Scenario
Sally Smith is a recent college graduate working in New York City at BigName design firm. Since she is only a starting analyst, she lives on a tight budget, especially with the high New York city tax and cost of living. Sally current lives in a Manhattan apartment with three roommates. Not only is Sally living with these three people, but she happens to be best friends with them as well. This makes life really great for Sally because she has a nice group to go out with on the weekends. However, as time has passed, Sally and her roommates have noticed that they have a lot of debts to resolve all the time.
From housing bills and utility bills to bar taps, taxi fares, and movie tickets, Sally and her roommates constantly struggle to figure out how much each person owes another in total. Between her and her roommates, they find themselves either not remembering an amount of debt, disputing an amount of debt, or disputing a debt completely. One of Sally's roommates, Jackie, had once tried to take up the task of keeping track of everyone's debt with a personal finance application on her iPhone, but this task proved to not only be too cumbersome for not only Jackie, but she found it impossible to track all of the roommates down at once to settle debts since they all have different schedules (and don't want to settle debts when they're going out!). With her busy schedule, Sally would really love to be able to have a system that allows her and her roommates to keep track of their mutual debt, dispute any debts that are questionable, and review all of their transactions at the end of the month when they pay their bills. Notably, Sally would like to be able to easily add new transactions (when she foots the dinner bill for a group of friends), easily view all transactions posted, and also flag a bad post if she wants to dispute an faulty transaction.
Designs
For these designs, we decided that we would all create our own personal designs without consulting each other. That way, we can use our creativity to the fullest without any outside influences. Below are the three unique designs.
Design #1
This design borrows emphasizes consistency throughout the application and simplicity.
Imagine that Sally has just opened up the PennyPincher website...
Figure 1 displays the home screen of the application for Sally Smith. In this screen, she can see a list of all of the people she has a PennyPincher connection with. Each row itself is a link to a screen displaying all debts for that particular person (Figure 2). On each row, three main user interface devices are shown. On the very left, there is a checkbox used for selecting the user when Sally wants to delete a connection with that particular user. To the right, there is, on some rows, a button with a label representing the number of disputes that particular user has with Sally. Next to the disputes button, there is a convenient "add" button that will bring Sally to the pop-up add screen (Figure 3). On the very right, there is a value of how much money that Sally owes or is owed by that particular person. (Negative sign (-) means Sally owes the person, and positive sign (+) means that the person owes Sally).
Imagine that Sally has pressed the row with "Roommate #1"
Figure 2 displays a screen displaying all of the debts between Sally and Roommate #1. The layout of Figure 2 is consistent with Figure 1, with the difference being listing debts instead of people. Just like before, checkboxes are on the very left of each row to perform row selection for the "delete", "nudge", and "dispute" functions located at the bottom of the screen. On the right side of some debts, there is a dispute flag, indicating a dispute on the debt. On the right side, the amount of debt is once again shown, using the same (+/-) system to indicate the direction of the debt.
Imagine that Sally presses the Add button on the bottom left of Figure 2.
Figure 3 displays the add debt pop-up screen. The idea behind that idea of an add "pop-up" is that users can add a transaction from home page (Figure 1) as well as a user's page (Figure 2). This duplication may seem ineffective, but since "add" is such a commonly used function, users would appreciate not having to go back to a certain screen to "add." The add pop-up itself is pretty simple, with three main fields: name, date, and amount. The user can simply click on the field to bring up a suitable keyboard (on touchscreen phones) or simply click the field to gain focus to type. At the bottom, there is a simple add button to submit the debt. After this is done, the pop-up simply disappears.
Imagine that Sally is on Figure 2 (the page displaying all of Roommate 1's mutual debts), selects two items (checkboxes on the left are checked), and presses the dispute button on the bottom right corner. This would send a dispute in the system to Roommate 1.
So now, imagine that you are Roommate 1 and you are looking at the Penny Pincher application. On your home screen (Figure 4), you see that Sally Smith has disputed 2 items based on the red button next to her name. You can simply tap that button which will bring you to Figure 5. On this page, you see the items that Sally has disputed. Here, you have the option of settling the dispute (button at the bottom). This will lead to Figure 6.
Imagine that Roommate 1 has pressed the "Settle Dispute" button.
Figure 6 shows the "settle dispute" pop-up menu. In this pop-up menu, there is a "new amount" field that is defaulted to $0.00. This default has been chosen to make it easy for users to accept disputes (clearing the debt). This type of menu also makes it easy for the two users to agree on a new amount of the debt if they choose so. if the new amount is set to $0.00, the debt will be automatically deleted on both of the user's accounts.
Design #2
Upon logging in, the user will be greeted by the Home Page. At the top, there is a bar with the PennyPincher logo and three menu buttons to be displayed on all pages. A the home page specifically (which can be accessed by clicking on the PennyPincher logo at the top), the user will see a quick overview of the current “what is owed” status from the most recent closed transaction period. Reds (as taken from the term ‘in the red’) shows what the user owes other people, whereas Greens (for ‘in the money’ where green symbolizes as such) shows what other people owe the user. The Reds and Greens can be expanded and contracted as needed and will show the transactions under each with additional granularity.
Clicking on the transaction button will lead to a page where new transactions can be added. In this example, Eunice would like to add a transaction where she paid for dinner for a group of friends (with Adam W and Madeline J). Although she would have been fine to split the bill evenly, Madeline insisted that she pay a larger portion since she ordered a more exotic dish and have Adam and Eunice split the difference. After selecting the people involved in the transaction, specifying custom payments, and adding a quick description, Eunice posts the transaction.
Clicking on the summary button will load a new page that shows a list of compiled transactions. This can be filtered by transaction period, and further by date posted, by counterparty (who the transaction was with), by amount, by transaction type, etc. Clicking on the information icon will lead to a transactions description page.
With the transactions description page, details about the transaction are shown. Eunice sees that this transaction is faulty and decides to dispute it by clicking on the Dispute button. This leads to a new page that where she can add a quick memo/message about the dispute before submission. When the dispute is posted, the counterparty (Matt M in this case) will be notified for settlement.
Dimensions of Usability
PROS
Learnability: This design is similar to many existing applications on the market. There is a clearly defined menu bar at the top for easy navigation to feature pages; the summary page lists transactions in similar style to some online banking mobile-based displays.
Efficiency: A common action that users will encounter will be to add a new transaction. The current design places the add transaction button to the top left of the screen for easy navigation on every page!
Safety: When there are faulty transactions, users have the ability to post a dispute for mistaken transactions. (Although not shown here in this design, the original poster of a transaction should have the ability to cancel it).
CONS
Learnability: While there are many features here that are commonly found in some well-known applications, it may be unclear what a transaction implies (as in, who is allowed to make a transaction and type of transaction). Since our implementation involves only one-way directional transaction relation, this may be difficult to learn or understand for users.
Further handling of disputes: Ease of tracking, settling, and following-up with disputes is currently unknown. This design provides an option to "settle" a dispute, such that the transaction will be effectively canceled. However it is a bit uncertain how to handle the case that a dispute is settled by an agreement on a new transaction amount.
Complex transactions: Consider the case where at a dinner, a group of 4 decide to evenly split a $100 dinner bill. However, some people are short on cash while others have extra on hand. So one person pays $50, another $40, and two of them $5 each. If in the end this should be equaled out such that all pay only $25 for the dinner, how would that happen? The solution to this is currently unknown.