MoneyMate

Problem Background  

Anyone between 20-40 years old, who’s financially active/ aware and somewhat tech-oriented who goes out with more than one person or in a group at least once every week have one thing in common: the stress about splitting the bill. People usually stress or take a long period of time splitting the bill when receiving it after; eating out, going to parties, using a driver service, planning expenses ahead of time or any activity that you could think of that requires a payment when out with more than one person.

Currently users have to track their bills by writing them down, one by one, or memorising them in their heads, sometimes even leading to paying incorrectly. By efficiently dividing the information received from the bill, as well as the amount and number of recipients, we can give users the time and messy moments of calculating and knowing who needs to pay what and when back, making this uncomfortable situation, a problem of the past. 

All users we interviewed had this problem in common, they never thought ahead when going out, how they would’ve needed to divide their bill (unless of course they were just inviting and paying for all) and the moment they received it repeatedly represented; time wasted, stress, as well as unconformity.

In the situation of planning an event ahead of time, less mistakes were made, however it still took some time to calculate the expenses within the group. Even when doing so it was also hard to input or share the ‘expense chart’ with the rest of the group. In the case of adding expenses, or modifying something, was also too complicated unless a recipient in charge did all the work for the rest of the group, leading to miscalculations or inaccuracy. 

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Research Insights & User Pain Points

We were able to do over 10 interviews which went over the following questions:

1. How often do you make plans with groups?
2. How often do you pay when you're in a group?
3. How easy is it for each individual in your group to know exactly how much to pay?
4. When (moment) do you split the bill?
5. Why do you split a bill?
6. Do you divide each bill at the moment you pay or does someone offer to pay for all so that then you just transfer the money to this person?
7. Tell me about a time you had to split a bill/multiple bills in one night? What was that experience like?
8. Is paying someone back for a favour something that you would easily forget?
9. If you could split the bill in 2 steps, would you use it?
10. Is planning ahead (budgeting) easier when it comes to dividing a bill?

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We identify these main 3 pain points:

1. When in groups (more than 3) it’s stressful to know exactly who needs to pay what.
2. When someone pays for you, you tend to forget how much you owe and to whom.
3. Planning ahead isn’t as straightforward if plans change within the group.

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Solution Explanation

Our proposed solution is to build a free mobile-first web app that provides an easy to use bill splitting experience, which simplifies what the user needs to pay and to whom they need to pay after receiving one or multiple bills.

Based on user pain points collected from our initial research, we prioritised the features we want to deliver based on the following parameters:

Must-haves

• Fast onboarding
• Inputting the bill details
• Creating expense group
• Automated splitting (equal division or percentages)
• Manual splitting
• Overview of the amounts from the bill uploaded
• Send the request for payment

Good-to-have

• Take a picture of the bill (to upload)
• Adjusting balance due according to payments

Future backlog

• Click directly on your choice of payment (money transfer)
• Push notifications or email notification until to remind you of the payment until you’ve done
• Graphic panel that I can see what people owe me or what I need to pay.

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Lofi & Hifi Mockups

Iterative Design Learnings

Chaski | 25 | Grad Student at NYU

Pre-testing Questions

1. On a scale of 1 to 5 (1=not at all confident, 5=very confident), how would you rate your level of confidence in using your mobile phone for splitting your bill? 2‍

2. How often do you use your phone to track, split, or revise your bill? Not often, I’ve never used an app

• When was the last time you engaged in this task? Never, but I am confident in my tech skills
• What tools do you use, if any, to help with this task? Calculator
• Please describe your experience with this tool. -

3. Which of the following indicates how much you know about splitting your bill with a technological tool?

• [Option 1:] I don’t know anything about that.
• [Option 2:] I know a little, but I could learn more
• [Option 3:] I am an expert.

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Flow 1: Adding a Friend

Insights

• Is the email or number required? 
• Flow was easy to understand as it is similar to any other social app

Pain Points

• Finding email or phone and copy pasting into the app
• So everyone has to be signed up prior to the bill? What if someone makes a bill already and wants to add to a group or bill later?

Opportunities

• Can I send them an invite through text message or other app rather than typing their email or phone number is extra work

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Flow 2: Creating an Activity + Split Bill Evenly

Insights

• intuitive

Pain Points

• Removing friends from group

Opportunities

• Maybe be able to put  type of bill prior to making it? Food, ride share, lodging, etc.
• Is this a confirmation or send button?

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Flow 3: Splitting Bills Individually

Insights

• I like how you can pick who out of the group is supposed to pay but can’t we do this with the bill like how we do with an activity?

Pain Points

• How do we split tax and tip? People do it differently

Opportunities

• What if someone wanted to split an item?

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Sam | 27 | Developer at Disney

Pre-testing Questions

1. On a scale of 1 to 5 (1=not at all confident, 5=very confident), how would you rate your level of confidence in using your mobile phone for splitting your bill? 4‍

2. How often do you use your phone to track, split, or revise your bill? Often like a few times per month

• When was the last time you engaged in this task? Last week for dinner
• What tools do you use, if any, to help with this task? Tab and Splitwise
• Please describe your experience with this tool. Tab is only for food/drink bills and tips/tax is required. I also can’t edit my bill and sometimes when I take a picture it is incorrect. I have also used Splitwise but everyone needs an account to do bills, and there are a lot of features which can be helpful but overwhelming at first.

3. Which of the following indicates how much you know about splitting your bill with a technological tool?

• [Option 1:] I don’t know anything about that.
• [Option 2:] I know a little, but I could learn more
• [Option 3:] I am an expert.

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Flow 1: Adding a Friend

Insights

Pain Points

• Creating groups as we’re creating the bill i think makes more sense for me

Opportunities

• Sending invite through linkk

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Flow 2: Creating an Activity + Split Bill Evenly

Insights

• In Tab, you can ‘join’ a bill

Pain Points

• Group makes sense, but what if everyone is not paying on every bill in the activity?

Opportunities

• Being able to edit the bill after a picture is taken

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Flow 3: Splitting Bills Individually

Insights

Pain Points

• Maybe don’t have split evenly and by person so large on the screen bc it seems like you can easily switch it

Opportunities

• More ways to split the bill and be customized

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Implementation Details 

Technical implementation

• ‍Where is it hosted? Vercel‍
• What is your tech stack? NextJS / Express‍
• High level journey of a request User actions are processed through a database. Frontend takes in all information from the database to load a static page.

Technical challenges

• ‍What was the hardest part of development? Implementing local persistence‍
• Does your app have any scaling issues? Not to my knowledge‍
• What are some key takeaways? You can create the functionality of the app and easily replace code to fit in a backend

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Future Steps

At the moment we won’t be pursuing this project in the future, although we might change our minds.