Improving the Venmo User Experience

Step 1: Interviewing users on their experiences with Venmo.

During my interviews a common factor that came up time and time again was the difficulty in distinguishing between when the user was paying another person as opposed to receiving money from another person. Other problems that came up were concerns over privacy, given that Venmo essentialy creates a social platform out of user’s payments, which sometimes are confidential in nature.

Step 2: Define

Figuring out the pain point that will have the most impact to solve.

The pain point of user’s being unaware of when they are requesting money as opposed to receiving money is a serious issue, as Venmo’s entire business relies on their ability to serve as a medium for transferring value. For this reason I saw it as imperitive to create a solution for Venmo that better differentiates between their cash transfer options, making an overall improved experince for both the sender and reciever.

Step 3: Develop

Iterate several ways to solve this problem. Afterwards, pick one solution you like the best.

The first and most obvious option is to have separate menus for sending money vs requesting money. The problem with this option is it takes away people from the center of the attention. Venmo is specifically designed with the idea that we think of people first — and not the transaction. This is exactly right, we do not think in terms of if we should pay or receive cash, and if so from whom, but rather we tend to think of the person and then if we should pay them or recieve cash from them.

So in this regard I do not believe a macro change in Venmo’s current payment UI is needed, but rather a micro one. My idea is to make simple changes that serve as implicit indicators to the user to remind them if they are paying or recieving. On Venmo’s public feed they already have a great color scheme for indiciating if one’s cash balance is increasing or decreasing, green for the former, and red for the latter. I believe that the best course of action is simply to implement this color scheme within the main payments page.

Step 4: Deliver

Design the solution in Sketch

Step 5: Present

The solution

My solution is a sleak change to the color scheme of Venmo’s existing UI. The goal was not to reinvent the wheel, so much as polish it. The solution took approximately an hour of Sketch, with more time I would like to come up with a solution to make it clearer that the Request/Pay buttons are also sliders in case the user accidently selects the wrong option.

In totality I think the overall solution works quite nicely, it is subtle, but to the point. The small changes like the color scheme of the dollar amount at the top, remind the user of their selected money transfer mode, preventing accidental misusage of the app, and ensures stability and security for Venmo’s users in performing financial transactions.