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Splitwise Notifications Strategy

Role: Content strategist and designer

Timeframe: 10 weeks

Tools: Figma

Background

Splitwise is a tool that provides a better way to split expenses with family or friends. The app is used in many situations, like helping roommates split living costs, allocating dinner bills amongst family members, or divvying travel expenses between a bridal party. The mission of Splitwise is "to remove the stress, awkwardness, and confusion that money places on our most important relationships." Despite Splitwise's intent, stress is still felt by users.

Based on personal experience using Splitwise on a group vacation, I noticed that stress around money occurred not only for me but for all members of our travel group. The following case study is a personal project exploring the factors that cause Splitwise users stress and proposing a content strategy solution to resolve stress points.

Project objective

Users download apps hoping they will help them achieve goals, change their behavior, and ultimately make their lives easier. However, when things don't go as they hope, users are likely to blame apps even if they are the ones responsible for their frustration. Even though Splitwise provides tools to remove the stress, awkwardness, and confusion money places on relationships, there are gaps between this intention and what is experienced by users. The objective of this case study is to create a solution for Splitwise that will better achieve its mission of reducing the stress money places on relationships.

Course of action

  1. Identify what thoughts, emotions, and actions happen between when an expense is incurred to when it is entered into Splitwise.

  2. Determine user attitudes toward Splitwise and identify areas of delight and improvement.

  3. Understand how dynamics within a traveling group add to pain points.

  4. Create a solution to help users help themselves.

Phases 1 & 2 - Empathize and Define

Understanding the user and determining their problems

Research

Method 1: App Store reviews

The App Store was analyzed for trends among favorable and critical reviews to see where users find delight and frustration. These findings were useful in identifying areas of improvement.

Method 2: User interviews

I interviewed three Splitwise users who used the Groups function while traveling to understand motivations, thoughts, and emotions in their experiences. These findings were helpful in forming a solution that worked with users' existing patterns of thinking.

Empathy map

Creating an empathy map was useful in consolidating the research. While the App Store findings and interview results expressed many of the same frustrations, users took different approaches to resolve these frustrations, such as keeping receipts vs. not. The empathy map aggregates these findings and helped inform the persona.

empathy map 2

Persona

The persona which best summarized the research culminates is Bianca Alvarez. Her demographics represent the interviewees, and her goals and frustrations highlight themes found during research. Creating this persona focused the ideation process around Bianca's goals and frustrations rather than trying to create a solution that meets the needs of every Splitwise user.

Persona - Bianca Alvarez.png

Findings

There were three key findings that came out of the research:

  1. Users are unaware of Splitwise's capabilities.

  2. Users need to input expenses immediately to have a stress-free experience with the app.

  3. Users feel frustrated by lagging group members.

01. Users are unaware of Splitwise's capabilities

Users with both positive and negative experiences can agree that Splitwise is tricky to figure out. However, those who are able to uncover the app’s capabilities on their own are satisfied and delighted with the ease it brings to allocating expenses.

Takeaway: Splitwise needs to make its features easily discoverable so more users can experience delight.

reasearch finding 1a
research finding 1b
research finding 1c

02. Users need to input expenses immediately to have a stress-free experience

Users with both positive and negative experiences agree that timely input of expenses is necessary to have a successful experience with the app. Users with positive experiences added expenses as they were incurred to avoid playing catch-up at the end of the trip. Based on the screenshot below from Splitwise's website, it's clear that the intent is for users to add expenses as they come up to avoid the frustration of forgetting expense details if they procrastinate.

Takeaway: Splitwise needs to help users input expenses immediately to bypass feelings of frustration with the app.

research finding 2c
research finding 2d
research finding 2b
research finding 2a

03. Users feel frustrated by lagging group members

When traveling in a group, those who use Splitwise as intended can still experience stress when other group members are not timely about their expenses. This leads to errors because someone can’t remember expense details, creating back and forth between group members and a delay in settling up expenses.

Takeaway: Splitwise needs to help groups settle up expenses accurately and promptly to remove the stress money puts on relationships.

research finding 3

It's frustrating because the app doesn't know who we're waiting on. It'd be nice if there was a way to send a reminder to the group.
- Interview Participant

Phases 3 & 4 - Ideate and Prototype

Generating ideas and bringing a solution to life

Solution brainstorm

When brainstorming solutions, the goals of making existing features more discoverable, improving the timeliness of expense input, and settling up group expenses quickly were top of mind. I also considered the impact, feasibility, and implementation time for each solution. Based on these considerations, I ideated three content-focused solutions: a microcopy strategy, a pop-up tips strategy, and a notifications strategy.

The microcopy strategy would focus on revising the microcopy throughout the app, namely in the "Add an expense" section. While choosing new vocabulary and inserting copy to highlight new features could be helpful to the user, these changes didn't seem impactful enough to resolve users' frustrations.

The pop-up tips strategy would add in pop-ups to the existing user flow to point out features and provide guidance to users. However, because pop-ups are not currently a part of the experience, this strategy would require development time which prolongs getting a solution to users. Given this, I did not feel like this would be the best solution for Splitwise.

The notifications strategy uses Splitwise's existing technology to push prompts and information to the user. This strategy is more flexible than the other two, as notifications can give encouragement to input expenses and provide educational tidbits all from the phone's home screen. With these and the considerations below in mind, I decided that the notifications strategy was the best solution for users.

Microcopy strategy

  • Only works if user opens the app

  • Changes may be too small to be impactful to user

  • Requires additional research

Pop-up tips strategy

  • Only works if user opens the app

  • Could help user uncover existing features

  • Longer development time

Notifications strategy

  • Prompts user to open the app

  • Flexibility in types of content shown

  • Easy to implement

Defining Splitwise's voice

Before creating a notifications strategy to resolve users' frustrations, it was important to define the key attributes of Splitwise's voice. This was done by reading through the company website and app and jotting down words that described the copy writing. Some adjectives which describe Splitwise's voice are:

  • clear

  • valuable

  • friendly

  • approachable

  • helpful

  • understanding

  • informative

  • empathetic

  • familiar

  • relatable

  • plain-spoken

  • kind

Upon analysis, these words point to a voice that is clear, empathetic, and approachable. These three voice traits along with the goals to educate the user on the product, encourage timely input of expenses, and relieve users of social awkwardness provided axes for the voice chart below.

Strategizing using the voice chart

With the voice attributes and goals determined, the next step was to outline criteria for the notifications. I worked through the chart one row at a time and considered what types of language and prompts would convey each voice attribute the best. Clear notifications could address the goals head on, empathetic notifications needed to focus on user's emotions, and approachable notifications needed to show understanding for a user's situations. The chart below shows how these goals will be addressed through the three voice attributes.

Voice chart.png

Solution

Below are the final notification prototypes addressing the strategic objectives through the lens of Splitwise's voice attributes.

01. Educate users on Splitwise's allocation offerings

The aim here was to educate users in a way that would encourage curiosity and exploration. Being clear, empathetic, and approachable framed the copy for these notifications, giving Splitwise three ways to achieve the goal of educating users on its features.

Result: Users are pushed information and tutorials on expense allocation features instead of being expected to find these themselves.

Clear

goal 1 clear.png

Empathetic

goal 1 empath.png

Approachable

goal 1 approachable.png

02. Encourage users to input expenses immediately

To achieve this goal, it was necessary to strike a balance between reminding users without nagging them. Writing these notifications through the voice attributes of being clear, empathetic, and approachable ensures that notifications are meaningful to the user.

Result: Users are prompted to input expenses on time which helps them avoid the pitfalls of procrastination and leads to a more satisfying experience with the app.

Clear

goal 2 clear.png

Empathetic

goal 2 empath.png

Approachable

goal 2 approachable.png

03. Relieve group members of social awkwardness

The solution for this goal allows Splitwise to become a neutral intermediary for communications around money, which generally is an awkward subject for friends and family to navigate. The notifications broach the issue by being clear but not harsh, empathetic but not assuming, and approachable and friendly.

Result: Splitwise carries the burden of communication around a sensitive issue, removing the awkwardness users face when confronting friends about money and helping users get their finances settled as soon as possible.

Clear

goal 3 clear.png

Empathetic

Approachable

goal 3 approachable.png
goal 3 empath.png

Next steps

The following steps will help Splitwise to test this solution and continue to improve its user experience:

  • Release notifications as A/B test to Groups users.

  • Incorporate notifications that are proven successful.

  • Measure changes in ratings and reviews in the App Store.

  • Continue to research pain points around these issues and ideate content strategies to improve the user experience.

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