IntroDPD Exercise: Evangeline Ng
This is a pre-design exercise done for Introduction to Digital Product Design led by Sahil Khoja and team from Students Who Design. Thank you for the initiative and effort!
Part 1 — Interview users on their experiences with Venmo:
A. New users do not know that you need an extra step to transfer money in their Venmo app to their bank account.
It is confusing for new users (one of them have used it up to 9 months), and did not have any idea that when a friend transfers them money through Venmo, it does not automatically go into their bank account.
B. Social Problem: When they are paying a non-friend, it is hard to find them on Venmo.
Searching by First and Last name is not the easiest way to find a friend, because there could be duplicates, especially if it is a common name.
Being friends on facebook and ensuring the user connects Venmo to Facebook makes it easier.
If both users are not next to each other physically, they cannot use the QR code. This results in some resistance.
However, searching for the username, allows the users to find each other easily. This has been a “useful hack” that has been shared to me by 2 users i’ve interview so far.
Part 2 — Deciding on one pain point to solve
In order to decide which pain point to solve, i need to define what Impactful means
“ Figure out what problem / pain point will be most impactful to solve.”
Impactful means: How a change can increase social interaction / solve user’s issue
a. Business goal (Increase social interaction)
b. User goal (Solve user’s issue)
A. Venmo’s business ties in the social aspect very closely with the transaction of money. I delved into reading why the entire organization has decided on going hard on the social aspect, even though it is a money transaction app.
I also asked a few users how they felt about Venmo as a social app:
User response: “Didn’t want to meddle into affairs of people’s money.
Usually money is not really a good topic to talk about. Sees it as a payment app, not a social network. However this made money transferring more casual, compared to handing cash and doing online payment transfer with high levels of online security.”
I decided to solve Pain point 2 — Searching for a friend to pay/request money,
because finding and adding a friend is crucial in order to achieve Venmo’s company goals for it to be a social app in the long term.
Problem chosen:
Pain point 2 — Searching for a friend to pay/request money
Accuracy of sending money was brought up as a pain point for users who were unsure if they have gotten the right account to pay to. They wanted to be assured if they have paid the right friend.
Part 3 — Solutions:
Primary Solution:
Finding friends/users nearby with location services technology
Secondary Solution:
Friend is able to tap an emoji to show the sender that the money is received. (This secondary solution is to solve the accuracy part where a friend can be sure that they paid the right person.)
A.Finding friends/users nearby with location services technology
I looked at WeChat’s App and they had a fun “Shake” and an easy “People Nearby” Feature. Below are the examples and screenshots.
I interviewed a few friends who are venmo users and asked where would they expect the “Find People Nearby” feature to be. They said it would tap the menu button > Search people > Tap around the top half of the screen.
(Sorry! i would make this screen on the left smaller if i could but I have no idea how to do so on Medium.)
Part 4 — Design Solution
Primary Solution: Finding friends/users nearby with location services technology
Instead of the shaking feature, which would definitely be a fun add-on, a “Find People Nearby” seems like an easier to implement / basic solution to solve the pain point where it is hard to find friends.
Secondary Solution: Acknowledging Payment from Friends
Using two simple mock-ups and asking users which one effectively conveys to users that the payment has been acknowledged. The one on the left was preferred by users. It is also more consistent with the notifications and stayed true to Venmo’s design branding and style. The one on the right may seem more social but out of place for Venmo.
Long Term Suggested Features — Venmo as a social app in the long term
A possible reason why Venmo had high adoption rates with millennials in 2017 was because it was a social and casual payment app. Below are a few solutions to drive Venmo in the direction of a social app in the future.
A. Social Events
(For example: Friends can send each other Birthdays, Gift vouchers, Starbucks credits, Cheesecake Factory Gift Card)
B. Charity
(For example, for my birthday i’ll be donating to animal shelter a dollar every $2 my friend donates.)
Reflections
The People Problem Format was super useful in anchoring what exactly am i solving. As i was thinking of solutions i got excited very quickly about fun solutions that might be worth exploring, but reading the PPF grounded me in solving the problems at hand first, and shelving the other solutions as long term solutions.
Something I’d love to understand is how a company decides if this feature is worth shipping. Is there a cost-benefit analysis going on, if so how is it done and who is it decided by? For example, the “Find people nearby” feature sounds easy to implement and seems like a crucial feature to have for a social payment app like Venmo, and someone in the company must have brought it up, yet the decision is to not implement. I wonder why.
