Split/Pay

Mobile App for sharing bills and payments

Mission: Create a simple, user-centric mobile app that allows users to split bills or payments without the usual stress of financial coordination

Impact: 92% positive feedback on initial testing round of prototype

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Introduction

The stakeholders presented me with a PRD for this project that outlined what seemed like a straightforward task; make a payment sharing app that eases the stress of shared financial responsibilities.

The market has no shortage of mobile pay sharing apps, but each comes with its own quirks. Some integrated systems, like Zelle, feel overly formal and severe in their approach. Others, like Venmo, are quick and easy, but sacrifice advanced features like groups and scheduling to achieve it. Still others, like Splitwise, include more advanced features, but lack the actual financial integration to be an all-in-one solution.

Enter Split/Pay, the app that combines a friendly design stance and attitude with straightforward user flows and actual integration of financial features. The new one-stop shop when there’s a bill to share!

Research

PRD Response Outline and Initial Notes

After reviewing the stakeholder PRD, I wanted to quickly outline my approach to this project to give a better sense of the branding approach, design priorities, and prevailing project goals. The outcome of this project seemed keenly aimed at a feeling; making budgeting apps feel friendlier and more approachable. I wanted to nail down some key tenets right at the top of my work so that they’d function as pillars to reference whenever a decision had to be made.

PLanned Approach

Next, I wasted no time and laid out my approach and timeline in phases so that I could stay organized throughout this project’s very compacted timeline. For v1 of testing, I had about 3 weeks to get the prototype version together and in front of test users. Keeping that in mind, I wanted to keep my workflow tight and organized so as not to miss any essential parts of the process.

(Quick) Competitor Analysis

I obviously didn’t want to enter a market I wasn’t an expert in blind, so I dedicated a day to testing out competing apps in-depth to see where they shone or could be improved. I also dove deep into user reviews to get a better sense of the largest complaints for each kind of app. I found that each of the biggest apps in this space had key issues to users:

Venmo: clean and easy to use, but lacking advanced features

SplitWise: feature-packed, but lacking true financial system integration

At this point I knew I needed to utilize the same kind of clean UI that made Venmo a hit and make sure financial integration was tight without sacrificing features that would make those features truly useful.

Lo-Fi

Takeaways

1. The Tone design sets deeply impacts user perception.

2. Familiarty through design patterns make users feel at home faster.

3. Even High-Stress tasks like sharing finances can be made fun and friendly.

IMPACT

  • 92% positive feedback in first user test

    • the most common feedback keywords were ‘familiar’ and ‘simple’

    • users had almost universally positive views of the chosen branding and color story