— Project Summary
Venmo is a popular digital wallet app that has a user base of 50 million active users. It is targeted towards Millennials for sending and receiving payments directly.
Although having a large user base and doing the job of splitting bills and transferring funds successfully, it has some pretty significant UX problems and usability issues. In this project, I am focusing on the overall product and not just the aesthetics of Venmo.
However, Venmo is ahead of its market competition in terms of popularity and user acquisition. But I believe, no matter how big and famous the product gets, its core value should always remain focused on its target audience.
I also wanted this to be an experience where I would solve problems for an application with a large user base.
— Role
Product Design Information Architect
— Tools
Figma , Illustrator , Origami Studio
— Timeline
10 Weeks
— Team
Personal Project
— Problem Statement
What is the problem that I’m solving?
Venmo solves the pain point of the user, related to sending and receiving payments. There is no traditional traction involved, and everything is on your mobile phone.
However, I was surprised to see that the app lack some basic UX principles. Right from the start, you won’t notice any onboarding experience.
I did know how to add my bank account and no idea what my Venmo id is? And also how to add my friends.
Upon opening the app, It greats you with unknown people sending payments to each other, which led me to believe I have the wrong app because it looked and still looks like a social media platform. Overall the UI is intrusive and hides essential features inside the menu bar.
— Deliverables
What is my end goal?
- A redesigned visual interface that adheres to modern UI design principles.
- Improve basic functionality and overall user experience of the app.
- Adding a non-existent feature called “Spending Tracker,” which will allow users to track and download their monthly, biweekly, or yearly expenses
— Process
What design process I followed?
Understanding the Problem
Interviewing to understand pain point
As a regular user of the app, I already had a list of frustrations of the app, but I want to make sure that others are also making this type of issue or I am the only one. Therefore I interviewed the users who were currently using the Venmo application. My goal was to learn about the context of use, what they like, what they hate, and any feature they want in the app.
— Key Findings
Market Analysis
Persona
After doing some interviews and competitor analysis, I look back at my finding to synthesized my user persona. I identified major pain-points and behavioral patterns while doing the talks, which I wanted to distill into my personas. I create my persona keeping the target audience that accounts for 90% of the user base of Venmo, i.e., young millennials. I also created user stories and user journey maps to bridge the gap between my personas and design concepts. I always got back to my persona to help guide my design decisions throughout the project.
User Story
I wanted to focus on the critical parts of the product; therefore, I created user stories. I knew that Venmo can do research, understand users and gain more insights than I could ever have. These user stories will help me a question and validate my designs later and keep my decisions on the right track.
Scenario 1
In this scenario, the user will interact with multiple screens of adding the sender or requester name and amount, select the bank account, and then interact with the confirmation screen. This will include redesigning the transaction flow. I think it can improve the app’s experience, and as per my persona, it is an essential action user performs.
Scenario 2
The app does not provides any option to view or track user’s spending. As of now, users need to scroll on their feeds to see all their transactions. Addressing this scenario, I want to solve this issue and enable users to visualize all their the transaction, add filters such as Months, amount, account type, etc. This can improve the app’s reliability and trustworthiness, making the users have insights into their financial expenses all in one place.
Scenario 3
For any new users, the app does not have any onboarding experience as such as of now. I want to simplify the signup process and have a better product onboarding experience for the user. Onboarding can make users know the app better and know what features the app offers. I think this can make a huge difference in expanding the application’s user base.
Journey Mapping
Wireframes
Mockup Screen
My goal of the UI was to provide a visual experience that feels minimalistic and modern. I did not want to go off-brand, thus keeping the Venmo color palette to retain the same app’s holistic feel. However, I played with some illustrations and colors to grab attention and give contrast. I aimed to fit the app interface into user’s lifestyles by instantly and conveniently allowing users to complete a transaction. Below you can see newly added onboarding screens and user flows, and I will also explain why I redesigned it.
— Current Flow
On opening the app, you can see a button to sign up with random transaction feeds.
— Proposed Onboarding Flow
I have designed a splash screen and listed some main features that Venmo has to offer.
On Boarding Screens
Usability Testing
My usability testing approach was to take my screens with a working prototype and let users enact some scenarios-based scripts. This will let me know what they feel about the design and get crucial feedback and suggestions. I conducted my usability test with two users on zoom, where I read them a task they needed to perform. Then I prepared a set of exit questionaries, which I ask the user at the end. This was a 15-20 min exercise overall.
Some behind the screens – Usability testing notes
Evaluating Testing Results
I used the KJ method for evaluating my usability testing results on mural. I laid out all the information and suggestions from testing on the sticky notes. Here you can see how I performed the KJ methods and know what my findings were.
— Takeaway
What did I learn from this project?
Pursuing this design challenge was an excellent test of my product design skills. I was challenged to bring my visual design experience to improve the user experience on a product that is being used by millions of users daily. Paying attention to user interactions, learning, and incorporating modern mobile design standards were essential additions to my design arsenal.
If I had time, I would have done the same usability testing on the current app for the same user flows to understand more improvement areas. I would also increase my testing user base from 5 to at least ten since I think that would allow me to notice more users with different demographics and contexts that they use Venmo.