SUMMARY
A design challenge to improve the navigation experience for users in Venmo so that they can find the features most important to them quickly and easily
Role: UX research, UX design
Key skills: UX research
Tools: Google Forms, Miro, Figma
Delivery date: November 4, 2021
Project duration: 4 weeks
BACKGROUND
Venmo is a market leader in the fintech app space, particularly popular for peer-to-peer transactions. In 2020, there were over 50 million people using Venmo in the US (The Street). With a strong, established user base that is continuing to grow, it’s imperative that Venmo carries its current momentum and continues to demonstrate value to its users to stay competitive. How might we better align Venmo’s user experience to address user needs?
THE PROBLEM
Venmo’s UX design doesn’t meet its users’ priorities
Although Venmo’s core service is sending and requesting money, its current UI isn’t designed or structured to optimize payment activities. Instead, the app highlights features that are less important to its users—such as the social networking feed and the Venmo credit card—and doesn’t provide intuitive cues for where users can find key information, such as a user’s transaction history or how to share their payment contact info.
For an app that has a humble mission to support peer-to-peer online transactions, why are users finding it difficult to navigate the app and find what they’re looking for? How might we streamline the navigation experience and reduce frustrating distractions? In my UX research, I plan to explore:
- Who are Venmo users? And what are their needs, hopes, and pain points?
- How are users using Venmo?
- Is the app designed to align to user priorities?
01 Research
The purpose of research phase is to better understand how users use Venmo and what features are most important to them in the app.
1.1 Process overview
I started with discovery research to better understand Venmo and its perception on the market.
I conducted a survey of 50 Venmo users to observe broader trends and identify common usage habits.
I conducted 5 user interviews to dive deeper into user engagement for specific Venmo features.
I created a persona based on the research findings, focusing on highlighting some of the qualitative feedback from my user interviews.
1.2 Discovery research
I kicked off this project with discovery research, exploring the app on my own and noting some of Venmo’s more interesting design choices. Here are the key findings:
1.3 Survey
I conducted a survey to understand how a wide range of users engage with Venmo. I was interested in learning the typical situations Venmo was used in as well as the most common actions completed in the app. Click to view full summary of survey responses.
Demographics
The vast majority of Venmo users surveyed were millennials and use the mobile app exclusively to access Venmo
Usage
The top three transactions performed on Venmo are:
Venmo is most frequently used in the following situations:
Many users scroll through the social feed on Venmo (72%), but only a quarter of users have ever engaged with or reacted to a post.
More than half of users express ambivalence toward the social feed (54%), while the remaining half of users expressed dislike for the social feed.
1.4 User interviews
The user interviews supplemented the survey data and users provided some deeper insight into some of their pain points with the app.
“I think it’s a really useful tool but it is a little bit annoying to use”
1.5 Persona
My research uncovered that an overwhelming majority of Venmo users are millennials and most report using Venmo for specific transactions, and nothing else. I wanted the persona to capture and emulate the same feelings and thoughts that came up in user interviews.
As a typical user, Mari became my North Star for design decisions: How is this addressing Mari’s frustrations with the landing screen? Is this design decision aligned to Mari’s priority to “get and out of the app quickly”?
1.6 Research summary
Emphasize user priorities on landing screen
Make the top transactions easy to complete for users, ideally in one click, and reduce distracting elements
Optimize app architecture to reflect user priorities
Make the most used features easily discoverable in app and reduce unnecessary menu items and screens
Minimize presence of social feed
Users consider the social feed as a fun addition, but not a must-have feature. Moving the feed from its current position will free up real estate for higher priority features for users
02 Information Architecture
2.1 Task and user flows
I discovered the most common actions completed in Venmo based on the survey results and wanted a way to visualize the steps involved. I created 2 simple task flows for paying someone and completing a payment request. Then, I created a user flow to fully explore the steps that could be engaged during one of the most common Venmo use cases: splitting a bill.
2.2 Information architecture
With an emphasis on the key design takeaways from the research phase, I reconstructed Venmo’s architecture.
In particular, the architecture needed to…
Drive the action early in the flow
It doesn’t make sense to send a user through several clicks in the app before even opening up the beginning of his or her desired task flow. Top actions should appear earlier, if not the first screen.
Aim for fewer steps and branches
Additional information or chances to branch off into another task in the middle of a transaction only adds confusion to the overall flow. Action flows should be streamlined with the goal of driving the user to reaching completion with minimal distractions.
03 Ideate + Prototype
I started with an ideation phase, making several quick sketches of ideas for potential screens. With many different design ideas, I was able to compare and identify elements that I liked and ultimately ended up including in the final designs. From the wireframes, I created a prototype that supports the task flows, defined in the stage before.
3.1 Wireframes
It was clear I was looking for an interface design that emphasized key actions, like paying/requesting money, and minimized the emphasis on other information that is less important to a user, like the social media feed. I started with a few quick pen-to-paper sketches to explore different designs.
3.2 Prototype
I worked within Venmo’s UI parameters as much as possible to maintain a consistent experience for a user. The driving mantra behind the prototype design is to keep the interface and interactions as simple as possible. Scroll down to check out some notable changes from the original app.
Pulling top actions to opening screen
The top actions in the app are paying and requesting money (98% and 56% of surveyed users, respectively). To improve the usability and ease of navigation, I made the top actions the first thing a user sees when opening the app.
Removing mysterious menu bar that served little navigational purpose
Only 2 of 4 the menu bar items in the current app lead to actions that users care about. In addition, the menu items aren’t labeled, lending to further confusion of their purpose. To simplify the UI, I replaced the menu bar with the pay and request buttons that appear in the opening screen and directed all activity to a single landing page.
Adding the ability to add multiple recipients to a payment or request
Since the most common use case for Venmo is splitting bills, often users need to send or request money from multiple people. The ability to combine several separate transactions into one transaction would help users streamline the payment/requesting process.
04 Test
I conducted usability testing with four users, asking them to complete two tasks in the prototype and provide feedback. I identified common themes and reactions from the usability test feedback and my observations and prioritized revisions for the prototype.
4.1 Usability testing
I tested the first version of the prototype with four users by walking through 2 different scenarios:
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- A friend, Tina Guerrez, bought your group of friends concert tickets. Pay her back $70 for your share.
- Your housemate, Calvin Nguyen, just sent you a payment request for your shared apartment’s October utilities ($45). Complete his payment request.
In addition to observing users walk through the above scenarios, I asked some follow-up questions about the interface, such as:
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- Where might you find that completed transaction from Calvin?
- What do you expect the “Feed” tab include?
- Where would you look to find your bank information?
- Where would you look to find your profile information?
The feedback was useful for understanding how users with different experience levels (from no experience to very experienced) engaged with the app and their expectations for usability and navigation.
4.2 Priority revisions
I reviewed all the feedback from the usability tests and clustered similar themes on a Mural board. I prioritized the revisions that immediately addressed the user confusion.
Adding a payment request notification to the opening screen
Users struggled to find incomplete payment requests, even when they knew that a request was coming and the sender. Many users cited the current locations, even when highlighted in red on the home screen, don’t stand out to them. Therefore, I added a payment requests notification to the opening screen to make it more difficult to miss.
Add a micro-interaction after complete an action to indicate completeness
Sometimes users weren’t sure if a transaction was completed since the payment/request screen disappeared immediately after clicking the pay/request button. I added a micro-interaction to confirm to users that an action was completed. I also added a short message on some of the confirmation screens to inform users where to look to relocate a request or transaction with the hope of educating the user on some of the new Venmo patterns.
4.3 Results
The objective of this Venmo redesign challenge was to see if I could improve the navigation experience for users so that they could find the features most important to them quickly and easily. After completing the priority revisions, I conducted a short test comparing the current Venmo app with my prototype. The three users have a range of experience with using Venmo (1 = no experience, 4 = very experienced).
Comparison test
REFLECTIONS
This design challenge was a great educational journey. I learned a lot during the research phase, and found it challenging to stay focused on the problem I was attempting to solve when so many different types of problems arose with the app during my user research. I had to continually remind myself that I was only focusing on one problem and invest my energy into exploring and unpacking user pain points associated with that problem.
One thing this redesign does not focus on is aligning to Venmo’s business strategy. Based on many of the screens and built-in features in the current app, Venmo is taking a clear stance in its intent to become more than its current status as a peer-to-peer money app. For example, the emphasis on the social media feed, despite a consistent lukewarm response from its users, as well as robust app support for less popular features like a Venmo card, crypto wallets, and Venmo for businesses.
If this were a real project, it would be important to ensure that a redesign continued to serve Venmo’s current audience—those who rely on the app for its tried and true key use cases—as well as take into consideration the direction of Venmo’s future business strategy.