Splid’it — Split Bills, Not Friendships. Part I: The Prequel.
UX-ing my own project: Trying to explain my thought process for an app design on day zero. Then, fast-forwarding two months later and ripping off the bandage. Ouch.
Details
Role: Project Management, User Research & Insights, Product Strategy, Ideation, Wireframing, Hi-Fidelity Mockups, Presentation Designer & Presenter.
Team: Junhan Foong.
Solution: Mobile App
Preface
Prior to becoming a User Experience (UX) Design Student, we were tasked with solving a problem (from a selection of three problems), take it as far as we wanted, and then present our solution. This admissions task was presumably a mechanism to ensure that we (i.e. anyone applying to become a UX Student) knew what we were applying for, were serious about it, and could work autonomously by ourselves.
If you were here for a stock-standard case study — you might want to turn away. I repeat — this is not a case study.
Instead, this will be a weird hybrid of:
- Recounting my thought-process as someone with absolutely zero experience and no prior knowledge in the UX Process.
- Ripping off the bandage — exposing some of the flaws (to the internet) at my own expense and dissecting my old thought-process; all in hopes that it would illustrate my own growth in the last two months.
Will my own design process change and evolve as I gain more experience? You bet.
Will my thinking expand over more time and with more exposure within the digital space? Absolutely.
Do I like a good “close call” car crash video? No, you sick f*ck. But clearly you do — because you’ve read this far. So buckle up — we’re in for a ride.
Project Overview
I was asked to consider how the experience of splitting a bill at a restaurant between a group of people could be improved with a mobile application.
In addition, I was also prompted with the following:
- What are the problems you are trying to solve?
- What was your discovery journey like? Did you do research? If so, what?
- What would it look like?
This article documents the initial thought process behind Splid’it, an app for split bills, the parts of “the UX process” it fell short in, and what I hope to improve on in the next iteration.
The Problem
Let’s be honest:
We’ve all been there — after a nice meal with a group of friends, the waiter leaves the bill on the table and… Everyone awkwardly looks around at each other.
Oh boy — how are we going to split this one up?
Awkward
There’s a deep feeling in my stomach — and no, it’s not from the excitement and anticipation of my order.
It’s that awkward feeling of having to ask a restaurant if they accept split bills — whether it is before ordering, and even more so, at the end.
Unfair
Splitting the bill evenly? Unfair.
I didn’t order extra side dishes, and definitely didn’t agree to ordering a few rounds of drinks!
Time-consuming
As group orders get larger, it gets even more confusing, complicated, and time-consuming to track what everyone has ordered.
And nobody has time to do mental gymnastics right after a night out.
Proposed Solution
No more fiddling about with change, lost receipts, or disagreements about the balance. — Just Splid’it.
Process:
ONE: “Diving into the deep-end, and realising there wasn’t any water in the pool in the first place.” — aka a Solution-First Approach.
With the brief in mind, I defaulted to conceptualising a design solution right away (more on those steps, later). But in this case — the solution was obvious. It was a bill splitting app — duh!
Taking a step back — I thought of my next approach. “Maybe I should design based on all the gripes I have when splitting a bill?” Uh oh.
Learning Opportunity #1: I designed with the idea that a solution to my own problems when it came to bill splitting applied to others. Sure, it may coincidentally satisfy a cross-section of users, but the lack of research in the early stages was alarming. You are probably cringing at this point — I know I am.
Learning Opportunity #2: With a lack of a clear research plan in place, and me designing based on a bunch of assumptions and biases I had, was bill splitting even a problem? At least some basic research (such as comparative and competitive analysis) and insights from others would help validate or dispel that hypothesis.
TWO: The lack of a clear Primary Persona.
Like a parent remaining silent on who their favourite child was in order to “keep the peace”, I too had no clear direction over who was my primary persona. These were my “personas” at the time:
For someone who initially had no idea what a “persona” was (or how to write one), it’s not bad — it covers some of the general formatting and some (somewhat) realistic real-life problems.
Friendship ended with Dee, Now Jay is my best friend.
Learning Opportunity #3: Again — the current behaviours, frustrations and needs were not based on any research but instead based on a “target-market approach” (who I thought this design solution would satisfy). The insights themselves were not bad, but without the research to back it up the personas were nothing more than being full of hot air.
Learning Opportunity #4: I never really designed these personas with a primary or secondary persona in mind. While we all want to strive for true equality in the world, in the context of this project I never clarified who was my primary persona, and who was my secondary persona. This just meant that I wasn’t really designing for one person in mind, but multiple personas, at the same time.
THREE: “I got 99 Problems… That’s all. 99 Problems.” — aka Too many problems, and not a single clearly-defined one:
In an (in retrospect, poorly structured) attempt to show how I organised various attitudes, feelings, and problems into one image I came up with the following:
This was in hopes that it would nicely segway into my next part of my presentation which was trying to highlight the key problems and possible solutions and features. In a way, and unknowingly so at the time, you could say that this was my way of defining the problem and “ideating”.
Learning Opportunity #5: what was lacking was a single clear problem statement — I listed three key problems (all of which could still be valid) but I should have clearly defined one problem statement and attempted to solve for one problem at a time.
Learning Opportunity #6: I listed down every idea for a feature/solution I could, like they were a shopping list of things I would work on and tick-off one by one. Instead what I should have done was to place these against an effort-impact matrix to figure out what was my Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that would resolve the core problems and the rest could be implemented over time (with some testing).
I also tried to narrow down my key priorities into three points, originally thinking that it would show that I was not tied to certain ideas and was able to focus on (what I thought at the time) the key essentials of this app.
Learning Opportunity #7: Again, I didn’t have an MVP, and had I focused on the one key or core problem my users would have had, I would have realised that my one feature I needed to design for the most (which, to be fair — I did.. Again unknowingly) was that the app needed to be flexible in split payments (i.e. to split evenly or to split based on an itemised value per person).
Design:
“I-screen, you screen, we all screen for I-screen!” — aka a first crack at Wireframing and Hi-fidelity Mockups.
I will admit that prior to my first steps in becoming a UX Designer, I was seduced by the myriad of beautiful concept screens and app designs there are out there on the internet. I mean, that was all I thought designers did in the digital space did — the glossy end part of the process.
Have I atoned for my sins, and re-entered into this world a reformed person by renouncing my love for the User Interface (UI) aspect?
I think you forget that this is a tongue-in-cheek article with no plot twist and a mediocre story arc — so, my friends, to answer that question: a resounding NO.
I still love my pretty UI screens but I have a much deeper understanding and appreciation of the early stages of design. Since my wake-up call (which, thankfully happened within the first week of my study), I have been working rigorously on becoming a more well-rounded designer in the entire process.
Learning Opportunity #8: To be fair to myself, I was not aware that testing (testing the concept first of all, then later usability testing) was a thing designers did as part of the process until much later. You can see here I jumped straight from wireframing to a high-fidelity mockup without testing the idea, simple interactions or buttons, and flows on users first. At the time, I was just having too much fun picking up Figma for the first time and then getting carried away by letting the visual aspect lead the design.
Final Thoughts:
Dig at Arsenal fans aside (sorry), I bet you “8–2” be reminded that at the end of the day, this is a UX article after all (see what I did there?).
Have you been keeping score? I know I have.
Learning Opportunities: 8
- Designing self-referentially (oh no).
- Lack of a research plan.
- Lukewarm persona design.
- Designing with multiple personas in mind (no clear persona).
- Lacking a clear problem statement.
- Trying to solve problems with too many solutions.
- Not knowing what my MVP was.
- Not testing the concept/idea, and not testing the usability of the product.
Small Wins: 2
- I had my first taste of one of the tools used within this space (Figma) and had a lot of fun figuring out how to use it.
- I can look back at this project — appreciate it for what it was, and laugh about it.
It was clear that the way I approached this brief and my design was very product-oriented instead of being based on research, hard facts and statistics. Say what you want about the outcome, but I was glad I had this project (and reflection) as a baseline to measure any future success from, and something to remind myself of my growth so far.
Plus, I got to be slightly self-deprecating which is always a win in my book.
If you have read all the way to the end — thank you.
If you have read all the way to the end in hopes that there would be a link to a Part II or a “sequel” to this saga?
PS: Jks, there will be a Part II coming soon (I Promise).
Hello, I’m Junhan.
I’m a UX/UI Designer based in Melbourne, Australia.
Feel free to check out more of my work at junhanfoong.com or reach out on LinkedIn!
