Case Study
Venmo donation feature: connecting communities
High fidelity screens for Venmo Charitable Giving feature.
General Assembly Project
Objective: Venmo is a mobile app that allows users to send payments to others for free, and wants to strengthen its brand by offering options for social impact.
What we did: UX/UI Design, Research, Surveys, User Interviews, Wireframing, User Testing, Prototyping, Mockups
My Role: UX/UI Design, Research, User Testing, Wireframing, Prototyping
Tools used: Surveys/Interviews, Comparative & Competitive Analysis, Affinity Diagramming, User Testing, Paper Prototyping, Sketch, InVision, Design Sprints
Jump to any part of my design process:
The Challenge
“Giving isn’t a business transaction, it’s human connection”
Venmo makes it easy to send payments to other people through its app but want to expand their services into making a difference in the world.
With users accustomed to sending money quickly, Venmo would like to introduce a way for users to send money via the app to causes they care about – whether that be a charity close to home, or one on the other side of the globe.
How can we make a difference? How can we help Venmo users connect with the communities they care about?
Our three person design team got to work. This new feature had to fit current users' interests and be smoothly integrated into the existing app so as to not interfere with usage. We wanted users to be able to easily locate, identify, and connect with causes that they resonated with, and feel empowered to go out and make a difference in the world.
Discovery & User Research
We set out to understand the product and our users' behaviors, needs, and motivations. While my team members and I were all active users on Venmo, research was important as it would align our ideas about the problem and help us remove any incorrect assumptions about how others might use it.
User surveys were sent out and interviews conducted to establish commonalities across our target market.
Results from the surveys and user interviews showed that Venmo users are young adults (20-30 years), and fairly tech savvy. In order to determine whether we could leverage the social aspect of Venmo to encourage giving, questions delved into the types of causes users have donated to, whether they would use a money sharing app to donate, and background information on how they use the app now.
Overall, users were positive about donating, especially with causes that were local and close to home.
Target user: Creating Personas
We examined our research to find data we could use to create a persona, or user archetype. Affinity diagramming allowed us to organize data points together based on their natural relationship, and note any patterns that emerged.
Some key characteristics emerged, and our primary and secondary users 'Chad' and 'Liz' were born. We kept both in mind as we began to build out our feature, but ultimately used Chad to focus our design efforts on.
Chad, primary user
- Social Venmo user, transfers money for ride shares and splitting the check with friends.
- Active in the community, cares about local causes directly affecting friends and family.
Needs
- An intimate or personal reason to get involved.
- Incentive to donate money.
Pain points
- Feels the typical method of donating is outdated.
- Lack of trust in charities and whether his donation is being used appropriately.
Ideate
Our team used a Design Studio methodology to quickly generate ideas as to how best we could integrate a donation feature into Venmo. We went through several cycles of individual sketching, brainstorming, and critique before repeating the cycle as a team. Design Studio generates a lot of ideas very quickly, creating a shared focus and distilling ideas down to the strongest ones.
Ideation sketches.
Design
After brainstorming ideas, our team decided to integrate a donation feature into the profile page of the app, as well as through the transfer page. Local and global charities would be featured on an information page, giving users the option to browse and find out more information for any specific cause. As an added incentive, upon donation users would receive a badge specific to the charity they donated, adding a gameification aspect to encourage giving.
Whiteboard sketches for individual screens.
Venmo sitemap with donation feature.
User flow.
Before we moved on to higher fidelity wireframes, we opted to create a paper prototype to make sure our custom user flow worked.
Our wireframes took shape. From medium fidelity...
Charity information page.
Charity information modal.
Hamburger menu, Charity page addition.
Profile page with donate button and badge gameification.
...to high fidelity. We used Venmo's existing style guide to make sure that all elements matched, seamlessly merging the donation feature into the Venmo user experience.
High fidelity charity information page.
High fidelity charity modal.
High fidelity hamburger menu.
High fidelity profile page.
User Testing
We tested our prototype multiple times throughout the process, building on our donation feature as we went from paper to high fidelity prototype.
Several iterations were made to our wireframes, including the removal of a ‘round up’ feature in which users could donate by rounding their transactions to the closest dollar, and donating the additional cents. Research proved users wanted to retain control over the amount they donated.
The donation button was iterated on as well, scaling down its prominence so users wouldn't feel forced into donating.
Conclusions and Looking Forward
Users are accustomed to living their lives online. We pay our bills, play games, communicate and much more every day. Making a difference close to home or on the other side of the world should be just as easy.
With the built-in donation feature, Venmo could allow users to send money quickly and securely to charities and causes they care about. Whether it be Austin Pets Alive in their own backyard, or Doctors Without Borders around the world, Venmo users will feel empowered in their decision to make a difference.