My friend and I are in the same ATT family plan. I always send my split of the bill every month via Venmo. I have a reminder set up on my phone to remind me to venmo her the phone bill. I thought to myself: “What if I can do this all in one app which is Venmo and it can all be automatic?
Problem
Users have to send manually each time for repeat transfers
Solution
Add an option to set up automatic recurring payments or charge requests.
Role
UX Researcher & Designer
Timeline
2 Weeks
Understanding
Venmo
Key Benefits
Key Venmo benefits for users are: cash replacement, convenience, free and social networking.
Target Users
Most Venmo users belong in the 18-34 age group.
Competitive
Analysis
Two leaders in the mobile P2P payment market by the number of users
Zelle has a much higher average transaction size at $300, whereas Venmo’s average is about $60. Zelle has recurring services that users can schedule repeat payments like rent which tend to have a larger transaction size.
Zelle average
transaction size
Venmo average
transaction size
To
Conclude
Understanding
the users
My goals are to find out
The participants
I interviewed 5 Venmo users aged 20-39 to cover both Millennials and Gen Z.
I split a monthly service with 3 friends so every month I have to send the same request.
- Interview Participant
I like to browse the feeds even when I’m not paying someone, just like on instagram.
- Interview Participant
Key Insights
Persona
Task Flow
Initial Sketches
Lofi Wireframes
Complexity
Users set up recurring payments for various types of transactions including rent, phone bill split, personal debt, and etc. Monthly is the most common frequency for recurring transactions. However, I needed to cover most use cases in terms of payment frequencies. I came up with 9 variations of payment frequency and pay date option for each variation.
Lofi Iteration
Hifi Interfaces
Mockups
Testing
I conducted a round of testing with 6 participants. All expressed that the design was very intuitive and easy to use.
All testings were conducted remotely via Zoom. Participants were asked to hug their laptops and hold their mobile devices in front of their webcam during the testing sessions.
I would totally use this feature if it officially comes out.
- Testing Participant
It’s very straightforward. It feels like I’ve been using it for a while and already know where everything is.
- Testing Participant
Iterations
Although the testing result was overall positive, I was able to identify some issues that needs to be fixed.
The Recurring icon
“Hmm..I see a refresh icon here, not sure what it does..”
From the testing, I realized that the recurring icon is confusing and can be mistaken as a refresh icon. I redesigned the icon by adding a canlendar and a dollar sign to make it more obvious that it’s a time relavant event.
to end recurring
From the testing, I noticed that the design for setting the last pay date is too much labor for users and lacks flexibility. I went back to do some more research on Google Calendar and Apple Calendar to study how they tackle the design of ending a repeat event.
For this iteration, I added a no end date option for situations where users don’t want to set an end date for now. To cover use cases like pay in installments, I added an option to end recurring after a number of occurrences.
Understanding how users use the product in various use cases helped me focus on users and their goals.
Breaking down the problem into small pieces helped me focus on one problem area at a time. Design is a never ending process of testing, iterate, and repeat.