PAYPAL
Creating easy access to split the bill and ensure secure payment.
Role: UX Designer
User researcher, Interaction design, Prototype, and Testing.
Project Status: Completed
Duration: 2 weeks

Overview:
This is a contextual project that was assigned to our team. A couple of designers and I had to redesign an existing feature and also add a new feature to the Paypal app. As a part of the project, I conducted user research and designed the midframes for testing the prototypes.
Background:
PayPal has remained at the forefront of the digital payment revolution for more than 20 years. By leveraging technology to make financial services and commerce more convenient, affordable and secure, the PayPal platform is empowering people and businesses to join and thrive in the global economy.
Design Process:

Our process involved the Double Diamond Model and Agile methodology as these stages us to organize our thoughts in order to improve the creative process and also help us to work on the iterations immediately. We aim to incorporate the key phases of Discovery, Definition, Ideation and Implementation in all of our projects.
Understanding the Problem:
I and my design team conducted a UX audit wherein we would test the product and explore all the features. That is when we came across there was room for improvement by adding some new features and redesigning certain existing features to make them more accessible.
Hence I conducted research interviews with our primary users to uncover any pain points that they were experiencing with the app.
My research encompassed:
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Understanding user goals and needs.
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Identify any opportunities.
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Uncovering pain points with the existing user journey.
Identifying Opportunities:
After the research, we synthesized our data by creating an affinity map. We gathered the information, placed the observations onto sticky notes and categorized them into groups we thought deemed to fit based on the common themes and features.
Insights of Affinity Mapping: Together as a team, we created 12 categories. Out of those 12 categories, 5 stood out and they were:-
1. User's main concern is their privacy when managing money
2. Users mainly use mobile payment apps to transfer money between friends or to settle bills.
3. They expect to have fixed navigation systems to refer back to at all times.
4. People want to quickly identify what buttons are used for.
5. Having abilities to verify codes and get feedback that money was successfully sent or received.




Affinity mapping is a tool we used to group ideas and data points based on the research, The grouping helps us to identify opportunities and upcoming trends.

Emma
Age : 28 years
Occupation: Retail Sales Associate
Habits:
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Makes payments through online platforms.
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Prefers to share the expenses whenever she goes out with friends for dinner.
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Doesn’t carry cash.
Frustrations:
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Unable to confirm if the receiver received the amount.
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Struggling to find the split the bill option
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Annoyed when coworkers forgot to pay their part of the bill.
Needs & Goals:
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Emma needs to have a simple way to calculate differences in bills
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Wants a confirmation when any transaction is done to give her piece of mind.
Meet Emma: Primary User
Identifying the Problem:
Based on the data synthesized during the affinity mapping and Emma's frustrations and need we were able to successfully identify the pain points
"Emma needs an easy way to access the split the bill feature and have an option to verify and confirm before making the final confirmation because she finds it alarming to not have a verification process before the transaction is completed."
Our Proposal:
After the identification of the problem, we decided to incorporate the following solutions-
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Add split the bill button to the home page.
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An easy method to split the bill.
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Receive a summary and enter a code before making the payment.
This will help the users in having easy access to split the bill without the homepage being overloaded and make them feel secure by having a verification process before completing the transaction.
Sketching and Ideating the solution:

Design Studio:
After the creation of the user flow, we decided to individually sketch out the wireframes and come together during the design studio wherein we would all share our ideas and pick the best ones.
Wireframing the Solutions:
Based on the above problems identified, I worked towards addressing these pains by coming up with potential solutions:
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Reducing the steps to access the split the bill feature.
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Enter a verification code before confirming the payment.
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Have a summary page to review the details before confirming.
I and my team quickly mocked up some basic wireframes to gather feedback from Product, Engineering and the users on the overall layout and structure of the Paypal App. This involved establishing a standardized visual hierarchy and layout for the future Paypal app.
During the design studio, there was a difference of opinion on the layout of the homepage of the Paypal App and hence we decided to have 2 mid-fi prototypes and conduct A/B testing. The only difference between the 2 was the Homepage.
Prototype A
Prototype B
Design Decisions: Prototype A
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It has the same layout as the original Paypal App.
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Split the bill option is introduced to the homepage and placed next to the "Request" button to ensure easy access to the button.


Design Decision: Prototype B
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Users can search the features and contacts by typing in the search bar
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The bottom navigation bar is provided with descriptions of what icons mean to promote inclusivity.
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The homepage consists of the contacts to help users to easily select the name of the person to whom the money is to be sent.
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Split the bill option is introduced to the homepage and placed next to the "Request" button to ensure easy access to the button.
Validating the design:
Before we could code the midfi prototype we decided to test it. We conducted the A/B testing on 8 participants and assigned them tasks to perform.
Goal:
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Emma(user) needs to navigate through the homepage and split the bill using a scan receipt option and confirm the payment.
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The benchmark for users while performing the task was to complete the task within 50 secs with not more than 1 miss click.
Results:
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Prototype A: Users took on an average 2 mins 20 secs to complete the task with an average no. of miss clicks of 4
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Prototype B: Users took on an average 2 mins to complete the task with an average no. of miss clicks of 2

Based on the analysis of the results, users faced the following issues:
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Unable to understand what the icons meant on the bottom navigation bar in prototype A.
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Struggled to understand what task to perform once they selected split the bill.
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Unclear instructions on the verification page.
The users also had qualitative insights which helped us understand the issues they faced during the testing.
Reiteration of the Mid-fi prototype:
Based on the qualitative and quantitative results our team decided that I and my teammate work on reiterating the prototype and create the 2nd midfi prototype before we could create a Hifi prototype.
Design Decision for Frame 1
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During the A/B testing, the homepage of prototype A had a positive output, and hence decided to continue with the same format and decided to have the ads on the homepage.
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The payment options are placed on top of the screen to help users to find them easily.
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The users really liked the description of icons on the bottom tab in prototype B and hence decided to incorporate that.

Design Decision Frame 2:
In this page users need to select the recipients with whom they want to split the bill.
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Users can find recipients by searching in the search bar.

Design Decision of Frame 3:
This is the screen that users are redirected to, once they click on split the bill button.
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To help users be aware of which stage they are in, the progress tracker has been incorporated.
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In this page users have an option to either enter bill splitting manually or scan the receipt.

Design Decision Frame 4:
This is the summary page.
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The users can edit the amount and name of the receiver by clicking on them,

Design Decision Frame 5:
Once the users confirm the details in summary page, they are redirected to this page.
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The users will receive a one time password, which they are asked to enter in this page.

Testing mid-fi prototype:
I conducted a 2nd round of testing for the 2nd Midfi Prototypes.
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All the users completed the task successfully.
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They were able to complete the assigned tasks before the set time, i.e. 1 min 50 secs.
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On average they had 1 miss click which also met the benchmark.
The users also had a bunch of qualitative insights after the testing:-

Hifi Prototypes:
What's Next?
We hope to get more familiar with UX Writing or having a UX Writer on our team to better phrase our sections and buttons.This was something we struggled a bit with during our project.
And finally we look forward to adding an additional feature that includes receiving an message or a new screen notifying users of our redesign as well as our new feature when they enter the app .