What is Splitwise?
Splitwise is an app to split bills between friends, family members, co-workers, roommates and basically anyone. It is a highly used app in India and after talking to a lot of people and my inconvenience to use the app I planned to redesign it.
Splitwise is a little similar to Venmo in a way that the end goal is to pay the amount you owe to someone or get back the amount someone owes you. The only difference is it helps to keep a record and does the calculation for you to split the bill evenly, unevenly or 'wisely'.
Problem Statement
Although numerous other designers have explored redesigning Splitwise for UI and UX, I am only focusing on introducing Itemized billing feature by scraping information through an API and Splitting the bill "wisely".
Use Cases
Splitwise is used in the following scenarios:
• Share your Netflix account with friends
• Share your Internet Connection with Roommates
• Plan a Trip with Friends.
• Buying a Gift as a Group.
• Split Custody Easily with Splitwise
• Share Expenses As Couple
• Share your expense with Family
• Pay Your Bills on PayTM or Venmo
• Share your Internet Connection with Roommates
• Plan a Trip with Friends.
• Buying a Gift as a Group.
• Split Custody Easily with Splitwise
• Share Expenses As Couple
• Share your expense with Family
• Pay Your Bills on PayTM or Venmo
Why did I choose to redesign Splitwise?
Living with my roommates, we found out we are spending too much time splitting bills and expenses. And it was always a hassle to decode the final split. I found some problems with the current version:
• Doesn’t have itemized splitting option
• Complex language
• Difficult to spot quick links
• No option for one bill paid by multiple people in a group. You have to add multiple entries for the same bill if paid by multiple people.
• UI is dated.
• Android and iOS have a completely different UI.
To validate my idea to redesign, I looked up what people have to say, and what are the problems they are facing. Critical user reviews of Splitiwise on App Store:
UX Process
My Role
• Researcher • Interaction Designer • Visual Designer
Users & Audience
After talking to multiple Splitwise users, I figured out that no one is completely satisfied with the app though it has 5 million downloads on Android. The number of people I asked was surely a lot less than 5 million to analyze data but it gave me a fair idea about what users are actually looking for.
Research
Having limited resources and no access to Splitwise’s original data, I made use of critical reviews by users on Play Store and App Store’s. This gave me an estimate of what bothered users the most and a kick to start the project. I interviewed my friends with basic questions “What they like the most” and “What they don’t like”. The answers sorted out my initial step.
Research Insights
With this data, I focused to maintain the core features while giving users a better experience by simplifying the app. Also, some of the user interviews helped me understand that users are open to the new idea of scanning and itemizing the bill which gave me the confidence to move ahead with the new concept.
Market Analysis
The widely used app is Venmo with 10+ Million users on Android and 5+ Million users on Splitwise. Tab is another app to split bills with 50K users. These were the apps with a huge number of users and were similar in features. The feature comparison helped me understand how one app is better than the other and where is the scope of merging features.
Brainstorming
Sketched out the layout of the app after a lot of brainstorm on user research.
It is easy to split bills equally for users. They usually use Calculator app on their phones than going on a Split-bill kind of apps. And usually, they are instant about it.
Proposed Solution
Split-Wisely
But, when the bill is recurring or needs to be split unevenly like grocery bills between roommates where everyone has a different choice, it gets harder to maintain friendships when you’re buying groceries together. Or when you go out for dinner and drinks, but not everyone in the group is drinking, there is an awkwardness about how to split the bill. And sometimes people who are not drinking have to pay an equal share in the total bill because it is too complicated to split the bill wisely.
After looking at the edge cases and brainstorming on sketches, I finalized how the information will flow within the app and hence simplifies it with destining a user flow of the Navigation bar.
User Flows of Navigation Bar
Wireframes
After brainstorming on low fidelity mocks, I created how fidelity mocks on Sketch to have a clear picture on the flow of the app.
Branding
I rebranded the app and chose the colors that are more related to money while giving a cooling effect. Dealing with money and splitting money could turn unpleasant, so to keep the effect soothing I chose lighter tone of green and blue.
Visual Designs
My purpose to redesign the app was to improve the functionality of the core feature of splitting the money. I ended up designing a few screens for my love for design.
Project Learnings
• As bill splitting is a complicated process and sometimes involves emotions as well, it gets harder to make it more natural with a technical solution.
• I realized that testing at multiple phases is important to validate our assumptions.
• Feedback from even a small set of users can be helpful to pivot your current approach towards a more important problem.
• Also, if I had enough resources, I would have got this app developed and worked on the real data.
Update (2020)
The idea I published in this case study in 2016, Splitwise recently adopted the same bill-scanning feature and itemized billing (Split-Wisely, explained above) in 2020 as a premium feature in their latest update.
© 2018-2020 Sadhvi Sharma. All Rights Reserved.