Venmo is a digital wallet that allows users to request or pay another person from their mobile device. The service makes paying and requesting others a convenient and social activity drawing in a range of users from students to small businesses.

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In this case study, I:

1. Identified some of Venmo's pain points & people-problems.
2. Utilized product and design thinking to introduce a feature for a streamlined group-pay experience.

I recruited 12 users to discover (1) why, where, and how Venmo is used (2) frustrations with the app (3) any other money-sending apps and why users liked/disliked them. After compiling results from the user interviews, I found that a common frustration people had was splitting a bill within a large group.

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When users want to split a cost within a group they want:

1. The process to be quick, so they don’t waste time requesting from each person separately.
2. To keep track of transactions to see who paid and who didn't.
3. To avoid payment mistakes (under or overpayment)

‍User Interview Insights:

After sorting through an affinity diagram, I found four main areas of improvement: Money Management, Versatility, Security, and Paying & Requesting. I decided to tackle the last insight, since I found that a majority of Venmo users use the app in social situations and struggle with group payments. Social situations can include paying or requesting money for Uber rides, restaurant meals, grocery runs, or even rent and utilities.

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Ideation

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I thought of two methods of creating payment groups to solve the group-pay problem.

1. Importing existing group chats from other social media like iMessage, Snapchat, and Facebook Messenger. The groups created would be stored in Venmo and only accessible during group pay or request.
2. Create groups in Venmo before requesting or paying. You can add existing Venmo friends to a group, and import users from other social media.

I decided to create some initial flows that combined these two methods.

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‍Creating a group

1. The user can add existing Venmo friends or users (left side)
2. The user can import groups from other social media (right side)

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Paying a group

Once the user has added a group, they can either

1. Request or pay everyone from the group the same amount (left side)
2. Request or pay everyone from the group different amounts (right side)

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Information Hierarchy

In reference to my initial user flows, I mapped out the information hierarchy. This hierarchy emphasizes the group feature and ensures it exists separate from the people list. This hierarchy also doesn't disrupt the original home screen, and follows the familiar user flow of clicking the "pay or request" button to access users.

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Low Fidelity Prototypes

1. Creating a group by searching for and adding existing Venmo friends or users

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