Payment Transaction Ledger
Competitive Research
Challenge:
Conduct UX research to evaluate and advise what elements of existing payment systems are working and provide suggestions for improvement.
Process and Methodology
To best explain my research, I have identified the key user Needs, Pain Points, Behaviors and Values as they relate to online financial banking and transactions. I will use to these explain and validate my findings.
Heuristic Analysis
In my heuristic analysis of Capital One’s online banking site I assessed their user experience as it relates to the Needs, Pain Points, Behaviors and Values of their users. Overall I found the site clear, effectively displaying user data and navigation between accounts and ability to perform basic tasks was simple and intuitive. I did however have some recommendation for improvement to further enhance their app/ site.
Integration
Additional steps
Report Issues
When trying to resolve issues online, additional steps and redirections can be frustrating. In efforts to dispute a transaction on Capital One’s app, after going through a series of questions the end result required exiting the app and redirecting to their site and ultimately calling the company.
Recommendation:
Integrate problem resolution into the app design to allow users to work through steps all in one place
Provide online live chat option as an alternative to needing to call the company
limit excessive steps and questions - when trying to resolve an issue users are already frustrated and adding additional steps will only further fuel their frustration.
View User Data
Extraneous Information
View Transactions
Featuring scheduled payments as the focal point when reviewing recent transactions, when there are no scheduled payments is unnecessary and extraneous. Additionally separating out pending transactions can cause confusion when users go to review their recent purchases and they appear out of order. Users want to see their information at a glance. Information should be clean, concise and easy to find.
Recommendation:
Show scheduled payments as a collapsible section or otherwise reduce prominence on the app page.
Show a line item Indication of pending transactions and otherwise incorporate into overall transactions to be reviewed in order by date.
User Interviews
To better understand the ways in which individuals perform financial transactions online and how they interact with related apps and websites I conducted 5 interviews with individuals between the ages of 35 and 60, including 3 women and 2 men. Here I have illustrated a breakdown of the financial institutions, apps and websites used by one or more of these individuals.
From these interviews I was able to gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the user experience across various platforms and institutions. Some of the common frustrations across my interviews related to ease of navigation, privacy and security.
Finding:
Venmo, while unanimously used among all of my interviewees is designed more as a social media platform than a financial app. It lacks both in security, privacy and can be frustrating to navigate through.
When using financial apps, the focus should be on the user. Instead of opening to a news feed of your friends spendings, most people want to open to see their own balances and transactions.
Venmo, predominantly used as an app on most people’s phones, by default has no password protection or transaction privacy. While this can be changed in settings, it is not intuitive or simple for most people to figure out.
User Insight:
“I find Venmo hard to navigate, because it makes you input stickers and social media, and I don’t want excess crap telling me what my friends paid for things.” - Molly, 35
View User Data
Extraneous Information
Pay / Request Funds
Security
User Persona
This User Persona combines my findings up until this point merging the perspectives from my 1:1 interviews as well as my own findings from my Heuristic analysis into one representative target user.
Competitive Research
Since Venmo was the app unanimously used across my interviews, and also the app with which the most users had frustrations, I decided to dive deeper and look into Venmo’s leading competitors to assess how they compare, where they excel and where they fall short. I compared Zelle, Apple Pay, and Paypal.
Venmo prioritizes News Feed of friends transactions featured on the home page. Placing their focus on Social Media, they encourage users to use emojis and “gift wrap” their transactions.
Apple Pay offers a clean and simplified design. Keeping it to the basics users are able to easily navigate and not get lost or frustrated with extraneous information.
Zelle simplifies Peer to Peer payments intuiting user needs by offering Send, Request and Split. These options are clear and easily accessible. The addition of the split option simplifies the user experience and saves them the trouble of calculating out the math to split a bill.
Paypal’s home screen prioritizes the user displaying account balance, recent activity and options to send and request payments. The layout is clean and information is direct and easy to use.
Takeaways
Anticipating user needs creates a more desirable interface. By adding a split option users are able to process requests for payment quickly and efficiently when splitting a bill.
By highlighting user balance, activity and action items to send and request payments Venmo’s competitors present a more user focused platform eliminating insignificant information such as a news feed of friends transactions. This allows the user to easily complete payments and navigate to their desired screen within the app.
User Experience is about the user, so the focus should be on how to most effectively provide access to important information and simplify transactions and overall app navigation.
Findings and Recommendations
The dominant Need, Pain Point, Behavior and Value that I have identified throughout my research are:
View User Data
Extraneous Information
Pay / Request Funds
Security
Recommendations for an enhanced User Experience:
Highlight Key information directly relevant to the user
Reduce the steps required to complete tasks and navigate to other information within a site or app.
Enhancing external integration with other sites and apps will simplify user purchases and transactions
Intuitive navigation reduces user confusion and frustration
Anticipate user needs
Ensure privacy and security for users personal and financial information.
Focal Points:
Security
Clean and simplified design aesthetic
Prioritize key user information