Case study

Venmo Redesign: A Case Study



PROJECT OVERVIEW

I wanted to identify problems and opportunities with an existing application that has a large user base. I’ve had a growing interest in payment apps and their architecture and the reason I picked Venmo for this project is because it is the first peer-to-peer payment app to succeed in combining social interactions to financial transactions. 

Venmo is a digital wallet platform where people can transfer funds easily.  And as an avid user myself, it pained me to see that my favourite payment app that I used every day had UX problems that when fixed would greatly improve the overall user experience.

According to my user research, Venmo users find a lack in the ability to understand their spending habits and track their past transactions. They also think that the user experience for transferring funds using the mobile app could be improved.

This project explores problems and possibilities for Venmo to succeed in the saturated and highly competitive P2P marketplace.

My goal in this assignment is to improve the user experience of Venmo. I introduced a Statements feature that allows users to look at their past statements easily and to be able to identify major trends within their spending and budgeting, increasing their knowledge of personal finance. I also redesigned the homepage, making it more user-friendly.

Understanding Venmo

Venmo is owned by PayPal and is part of PayPal’s larger family of brands. This mobile payment app allows you to send and receive money quickly and is designed to be a social, consumer-friendly app. The company describes its service as making sending money “safe, simple and social.” You can also use Venmo to make purchases via the mobile app, online or in person. 

 As one of the most popular payment rail apps among the peer-to-peer (P2P) userbase, Venmo makes splitting bills, transferring funds, and connecting with people accessible through the reach of your fingertips.

Venmo’s greatest values are framed around practicality — specifically, how fast and easy it is to transfer and receive payments. 

Today, Venmo has 65 million users.

Competitive Analysis

According to Don Norman, any design process starts with the understanding of the problem and its users. I kicked off my project with understanding the FinTech sector and Venmo’s competitors.

To get a big picture of how Venmo is currently doing in the market, I looked at its major competitors including Venom, Zelle, Square, Cash App. By comparing their attributes and features, I managed to evaluate some strengths and weaknesses Venmo has.

LEMErS Framework

I leveraged the five quality components of usability from the Nielsen Norman Group to help me better assess the usability of this product. The five components are the following:

  1. Learnability

  2. Efficiency

  3. Memorability

  4. Errors

  5. Satisfaction

This is often referred to as the LEMErS Framework.

From the table, it is interesting to note that Venmo performed relatively low in Learnability and Memorability. While there are many variation with Venmo’s payment methods (fees, management of bank accounts, timing), I wanted to focus on user engagement with the transaction feed through contextual inquiry.

User Research & Analysis

User interview focus

I conducted user interviews with 15 Venmo Mobile users. The questions focus on their engagement with Venmo Mobile, their experience using Venmo Mobile and on what they expect out of the payment rail service. 

The questions asked in the user interview were:

  • When and how do they access Venmo

  • What are they trying to accomplish

  • How soon can users accomplish their goals?

  • What are the happy moments and/or pain points of using Venmo?

The assumptions that needed validation through user interviews were:

  • The feature of viewing friends’s public transactions and stories is not widely use.

  • There is a need for a feature that allows users to track and understand their spending habits.

  • The usability of Venmo’s mobile app needs improvement when it comes to making transactions.

Here’s the summary of my finding:

  • While most users are aware of both Venmo Desktop and Venmo Mobile, the majority of them use Venmo Mobile for their transactions.

  • Majority of the users explores the Main Social Feed out of curiosity but finds the home page distracting. The social media aspect of the app is understood and welcomed, but the core features which most user would expect to interact with aren’t visible.

  • Most users utilize just the “Add Recipients” and “Pay or Request” Buttons.

  • Only 3 out of 15 knew that the monthly statement is sent through email.

Helpful Quotes extracted from User Interview:

“I do not wish to know how my friends are spending their money, it is both creepy and annoying that it’s always the first thing I see when I log into the app. I also do not want to apply for a credit card!”

“It is difficult to take note of my spending on Venmo. I have to download an external mobile app and track my completed transactions manually.”

“I want to know how much of my Venmo transactions consist of shopping expenses.”

“I’m an emoji person so I like Venmo because it is not just a traditional banking app. It allows users to make transactions fun through stickers.”

Takeaway from User Interview:

  • Users want overviews of their monthly transactions.

  • Users want to understand their spending activities via categories.

  • Users want to be able to perform funds transfer from the homepage.

  • Users do not find the social feed intriguing. They think it should not be the first thing a user sees upon logging in.

Problem and Opportunity

According to my user research, there is a trend in the pain points users face while using Venmo mobile app.

  • The main issue is the lack of knowledge with monthly statements. Many users pointed out that past transactions are difficult to access and track, as Venmo currently provides statements only through the desktop platform. While Venmo Desktop does allow users to download transaction history as a CSV file, it does not offer transparency on the mobile platform. The insufficient information can affect the retention rate — users can now complete similar money transfer functions through other competing services that offer more clarity. 

  • Users also feel strongly that the homepage shouldn’t contain social features (such as viewing of a friend’s transactional stories) as that is often not their main goal in using the app.

Hypothesis

If Venmo Mobile adds a feature that allows users to gain insights of their personal spending, the app will gain reliability and trustworthiness. If Venmo mobile moves its tab for my friend’s transactional stories on its main screen to another tab, users will be able to accomplish their task of completing transaction with more satisfaction.

With the solutions in mind, I came up with a list of features to improve based on user feedback. To properly scope this project, I used the method of feature prioritization.

The categories are defined as:

  • Must — Critical for delivery on the target date

  • Should — Important features but not crucial to the overall design

  • Could — Desirables that are less important

  • Won’t — Unable to achieve due to time constraint

Prototype

Statements

In the current Venmo app, users have no ability to view and understand their monthly expenditure. Hence to make the app more intuitive and conventional like any other payment rail app, I introduced the Statements category in the user’s account tab.

In the Statements tab, users will be able to have a high level view of their monthly expenditures. They will also be able to filter the year and month.

On the current Venmo app, the homepage features a social feed that is distracting for users and does not help in accomplishing the main task of completing transactions.
Users should be able to perform transactions upon getting into the mobile app instead of checking out social feed.

So I introduced a Discover tab and moved the social feed under it so that users can access that tab if they are keen in exploring what they friends are up to.

Usability Testing

I conducted a brief usability testing with 8 users where I presented my prototype.

Findings & Observations

  • 7 out of 8 users are satisfied with being able to understand a simple overview of their Spending and Budgeting categories.

  • 6 out of 8 users really like that the social tab has been moved from the main screen because their main priority is to complete a transaction.

  • 7 out of 8 users prefer the new UI for selecting an amount when transferring funds as they find that the UI has more clarity.

  • 2 our of 8 users were confused with the new tab “discover” but slowly got used to it after exploring the tab.

Improvement Points

In the future if time allows, I would love to develop a more functional prototype and conduct additional usability tests. It would be great if I can incorporate the user feedback from above to create a smoother experience, finding solutions for the high fidelity prototype.

Lesson

The most important lesson is the valuable feedback from users that offered knowledge of how people interact with a product and my prototype, allowing me to understand how I can improve the product to improve the user experience. Moving forward and if I have more time for this project, I would love to work on the prototype for grouping of contacts. I think this feature would be really enhance usability.