything.
Review and Request Multiple Friends
After finalizing all the items, review everyone's owed amounts and simply request everyone with the click of a button.
Prototype
The usability prototype is meant to test for the following user tasks:
Test how easy it is to add, remove, or change items once the receipt has been scanned.
Add people that were at the dinner table to split with and assign people to their respective items.
Review items and send a mass request to your dinner party.
Reflection
Understanding how to add this feature to Venmo came with its challenges but I learned a lot about how to potentially add a feature to an already robust and existing system. A feature this complex and no onboarding would benefit from phone-specific actions such as swiping to delete or potentially drag and drop.
Challenges
Venmo functions at its best with its simple task of sending and receiving money.
I found that users find Venmo convenient to use because it's a quick and simple way of sending and receiving money. A feature like this can easily become too complicated for Venmo users and I had to consider interesting ways to follow the same feel that Venmo has in terms of its ease of use. A feature with too many steps could have turned users off to the idea of having this as a built-in feature.
Key Takeaway
Ambitious features need to be carefully crafted with thorough user research
With Venmo’s recent changes to its UI and other added features, users have expressed how it hasn’t aided them at all in terms of sending and requesting money. Keeping this in mind, features can always be added to make an overall better experience for the user.
Next Steps
Create a more in-depth prototype that can test more tasks for users such as backtracking and editing prior pages, changing item prices, and adding even more recipients to test larger parties.
Create the other side of the feature for the people attending but not footing the bill. What would it look like if you received a request from someone that paid the bill? Would you receive an itemized bill as proof or would it look like any other request you receive on Venmo?
Potentially design onboarding so first-time users have some guidance on how to best use the feature.