Way too many payment apps — a UX Case Study
In the Summer of 2021, I started my UX Course at CareerFoundry where I was assigned to design and research a mobile payment app, similar to Paypal and Venmo.
- Problem: The original “Problem” from the course was simply to provide a way to use your money with your phone, but after my research, I encounter that doing this will only add to the sea of forgettable payment apps.
- Goal: To eliminate the need for several payment apps on your phone to use or keep track of your money.
My Solution
I designed a combination of payment, budget, investment, and coupon apps. Where you not only pay, but also automatically use coupons when using the app, and simultaneously tracks your budget and investment portfolio.
I started with some research
I prepared a set of questions for my user research and interviewed 4 participants to figure out:
- Their money transaction needs.
- How they feel about using payment apps.
- Points of friction with their existing payment methods.
and here’s what I found:
- Rewards and savings are big purchase motivators.
- People who don’t actively keep track of their money simply guess their budget.
- Most people only use 2 debit/credit cards even when they have several more.
- People who don't constantly track their finances feel anxious when receiving budget notifications.
Quotes from my participants
- “I’m scared to look at what I owe” — Andrea
- “When I want to buy something I like to wait to get the best deal.” — Andrea
- “Crypto is not widely accepted, so it’s hard to use it sometimes” — Alex
- “I have 7 credit cards. I only use 2 of them, the others just help my credit score” — James
- “I opened credit accounts just because it has 20% off on something I wanted” — Rose
Control vs Freedom
By now I found a very clear difference in how the participants handle their money which basically boils down to 2 types of users:
The Control Users
- Those who will periodically keep track of their expenses, budget goals, and investments.
- Prefers to create their own budget alone or with their partner.
They feel more in control when they are more informed.
The Freedom Users
- Those who will rarely track their finances because the process is very stressful.
- Prefers to do budgeting with someone else or simply ask someone else to do it for them.
They feel freer when they do the least amount of finance tracking.
Build and test, build and test…
I drew on paper a prototype of how my payment app was gonna work, then use Balsamiq and Figma to start building an interactive prototype to show my 7 test subjects (aka “friends”) to do simple tasks like Send money to a friend, Search for your car expenses, Link your debit card, etc.
After every test I updated the prototype to fix problems with my design, I did this about 3 times, until I was comfortable with the final design, and moved to make the UI not look like it was from 2005.
Design Decisions
- To avoid Freedom Users from getting stressed I put away all the graphs and budget information, and only show their most recent activity and transactions. Their primary function using this app is going to be requesting and paying as soon as possible, and reminding them about how they are not on track with their budget goals when covering the bill of a friend can be a real bummer.
- You can see the profile picture of the person you are sending or requesting money from beginning to end. Several people noted that some of their friends have the same name and last name leading to selecting the wrong person.
Activity Screen
- Now that the Freedom User is taken care of, it’s time to give the Control Users some love. In my early prototypes, I wanted to find a way to display Spending and Budgeting information all in one screen, but in all my tests the feedback I got was “This is too confusing”, so after talking to other designers, and honestly a little bit of headache, I simply divided them into 2 different Screens resolving all previous confusion.
Investments Screen
- In my research, I found that when it comes to users with stocks and/or cryptocurrency portfolios they need a separate app platform to track and manage it, so a way to link their portfolios to the app will allow them to visualize all their assets in a simpler way.
E-wallet
- I let people nickname their debit/credit cards, and accounts linked to the app. This way they don’t have to rely on the last 4 digits when selecting which card or account to use to pay.
Moving Forward
If I were to move forward with this project I would like to:
- Perform a usability test focusing on the Rewards and Investment screens.
- Expand the graphs options the user can use to track their expenses.
- Add the option to change the color theme for color-blind people on the Profile page.
- Polish the UI to have a more consistent design language.
