Venmo UX Critique

Venmo provides an easy yet secure way to facilitate payments between friends. The actual paying flow is quite intuitive, as all that is needed is a recipient (which is autocompleted with some sort of smart suggestion system), the amount wished to be delivered, and a short description of what the payment is for. There are also a few features that make the payment process a bit smoother as well, such as a custom calculator keyboard that does calculations for you in case you do not want to. Payment is instant, as the money is first taken out of your Venmo balance then an optionally linked ‘fallback’ bank account, with plenty of alerts and warnings if the money being transacted is more than what is in your savings.

Overall, Venmo does what it is supposed to do quite efficiently. However, there are some drawbacks to using the app that I would like to highlight. Although Venmo is known for being a personal payment service, there is little indication of this on the landing screen. Instead, you are shown a chronological feed of what your friends have been up to, with a hard to reach tab bar on the top displaying options to check out a global feed or just your personal transactions. I am not entirely sure who would ever want to scroll through a list of random people’s buying and spending tendencies (especially with regard to the global view)!

As a result of the feeds having such a high priority, what I perceive to be the more essential aspects of the app are disregarded. For example, the actual button to pay / request money is placed in a hard to reach place on the landing page, and its icon is not that intuitive. Also, for other core features such as managing bank accounts, it takes users three taps plus scrolling through a long list of preferences to do so, which needs to be improved.

In comparison to other designs, I would say that Venmo is fairly standard: the feed functions like any other with the ability to like and comment on posts, and the sidebar is a common theme across many apps, especially Android ones. For the payment screen, the designers try to leave as much white space as possible, which keeps the UI simple and aesthetic.

After researching some of Venmo’s marketing techniques, it quickly becomes apparent why the designers chose to emphasize the feed elements rather than the actual payment system. While banks and their products (most notably Zelle) more or less dominate the older generations of small peer to peer transactions, Venmo targets the millennial generation. This generation has grown up with smartphones, constantly scrolling through the feeds of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. As a result, the Venmo designers must have wanted to tap into the addictive nature of an infinite feed, hoping that users would not only use Venmo as a transactional service but also as another social media app.

In terms of the usability principles, I would argue that the efficiency of Venmo is lacking, due to the roundabout nature of actually being able to pay someone. In the same vein, memorability is also mediocre, especially with regards to the settings screen. All preferences for the app (19 at my last count) are contained within a single scrollable screen, and contain options for anything from profile pictures to adding a new bank account. Unfortunately, it is also somewhat difficult to return back to the home screen from the settings, as you have to reopen the sidebar to select home. Furthermore, Venmo’s affordances are for the most part intuitive, a notable exception being the pay icon for which I suggest a redesign later.

For a redesign, I would suggest that the global feed completely be removed, and have the friends feed occupy the vacant spot. Now, with a spot in the top tab bar open on top, I would place the pay screen there, so it is visible as soon as users launch the app. I would then put bank account / related functions where the pay system used to be, so that the most used parts of the app are at most one click away.

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