✨ A deep dive into App Evolution

Making Monzo
41

Thank you so much for this :hot_coral_heart:. I have all the thoughts, so will start with the high-level then maybe go into detail later.

Firstly, as others have said, thank you. It’s excellent to see this sort of thing - and even more excellent to see how the thought process has evolved and the designs with it.

Which brings me to this: I’m all for a poll, but I’m not sure what it tells us. Prototypes A and B are definitely different options (on which I have thoughts!) but C is an evolution of - and the v1 is a build taking into account that feedback. So, I’m not too sure that picking an option is helpful here.

That said, I do have some thoughts on A vs B. I’m pretty much with the customer feedback - I do prefer A, but I also find it overwhelming. As I said on the new Monzo branding topic, I like my banking to be serene, calm and giving me actions by exception. Emotionally, it makes me feel the opposite of all of that. Which, incidentally, isn’t what I get from the hand drawn mock up top.

I do wonder if we’re missing a trick with the absence of budgeting/financial planning. The design takes an account/pot-centric approach to the main screen, whereas I’d much rather like to look at goals (have I an emergency fund, savings for those home improvements I wanted to do, gifts for the family etc) rather than the accounts they’re located in (I have a bunch of savings accounts that mean my goals are split across them). I’d also like to have more of an emphasis on things like free/safe/left to spend.

Finally a klaxon of caution (!). I totally get a v1 build is just that. And it’s totally right that it’s been hooked onto the existing feed / accounts screen. But I think this will ultimately fail if there’s not enough time and effort allocated to refining and updating those screens too. If that’s not done, this is just another layer of cruft put on top, adding to the technical debt and not ultimately fixing the underlying issues. I know that’s almost certainly not the intention, but the current card carousel version had other things planned that never came to pass. So I worry a bit about the long tail and the follow-through.

That all said, this looks amazing. And I’d totally be here to be able to configure the widgets. But like @N26throwaway says, it’s important to get the default sorted too. Very very keen to help test.

(On the basis that the Coral Crew never really get any perks, I’ll be cheeky: do hit me up on Monzo Slack if you’d like some early non-staff testing :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:)

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42

How do we get on the Monzo slack!? :smirk:

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43

Apply, interview, get-accepted and start working @ :monzo:. Simples.

(it used to be open to non-Monzo members on certain channels, then those were shut down. Then 2 unofficial Slack groups started up on the back of the shutdown)

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44

Looks like they’re using figma or a similar prototyping tool, perhaps @emmag can advise. This way I imagine they’re only building the minimum of what’s needed and coding when they’re ready to.

45

The more I see these prototypes, the more I prefer, personally a hybrid of A & C

Love the simplicity of the account balance and spent today bar, the graph and latest payments. And then the “at a glance section”

Otherwise it’s too cluttered, in my humble opinion.

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46

Monzo use Figma. Or at least Figma claimed (Monzo were among the brands they boasted as a client) when we were recently evaluating them.

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47

Yeah that would’ve been my guess, it’s essentially industry standard. I’ve seen others such as Invision used to great effect but one of the advantages I know of (perhaps others do this too) is you can bring them into Xcode to
Put the actual logic and code behind the fancy designs.

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48

And then there’s us. Using (primarily) Apple’s keynote for prototyping. :joy:

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49

I don’t think I explained well enough. This bit isn’t a prototype…

… It’s been built for staff release (and hopefully for us :soon:).

The point I was trying to get to what that it (for very good reasons) has been glued to existing screens but that those existing screens need to be updated or changed in the future. Otherwise it’s just one extra thing on top without really streamlining or fixing underlying issues.

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50

No I do get your point. I think that’s fine though at prototyping stage (which is what I would consider that screenshot to be) - it’s unlikely they could do it all at once so I’d imagine they’de have to consider how new things play nice with existing content.

I agree over time that for it to be immersive, improvements need to also happen

51

I’ve clipped the test main screen because I have thoughts/questions!

Screenshot_20221106-084728
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I like the hot coral lozenge (?) with account details. But it invites questions:

  • How well will this work in light mode? Would the colour change?
  • Is this horizontally swipeable to move through connected accounts or would it be a vertical stack - or don’t we see them here?
  • How does this work for a multiple account view? I think it’s important that we have a macro view of our finances on this screen, so all pots/accounts etc together.
  • I hope that we can configure this to show budgeting (safe/free/left to spend etc).

Some other wider thoughts:

  • There’s no search button! (I know that this probably needs more work, but is super important).
  • I really like the quick action ellipsis on the account lozenge thing. I hope we have something similar for pots so we can quickly move money between them.
  • I’d like the Pulse from Trends up top! But that’ll only really work when you can better predict income and future transactions. And, of course, effectively aggregate accounts.
  • I’m slightly disappointed that we still have the four standard tabs. Hopefully they’ll be rethought :soon: (I’d think about changing Help to Search, I think).
  • the action ellipsis (…) next to the Netflix transaction intrigues me (I’m presuming it’s a mistake) [edit: it’s an active card check - it’s the control to remove it from the feed :man_facepalming:]

More to come. But super keen for this.

Edit: the dash/dot between the “POTS” title and the subtotal made me think that it was a negative balance. Which I don’t think is right.

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52

What is it you’d wanna search?

Help needs to be there and stay there cuz some aren’t so competent and it needs to be visible for support.

53

So there are other ways of having prominent support (I’ve mocked some up before, have a search).

But, frankly, the biggest issue is not being able to contact support. The help tab is fine, but hiding the contact button has never been the right thing to do for customers. But that doesn’t necessarily need a tab.

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54

The majority of issues can be resolved by self help, and if everyone put some effort in searching the help section, they’d not need to always contact.

Even the contact page says:

Screenshot_20221106-101344
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But then makes it easy for the people to contact instead of looking themselves (for the most part).

From the above shot, it looks like it’s been made easier to make contact (probably some fca intervention to make it easy).

Search should remain within help if it’s help related, and also within transactions if transaction related.

Having an open search function that could and would search anything and everything like a Google, would probably require too much work to merge everything to one place, or cause more hassle than its worth.

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55

I don’t think is dissimilar to the current carousel, which works fine on light mode, it just looks better on dark.

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56

Also looks better in :disco:

57

Companies need to deal with people as they are, not as want them to be.

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58

Which is fine for the most part (notches, braille cards, large print).

The daft questions you get on frontline can mostly be resolved just by looking.

People absolutely refuse to help themselves day in day out.

59

You’re talking past me. I’m not denying that happens. I’m saying that companies need to deal with that as a reality, rather than wish it wasn’t the case.

You can try nudging folk, but ultimately it’s the cost of doing business.

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60

They do, by providing sufficient search functionality to a self help service which has almost all answers and doesn’t cost the business anything.

The costs come in when people message about stuff that can be found by searching, having to wait and cause unnecessary further waits for themselves and others which also costs the business, when in reality it could’ve all been saved if said customer just looked.

I get it sometimes some answers can’t be found, but when people just head to help and then search how to contact, it just adds to the problem.