SplitPay
Role: UX Researcher / UX/UI Designer
5-day design sprint
Sprint Design Process
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Value Proposition
The value proposition of a bill split application is to simplify the process of splitting expenses, reduce conflicts, save time, and ensure everyone pays their fair share accurately. Say goodbye to tedious calculations and disputes. Our app automates the process, making splitting bills a seamless experience. Our solution is not only to save time, but also to enhances transparency, and promote fairness.
Quick Overview The Product
Main Features
Simplifying the input process.
Facilitated easy assignment of items among friends.
Easily adding friends to share bills.
Day 1 Understand
Empathizing using a persona
After defining SplitPay's project goals, I created a persona to better understand and empathize with the users who will interact with SplitPay. This persona helps me to uncover users' goals, frustrations, and aspirations.
Sally Smith
28 years old
Houston, TX
Freelancer ( graphic designer)
Live with roommates
Bio
Sally is passionate about exploring new places. In her bustling life, she often finds herself in situations where splitting bills becomes a common occurrence. Sally values convenience and fairness in this process.
Reference
Convenience
Updates
Fairness
Flexibility
Wants & Needs
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Special Occasions
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Uneven Contributions
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Group Size
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Varied Preferences
Frustration
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Payment Delays
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Expense Tracking
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Fairness
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Complexity
Start at the end
Following the GV Design Sprint methodology, I employ the 'start at the end' approach to kickstart projects. This helps me gain a clear understanding of the ultimate goals and expected outcomes. During interviews, I use open-ended questions to capture a perspective on what the final product should achieve.
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Simplify Expenses: Effortlessly manage expenses with friends and family.
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Group Creation: Easily create groups and add members via email or phone.
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Seamless Bill Splitting: Split bills by scanning a code or using a generated link.
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Convenient Payments: Pay directly by linking your PayPal, Venmo, credit card, or Alipay accounts.
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Enhanced Tracking: Customize labels and categories for precise expense management.
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Effortless Record-Keeping: Upload receipt photos for simplified documentation.
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User-Friendly Experience: Enjoy a seamless solution for bill-splitting and expense management.
How Might We
To tackle the problem, I started phrasing the problems as “How Might We” questions, which allowed me to define the solution but allowed for many possibilities.
HMW
accurately split bills based on each person's orders?
HMW
make bill splitting quick and user-friendly?
HMW
guarantee fair bill splitting
among multiple users?
HMW
efficiently record and split multiple bills?
HMW
automate price calculations to streamline the process?
HMW
provide users with easy access to their payment history?
Mapping out solutions to the problem
I designed several potential solutions based on the end-to-end experience that a user might have while answering the HMW questions. There are three key components to the solution:
Efficiently record and split multiple bills.
Accurately split bills based on each person's orders.
Fair bill splitting among multiple users.
Day 2
Sketch
Lightning Demos / Inspiration
Searching for inspiration through lightning demos. I completed a lightning demo exercise where I would look at competitor solutions to similar problems. These serve as examples of available solutions and their drawbacks.
Splitwise An expense-sharing app that simplifies splitting bills and expenses with others.
Pro
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Group Features: It excels in managing group expenses, including multiple currencies and IOUs.
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Integration: Offers integration with popular payment apps like Venmo and PayPal.
Cons
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Expense Tracking: While good for splitting bills, it may not be as comprehensive for detailed expense tracking.
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Limited Reporting: The reporting and analytics features are relatively basic.
Splitty A collaborative expense-splitting platform designed for travel, enabling users to share and split costs for hotel rooms efficiently.
Pro
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Dedicated to Bill Splitting: Splitty focuses specifically on bill splitting, making it user-friendly in that context.
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Simplicity: Its simplicity and ease of use are ideal for casual users.
Cons
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Limited Features: Lack of advanced features compared to more comprehensive expense management tools.
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Business Use: Not well-suited for business or large-scale expense management.
Divvy An all-in-one financial platform for businesses, offering expense management, and corporate cards.
Pro
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Expense Management: Divvy provides robust expense management features, ideal for businesses.
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Corporate Card: Offers a corporate card for streamlined expense tracking.
Cons
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Complex for Individuals: Complicated for individuals or small groups who only need to split occasional expenses.
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Learning Curve: The extensive features can have a steeper learning curve.
Generating ideas using Crazy 8’s
I use Crazy 8's to create a broad of solutions, explore different angles, and challenge assumptions. The goal is to come up with a broad spectrum of ideas.
Narrowing down the solution using user stories
I use user stories to provide clear and concise descriptions of functionality or features. Understanding the importance of each user story, I can make informed decisions about what to work on next.
As someone who needs to split bills with friends, I want...
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To invite friends to join the bill, either by email or username, so that we can split the bill together.
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To automatically calculate the split amounts, considering the items each person ordered, tax, tips, and any special instructions, to ensure a fair division of expenses.
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To review and confirm the split amounts before finalizing the bill to avoid any mistakes.
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To create a new bill and add items with their prices and quantities so that I can accurately record shared expenses.
User flow
By mapping out user flows, helps me understand the journey a user goes through when interacting with the product. I can streamline processes, making it easier and more efficient for users to achieve their goals.
Day 3
Storyboard
Visualizing a user’s journey through a storyboard
When creating the storyboard, I wanted to map out the whole journey: from starting log in the the app to adding group of people to split the bill. The storyboard helped me understand each step in the user’s experience and provided direction when creating the prototype and testing the concept.
Visual Design
Creating a style guide to ensure consistency. Due to the condensed nature of the project, I did not create a detailed style guide and simply outlined the core aspects of the UI that convey the brand attributes - trustworthy, purposeful, and stylish modern design.
Colors
Font family - SF Pro
CTA buttons
Button
Button group
Alert
Forms
Effect styles
Prototyping
Creating a high-fidelity prototype for testing. With a style guide that outlines the essential UI components, I started creating high-fidelity screens. I added the interactions between the screens to create a working prototype that would be used for testing.
Day 4
Prototype
Day 5
Testing
Usability Testing
The usability testing was conducted in one round with 5 participants, all five tests were unmoderated. I made improvements to the design to address the issues identified. The participants for the tests were chosen on the premise that they had experiences with splitting bills thus, were more likely to use my app. From the usability testing, there were 3 key findings:
Finding #1: Lake of split details
Three out of five respondents expressed the need for comprehensive split details, including item names, tips, and taxes, instead of just providing the split amount.
Finding #2: Challenging User Interaction
Three out of five users found it difficult to drag and assign people to items on the small screen. To address this, I revamped the feature to list all users under the item, allowing users to simply click to select.
Finding #3: Inaccurate Receipt Scanning
Two out of five participants expressed that when they scan a receipt with their phone, sometimes the app doesn't get all the details right. I updated the feature to manually correct any mistakes instead of just going with what the app assumes.
What I Learned...
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Design Sprints for Innovation:
I discovered that design sprints are an invaluable tool for testing innovative ideas with minimal risk. In just one week, I gained a deep understanding of customer interest in the concept and gained insights into their decision-making process.
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Effective Time Management:
The process forced me to meticulously manage my time, allocating specific periods for each task. This discipline was preventing me from spending excessive time searching for a specific image, ensuring a more efficient workflow.
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Lightning Demos Spark Creativity:
Lightning demos proved to be a catalyst for creative thinking. Drawing inspiration from companies in unrelated fields dealing with similar challenges enhanced my creative thinking.
Next Step ...
At the end of testing, I updated the design based on the feedback of the usability test. However, due to the nature of a design sprint, there were many aspects of the solution that needed to be fleshed out.
User research: More research should be done to understand the user in order to design an effective product.
Additional usability tests: More usability tests should be done to verify the impact of the changes.
All changes to the layout and design of a number of screens need to be confirmed that they properly address the usability issues identified.
Prototyping Refinement: I created prototypes during the GV Design Sprint, but I need to refine and expand upon them. The insights and feedback gathered during the sprint guide these refinements.
