Cash App
Taking the #1 money transferring app to the next level!
Background
Research
The number one money transferring app prides itself on putting the user experience first with a simple flow and clean design. Cash App currently does not have a social presence in their app so our struggle as a team was to figure out how to create such a feature with their brand goals; simple, secure, and private.
We conducted 12 interviews that spanned between 22 and 42 years old who were already using at least one money transferring app on the market. We asked our interviewees the same 15 questions that ranged from what apps they are currently using to what they enjoy about that app and what they didn’t enjoy. After the interviews, we synthesized our data through an affinity map that helped us expose the commonalities so we could take that info into our user persona and design sprint.
Some of the biggest issues our interviewees had with the other apps like Venmo were the “news” feeds and the time it took for the money to be deposited into their checking account. Since we could not affect the timeframe banks take to deposit funds, we set our attention towards some sort of messaging feature. Once we dug deeper into that ideation and our research data, we also determined that adding a feature for recurring payments/requests and a calendar feature were high on our prioritization list.
Ideation
Our design sprint was a breakthrough for the team! With the data gathered from the affinity mapping and our prioritization’s list, we were able to compose our user persona which led us into the designing stage full speed. In this stage, we were able to spit-fire as many ideas as we possibly could then take a step back and strategically decipher which ideas topped our MVP, which ones will be next steps, and which ideas weren’t feasible. Out of the 14 solid ideas that came out of this, we took the top three and moved forward in our design process.
With our ideas in mind, we took them to paper. This is what I love most about design sprints; flushing your brain of all those ideas through some ink and paper. Though I am not the best drawer out there, it didn’t matter here because we were able to effectively piece together what would be our wireframes.
After numerous rounds in our design studio, we felt very confident with our final design plan that fit perfectly into the research we had done. So it was time to our persona, site map, and customer journey of the app as it was prior to our redesign then we created post-design maps which helped us visually see the kind of impact we made on the app. I love seeing the results in this stage!
Development
It was time for me to take our sketches to Sketch and create our wireframes. Since I had already created the screens from the Cash App that we were not touching, I was able to put all my focus onto our new features. This is where I shine as I am extremely detailed and OCD about making sure every aspect of the design is accurate and consistent.
With our wireframing complete, I uploaded the screens into InVision where we set the interactions between the pages and buttons. This was a bit of a challenge for us as some of our screens were too large for our intended prototype and I had to make some sizing revisions to a few screens. But once we got those hiccups out of the way, we were ready for our testing phase.
Usability Testing
After our first iterations of the wireframes were complete, we ask a fellow coworker to participate in a pilot test of our new features. We asked her the same questions we were going to ask our usability testers.
During this test, we found some minor issues we needed to address before our usability testing; mainly the size and coloring of font and parts of the calendar. So I went back to Sketch to make the necessary changes.
We were super excited for this stage of our design process because we had put a lot of time and brain power into our design so getting it in front of users was highly anticipated. We had lined up 6 individuals for our test but a couple of days before our testing was to begin, they all backed out. So we had to scramble around to find more, and off to a local coffee shop we went.
We were able to find four new test users who have used money transferring apps with the last 6 months. These users were given the same introduction script along with the same 14 questions and tasks. These tasks took them through a variety of steps through our new features like sending money to a friend within the messages, seeing how much money your friends still owe you from within a message group, and requesting recurring rent from your two roommates and making sure the request was correctly added to your calendar.
All of our users didn't have any issues making their way through the tasks but 2/4 users had a hard time seeing a drop-down menu within the messages feature and got confused by not needing to add decimals when sending or requesting money. My assumption they got confused was because they were Venmo users and Venmo requires decimals. Cash App does not.
Our misfortune from having to find new users turned to benefit us more than we anticipated because the data we were able to gain was beyond valuable from complete strangers than we might have received from friends or friends of friends. We synthesized the data we received and addressed the bigger items our users mentioned into our design.
Hi-Fi’s
While my teammates were doing performing our usability testing, I started turning our Mid-Fidelity wireframes into high visuals using Sketch. A challenge for me here was not being able to locate exact color codes or font types
Reflection
This project was a lot of fun for me! Being able to collaborate with two great designers who brought their skills and knowledge to the table for the betterment of the users and client was a great experience for me. I feel we accomplished exactly and more to what we set ourselves at the beginning of the project. Couldn’t be prouder of our product enhancements!