Quick Brief — for the hiring manager
Problem
5 million downloads. Zero satisfied users. Splitwise was the dominant bill-splitting app but failed at its core job — no itemized splitting, confusing language, and UX that ignored the emotional weight of money.
My Role
Solo designer with full creative autonomy — researcher, information architect, interaction designer, visual designer, and brand strategist. No client, no brief, no budget. Just a real problem.
Impact
In 2020 — four years after this redesign — Splitwise launched itemized bill-scanning as a premium feature. The exact concept designed here in 2016. Validated prescience.
Approach
Mined 1-star app reviews as a research source. Conducted user interviews. Applied color psychology to address money's emotional weight. Designed "Split-Wisely" for smart unequal splits.
Outcomes
Complete redesign for iOS and Android. Five core usability issues resolved. New brand with softer, soothing palette. "Split-Wisely" concept adopted by Splitwise as premium feature in 2020.
Learnings
Money is emotional — design that ignores this will always feel cold. Critical app reviews are an underused research goldmine. Sometimes the best validation arrives four years later.
App Downloads
5M+ (at time of project)
Validated
2020 — feature adopted
Platforms
iOS + Android
Who
As a personal project of mine, I'm redesigning Splitwise App for Splitting Bills within Roommates or Friends.
What
Pitching an idea for 'Split-Wisely', a new form of smartly splitting the bills in an itemized way, without manual effort.
Why
As a heavy user of Splitwise, I struggled with the existing UX. And I found out that the app doesn't have ways to remove people from items they haven't consumed while sharing a common bill.
How
'Split-Wisely' scrapes information from the bill and allows you to remove yourself from an item you didn't consume while keeping you in the bill split if you used other items. Ex: You don't have to pay for Alcohol if you didn't drink but had Dinner with friends.
The Challenge
A personal project with no client and no constraints — which is both liberating and terrifying. Splitwise had 5M downloads and was the market leader, yet users were routinely opening their calculator app because the product was too hard to use for anything beyond equal splits.
The deeper problem was that money is emotional, not just functional. Splitting bills between friends involves awkwardness, fairness anxiety, and social tension. Any redesign that treated it as a pure UX problem would miss the point entirely.
The Insight
"Users weren't struggling with the interface. They were struggling with the emotional reality of asking their friends for money."
Design Process
Research & Insights
App reviews as research data
1-star reviews were the richest source of real user pain. No single user was fully satisfied despite 5M downloads — a signal that the core UX model was broken, not just rough around the edges.
Calculator is the real competitor
Users were opening the phone's built-in calculator for quick splits. The app's true competition wasn't Venmo — it was the calculator app. That clarity shaped every design decision.
Color psychology for emotional UX
The original aggressive green felt demanding and transactional. Softer greens and blues — lighter, more soothing — addressed the emotional weight of asking friends for money without making it clinical.
Key Design Decisions
01
Introduce "Split-Wisely" — itemized bill splitting
The centrepiece of the redesign was a bill-scanning flow that let users photograph a receipt, have it parsed via API, and assign individual line items to specific people. In 2016 this was a design concept. In 2020, Splitwise shipped it as a premium feature — exactly as designed.
02
Rebrand toward emotional softness
Moved from the demanding, saturated original palette toward lighter greens and blues that feel closer to calm reassurance than financial urgency. The brand needed to communicate "this is fine, we'll figure it out together" — not "you owe money, pay up."
03
Unify iOS and Android experiences
The original app had completely different UX across platforms — a jarring inconsistency for users who switched devices. The redesign established a single interaction model that adapted to platform conventions without losing coherence across the ecosystem.
Outcomes & Impact
2020
Splitwise adopted itemized bill-scanning as a premium feature — 4 years after this redesign
5 Issues
Core usability problems resolved: itemized splits, language clarity, navigation, one-bill-many-payers, UI consistency
2 Platforms
Unified design system applied across iOS and Android for the first time
4 Years
Time between this concept and Splitwise validating it by shipping it themselves
Learnings
Money is emotional. Any product that handles money and ignores its emotional weight will always feel transactional and cold — even if the UX is technically clean.
1-star reviews are a research goldmine. They're raw, unfiltered, and specific in ways that interviews rarely are. They should be the first stop in any redesign audit.
Sometimes the best validation comes years later. Good ideas don't expire — they wait for the market to be ready. This project taught me to trust the work even when the timing isn't right.