Designing for Privacy: adding a messaging feature to Venmo
A Venmo feature concept.
An unlikely marriage
Venmo was originally thought of by its founders as a way to bring levity to what is typically an awkward interaction: asking someone to pay you back. With this idea they merged personal finance with social media, an uncommon pairing.
The social network feature within the app is an essential component of Venmo’s unique value add and at least partially responsible for its rapid adoption, especially among millennials. Not only does Venmo enable easy and efficient payments among peers, it adds an aspect of connection and fun to otherwise boring transactions.
At the same time, this same social media feature puts a great deal of user data and private information at risk. Unless you change the default settings, anyone can see every transaction you make on the platform. Several studies have even been conducted where researchers have been able to piece together intimate details about a user’s personal life simply by tracking their activity in Venmo.
A shift toward privacy
Among my own circle of peers, I’ve observed a gradual transition toward increased measures to ensure privacy while using the platform. In a broader context, the enormous Equifax data breach of 2017 (among others) brought the issue of online data security to the forefront of the public’s mind.
Thinking about these broader trends and what they might mean for Venmo, I realized my friends who had updated their default settings to private were compromising at least some aspect of the social sharing that Venmo encourages and relies on for user engagement.
Identifying the opportunity
Realizing this tension that exists between two key components of the Venmo platform — social sharing and user privacy — I saw an opportunity to further explore the relationship between the two..
I began to think about ways that Venmo could be reconfigured with the consideration of increased user privacy, while at the same time maintaining the social media aspect that is a key factor in user engagement and, by extension, Venmo’s success.
My next step was to validate the business opportunity through research
Validating the Opportunity
The business case for social media
I first wanted to validate the importance of social media as a contributing factor in Venmo’s success. A survey of available data confirmed that the majority of Venmo’s user base falls within a younger demographic and is engaged with other social media platforms:
- Nearly 75% of Venmo users are below the age of 35
- 89% of Venmo users have the Facebook app (compare with 44% of PayPal users)
- 82% of Venmo users have an Instagram account (compare with 36% of PayPal users)
Issue of transparency
Though an incredibly well-designed and useful product, Venmo has received criticism for its handling of user privacy. Some have challenged the app for burying the default privacy settings and also not making it clear that, unless manually updated by the user, all activity is visible to the public.
I decided I wanted to test feelings about the current privacy controls with other users to gather more data. I’ll discuss this further with my user interviews.
Understanding Venmo as a social platform
If the problem is that people are uncomfortable with a large audience having access to their activity, what are other models of social interaction that could encourage user engagement but within a more private context. I looked to other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat for industry standards. Both Instagram direct messages and Snapchat create a framework that encourages conversation between individual users. I also considered the Close Friends feature of Instagram Stories as an idea to potentially explore.
User Interviews
My next step was to speak to Venmo users directly. I interviewed 7 users who fell within the app’s primary demographic (between the ages 20–35 and engaged with other social media platforms). I was looking to learn more about their general motivations for using the app, in addition to their feelings about the social media features and personal privacy.
What I heard
1. A shift toward privacy
— There was a general trend among users toward increased privacy as 5/7 participants had updated their default settings to private
2. Minimal social engagement
— Users noted a lack of interest in the main activity feed. Most social interaction occurs between two individuals involved in a transaction
3. Lack of transparency
— Users unanimously agreed that the current privacy settings are confusing and a little unclear
Defining the user and problem
Identifying pain points
From my research, I knew my primary user fell within the millennial age range (23–35) and was an active user of other social media platforms.
I created a storyboard and customer journey map to create more context for my primary persona. Incorporating insights gathered from user interviews, the storyboard and journey map both reinforce a lack of engagement with the activity feed and the friction experienced when trying to update privacy settings.
The problem
Venmo users need more opportunities for personalized interaction because they are increasingly using the app with greater privacy measures.
From my POV statement, I brainstormed several how might we statements as a framework for my thinking moving into the design phase.
How might we:
- Make users feel comfortable sharing information, on their own terms
- Encourage social connection in a way that feels safe and personal
- Create a sense of trust between users and Venmo’
- Help users connect more with friends and family
- Help users continue social interaction even after the transaction is complete
The solution
Ultimately, I re-designed Venmo’s existing payment screen, merging a new chat feature into the task flow of creating a request and making a payment.
The added chat feature encourages users to extend their social interaction beyond the completion of a payment, in the context of a one-on-one conversation.
I also modified the home screen activity feed, incorporating a Megaphone feature that would provide personalized notifications like privacy setting reminders, birthday notifications, or memories of past activity that would encourage users to interact with friends while creating more transactions.
How I got there
Making interactions feel personal
Before ultimately reaching that final solution, I first started with a brainstorm of design features that would increase social interaction in a way that felt personal and private, but still fun.
I explored a few potential solutions:
- Personal Messaging (my solution): would already be familiar to users from their experience using other social media platforms; could help extend interactions beyond the transactions
- Notifications in the activity feed (my solution): personalized notifications would make the home screen more interesting to users, and also be a way to generate more transactions and social engagement in the app
- Privacy Dashboard: users would have a personalized panel with their security settings and other notifications; I ultimately ruled this out, thinking the effort would outweigh the impact and felt like a clunky solution
- Closed Groups/Top Friends: Users could limit activity visibility to a hand-selected group of friends; has some potential, but Venmo already has a privacy setting that limits visibility to friends — this felt like an inadequate solution for my users who strongly dislike the group aspect of Venmo’s social sharing
Opportunity for greatest impact
Weighing these different options, I returned to what I heard from users during my initial interviews. Unanimously, users noted their primary goal when using Venmo was to make or complete a transaction with another user. Additionally, everyone commented on a lack of interest in the main activity feed.
Design Goals:
1. Extend the interaction between two users beyond the completion of a transaction
2. Make the activity feed more relevant and actionable
With these goals in mind, I decided to move forward with the idea of a messaging feature that would enable text-like conversations between two users and personalized notifications on the main activity feed.
Designing the Solution
Encourage interaction, reduce friction
When thinking about how to best integrate the chat feature into the existing app, my challenge was to design a solution that made the new feature discoverable to users but not disruptive of their primary goal.
I learned from my interviews that users visit Venmo with the primary goal of making a transaction, not a social interaction. Knowing this, I decided the best solution would be to incorporate the feature into the task flow of that primary goal — a task flow was already familiar to users and would ensure discoverability.
Designing the interaction
After sketching out a few options for the combined transaction/messaging screen including a toggle or dashboard control, I felt the design was still feeling like a bit of a disruption or afterthought.
I looked to Venmo’s current interaction design as a model:
Dissecting this screen further, I mapped out the current user task flow for creating a transaction. Recalling my storyboard and customer journey map, I realized the opportunity was to extend the task flow beyond the end of the transaction.
The added messaging feature would integrate into the user’s existing task flow while also providing the option to continue the social interaction beyond the payment.
Making it discoverable
Hoping to avoid complicating the information architecture of the app, I initially thought it might not be necessary to add a separate menu item for messages, but integrate it into the flow of existing pages (outlined in the site map below).
After testing mid-fidelity wireframes with several Venmo users, I modified my design to make it more discoverable:
The issue of privacy
My initial conversations with users not only revealed a trend toward increased concern for personal privacy, but also a general feeling that the current design of the app could be more transparent in communicating security settings and how to update them.
I tested a finished prototype of the design with several users, asking them how they might expect to control the privacy settings of the new messaging feature and incorporated their feedback into the screens below.
Measuring Success
To measure the success of my re-design, I focused on several metrics:
Testing the flow — using the final prototype I created in Adobe XD, I conducted remote usability tests with several Venmo users, giving them the task of creating a transaction. Users experienced no issue completing the task, validating my decision to incorporate the chat feature into the existing framework.
“I really like that everything exists on one page now. It’s much easier to see my payment history.”
“It’s really convenient you can just scroll. You don’t have to go back and forth between different transactions.”
Increased engagement — with my final prototype, I walked six users through a remote concept test, demonstrating the new features and then asking them for their overall impressions and what scenarios they could see themselves using the new features in, if any.
“I love the birthday prompt. I would definitely use that with friends who live in different cities.”
“It wouldn’t be my primary form of messaging but I could definitely see myself sending messages to friends.”
Building trust — I chose two users from my initial interviews who were most critical of the app’s current handling of privacy. I walked them through the prototype and asked them questions exploring how the new features would change their feelings of trust and engagement with the app
“I really like to see the extra heads up on the home screen, especially for users who maybe aren’t as conscious of their privacy as I am.”
“The increased communication surrounding privacy makes the app feel more transparent.”
Conclusion and Next Steps
This project was a challenging but really fun exercise. Part of the beauty and genius of the current Venmo platform is the simplicity of its design — what gives it such great utility is the absence of feature clutter. I wanted to be especially mindful of this and design a solution that would be of actual use to users, not just another page to ignore in the hamburger menu.
One of the biggest challenges of this project was incorporating the feature into the existing task flows and IA of the app. It ended up being a great opportunity to really dig into task and user flows and think strategically about user interaction patterns.
As a next step, I would love to explore more options for the Megaphone feature on the home screen. I think there is a huge opportunity to encourage more transactions — it could be prompting users to donate to a particular charity, celebrate an event, or even explore partnerships with vendors so users could send friends gift cards within the app.
