Observations & Interviews

NOTE : Names of people interviewed have been changed to preserve anonymity.

1. 

Lessons learned

• Dog owners are probably willing to have his/her dog socialize
• Dog owners faced problem of coordination with other dog owners
• Dog owners might expect a platform that collects info about dogs and their owners 

2. A Working Professional - George Jetson

Lessons learned

• working young adults like to spend time in group recreational activities, involving group expenses.
• Keeping track of recurring expenses via email exchanges is not scalable and quickly becomes unclear.
• Records among different people can become inconsistent, especially with debts cycles among groups.
• It is uncomfortable to keep track of debts, payments and remind people.
• It is a tedious process to remember bank details for different people and pay each one via online transfers.

3. A Group of Roomates - Elroy Jetson

Elroy shares his apartment with two other rooommates. Every month his roommates and he have to pay rent and utilities. These are recurring expenses and each one's share remains the same. However, occasionally, he is unable to pay his rent by the due date, and requests on of his roommates to cover it for him for a few days. He keeps track of these using his notebook which though manual, is easy to maintain. 

He enjoys taking short weekend trips along with his roommates to a National Park or his parents' cabin. He usually finds that these trips involve a lot of small expenses like gas, toll, snacks, etc. These are usually difficult to keep track of such small expenses, and is left wondering what he spent money on by the end of the trip. His roommate tried recording these expenses using a notebook and manually calculating them later which was difficult in terms of dividing the expenses appropriately. Since this happened often, Elroy's roomate switched to using a spreadsheet using his smartphone. He would later run a nifty little Haskell script to compute the individual expenses. Elroy finds that his friend's solution helped make this process easier, but finds that entering details into a single smartphone or shared spreadsheet isn't easy and they would often forget to run the script to settle expenses soon after a trip. Elroy says "(We) Forget who owes what. (I) Won't get paid back, and I wouldn't ask my friends to pay me back because whats a few dollars between us."

Lessons learned

• people living together keep track of recurring shared expenses manually via notebooks.
• Trips taken together often involve multiple expenses which are difficult to keep track of. 
• User would like to know exactly what he spent on during the trip, both individually and as a group.
• Recording (Data-entry) these expenses using smartphones and spreadsheets is not easy since it requires all the expenses to be recorded either on the same phone, or requires consolidating multiple sources, or sharing spreadsheets online.
• Calculating expenses can often be tedious when done by hand.
• Automating the process using scripts seems like a temporary patch with potential for a cleaner alternative.

User Classes

Students

• Students often enjoy having meals or shopping together with friends.
• Most students prefer paying individually by splitting the bill.
• Some teenagers do not have credit card or checking account so that they have to pay by cash, which makes the paying process even more inefficient.

Working Professionals

• Many working professionals hold group meetings during meal time or eat out for lunch as a group.
• They are usually very busy and they might be happy to use an efficient method to track and pay debts.
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Clubs/Organizations

• Organizations often need to purchase public facilities, which should be paid by every member.
• The amount in the bill might be relatively large.

Needs & Goals

People who make the payment

• An easy way to record the expense and related details
• An transparent and automated way to calculate the individual expense.
• A non-intrusive way to share it with people involved.
• A clear way to keep track of debts.
• A friendly way for a user to remind people that owe them
• An easy and secure way for one person to make a payment and be reimbursed by other members of the group.

People who need to repay

• A transparent record of the expenses details.
• A way to keep track of total debts with an individual.
• A way to shuffle debts and break through cycles amongst groups.
• A way to record payment or clearing of a specific debt.
• An easy and secure way for a person to allow someone to make a payment and either deduct the money he owes from his or her account, or to create an IOU virtual receipt