Venmo Added Feature
The Venmo Auto Payment feature gives users the ability to set up a recurring payment to another user so they never have to worry about forgetting to send money again!
Problem Statement
People want to have a way to send a certain amount of money to friends or family regularly without having to manually do it every time. For example, a roommate may want to schedule sending money every month to another roommate for expected expenses like utilities. Another example is that parents may want to give their children monthly allowances. Currently, the is no way to automatically schedule payments to other users in Venmo. This can cause issues when people forget to pay money on time.
Process
Interviews
A series of 5 interviews were conducted to discover the target audience's current pain points. The users chosen to participate have monthly bills that they split with another person. Interviews were used as the method of research because they allowed me to gain greater qualitative data than other methods would. This type of information gathered was especially useful in the early stages of the design process.
Do users have expected monthly bills?
Do they often split expenses with someone else?
Do users have a way to remind themselves to pay money to someone else for expenses?
Questions Summary
Findings
Goals
The goals of users were obtained during the interviews and the goals of the business were based on goals of similar platforms found during the discovery phase of research.
Task Flows
This task flow represents the expected path users would take when utilizing the product and navigating through the added feature.
Features
Easy navigation to reduce confusion and time consumption for users
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Simple layout to assist with ease of navigation
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Clean layout to help users focus on necessary content
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Utilizes Venmo’s existing layout and design system.
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Sketches and Wireframes
To begin the sketching process, I first considered how I wanted the task flow to work. I took inspiration from Venmo's existing flow and aimed to incorporate the new feature seamlessly into the process. Initially, I sketched the overall flow of the new feature, followed by the details page design. I created several iterations of this design before selecting the one that I believed would be the most effective. Lastly, I sketched the drop-down menu and date picker overlays.
Overall Flow
Details
Overlays
Style Guide
Venmo’s existing design system was used for this project.
Prototype
A prototype was created on Figma and UsabilityHub was used to conduct remote user testing.
User Testing Results
100% task completion rate
Testing time < 3 minutes
All successfully navigated to appropriate pages
No users had difficulty navigating through the task flow
Final Thoughts
Results Summary: My findings from the interviews showed the pain points experienced by users who had monthly expenses they split with another person. Additionally, I was able to discover what users were looking for when utilizing a mobile payment app and what features may be beneficial to them when trying to set up auto payments.
Challenges and Assumptions: Because only 5 people were interviewed, there were some limitations on the results of the research since those interviewed may not be completely representative of the entire target audience. Another consideration was ensuring the company’s existing brand style was still utilized throughout the additional feature pages.
Final Thoughts: For future iterations, I would like to explore how this additional feature could be expanded upon. I would be interested in investigating if this new feature could be used to integrate Venmo with billing software for services, such as splitting payments for utilities, rent, and other shared expenses.