Venmo Feature Integration

I worked on this project with my team partner Antoinette Chow in my Major Studio 1 course in the Parsons MPS Communication Design program. In this project, our challenge was to integrate a new feature into a current existing app.

Build a Tab

Girls night out? An upcoming spring break trip with your friends? Start a tab, compile all your expenses together, and settle up whenever!

Problem statement

Keeping track of long term shared expenses can get messy and a hassle, especially with added microtransactions that occur between users.

Industry Audit

We researched the most popular exisiting financial apps to gain insight in what makes each app unique. We decided to audit two other personal finance apps in more detail: Paypal and Cash App, the two apps that are performing better than Venmo on the Apple App Store (as of Nov 2021).

Discovery

Main Emotional JTBD

Conveniently transact money between friends without the embarrassment; Small rewarding sense of accomplishment

Related Functional JTBD

Review P2P transactions; Spending petty cash

Stress Equation

We devised this stress equation to help us better understand user behaviour, and to figure if our proposed solution helps with balancing out the user’s amount of stress in the problem that we have discovered.

Interview Background

We interviewed a total of 5 people, ranging from the age group of 20 to 30 year old/ Our goal was to understand users perception of the app, how they utilise the app, and any possible pain points.

Takeaways

When looking further into the area for opportunity, we decided to explore deeper into the users’ pain points in the app, which fell into one of three catogories: frustration with people, frustration with the system, and confusion.

Archetype

How might we…

Simplify multiple transactions?

Drag and drop transactions
Running tab between friends
Save for later (save activity / transaction, but request/pay at a later time)
Settings with friend: transactions would be consolidated and only proceed at agreed frequency (weekly/monthly)

Ease the stress of splitting expenses?

Group participants in transactions
Transcribe photo of receipt to words
“Splitting” templates / options
Link to credit card transactions (so you won’t forget / have to check on each bank app)
Timed notifications (reminders for both payer and payee)