Venmo App Redesign

This case study was a product of a final project for COGS 187A (a web usability and information architecture course). During the course of the 6 weeks spent working on the project my team and I worked together to conduct user research, testing, and ideation.

*Note: Although Venmo has since released a similar payment feature as this redesign, it was unreleased at the time of the project. All redesign ideas are our own and original.

How can we decrease the amount of mistakes users make in transactions?

Storytime:

You and your friends decide to organize a weekend getaway, filled with memorable experiences and shared expenses. As the trip concludes, you take the initiative to settle the collective expenses on Venmo. However, the joy of the adventure turns into a payment puzzle. Everyone contributed differently, covering accommodations, meals, and activities, making it nearly impossible to efficiently request or distribute funds for each expense. The only solution now is to slowly send out separate Venmo requests to each one of your friends. The last thing you need after a long weekend is to engage in tedious calculations.

Despite its popularity as a mobile payment service, my team and I observed a notable inconvenience with Venmo — specifically, the challenge of requesting or paying multiple users different amounts simultaneously. This situation raises questions: What other user issues exist with Venmo, and how can we reimagine the app to address and streamline these challenges?

How can we decrease the amount of mistakes users make in transactions?

Pay multiple recipients at once — Frequent Venmo users need a convenient and discoverable way to pay multiple recipients at once in order to save time and prevent costly payment errors.

Groups and Group Payments — How might we redesign Venmo to make it easier for users to utilize group payment features and decrease the amount of mistakes that users make in transactions?

The message was clear.

I spoke to 8 individuals about the issues that they face using Venmo.

6/8 of the participants did not know how to request money from multiple people at once. Users would spend an excess amount of time creating separate transactions for each individual they wanted to request from.

6/8 of participants mentioned they would accidentally pay someone when they meant to request money and vice versa.

5/8 of participants mentioned they would like to see additional features such as being able to pay/request from multiple people at once while specifying different amounts of money.

Identifying best practices.

We conducted an audit of other payment applications.

Google Pay — Contains a 'Group' feature that lets you create and save a group of people who you want to pay. We want to incorporate this idea into our redesign because it's a convenient way to make recurring payments and it also increases the social aspect of Venmo, since Venmo markets itself as a social payment app. Unlike Google Pay, we plan on making this feature optional when making group payments so that one-time payments can be quicker.

Zelle — Taught us that checkboxes can make selecting users for group payments more intuitive. This inspired us to consider what other signifiers we could use to help users select multiple recipients.

Cash App — Showed us that confirmation pages are helpful in preventing payment errors.

Approaching from different angles.

Based on findings from our user research, we were inspired to sketch out a couple redesign ideas on paper. These ideas evolved into 2 different design approaches that each reflected different user needs that we found. In order to decide which design approach provided the stronger solution, we created 2 different high-fidelity prototypes to compare through usability testing.

Prototype 1

For our first design approach, we wanted to explore the fastest and most convenient way to pay multiple recipients at once (Figure 2.2).

2.2 Prototype 1 — Image

Prototype 2

In our second design approach, we focused on making group transactions more discoverable from individual transactions (Figure 2.3).

2.3 Prototype 2 — Image

The Proposed Solution

Using the findings that my group and I discovered, I was able to complete a final redesign on my own. I added new features and expanded on ones that were already prototyped.

Intuitive Friends List

Checkboxes on the friends list allows users to choose a single recipient or multiple recipients. These visual signifiers make it more intuitive to start group payments. They are also easy to implement from Venmo's current design, leading to a more simplified designer to developer hand-off (Figure 3.0).

3.0 Intuitive Friends List

Autofill Payments

When completing a group transaction, users can first enter the total amount, which is then automatically split evenly. If they'd like to customize the amount to pay or request each recipient, they can edit each number directly. The remaining amount will also be automatically split evenly amongst the other recipients (Figure 3.1).

3.1 Autofill Payments

Confirmation Page

A review screen helps users prevent mistakes before paying or requesting others. After completing the transaction, a confirmation screen summarizes all of the details, providing a visual signifier that the payment went through (Figure 3.2).

3.2 Confirmation Page

Saving Groups

There are two ways groups can be created and saved. Users are able to save a new group from their friends list and also save them from the payment screen. Your saved groups are saved onto your friend's list to make it easier to pay or request within that group again (Figure 3.3).

3.3 Saving Groups

Final Thoughts

This was one of the most enjoyable projects I was able to be a part of. The familiarity that my group and I had with the app, coupled with its issues, made me excited to tackle these issues through design. We conducted an extensive user interview and testing process that had us approaching other students outside, bringing confidence within each one of us.

This project also gave me valuable insights into my working habits and own attention to detail. The time I spent outside of class working on this project were dedicated to refining even the most minute details in each iteration. Although frustrating at times, it taught me a lot about recognizing that design is a highly iterative journey that requires patience. Thank you Professor Kirsh for imparting your expansive knowledge on usability and information architecture!