If you send me an email to dylanlewis@monzo.com Iâll add you
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8 weeks later and not a sniff of an update. Whatâs the point in labs if you donât put things in there to test?
Rome wasnât built in a day.
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Hey everyone 
If you havenât seen me pop up before, Iâm one of the two product designers working on the new Home screen in the App Evolution team (nice to meet you!). Apologies if weâve seemed a little quiet as of late; weâve been busy soaking up all the feedback weâve been receiving and iterating, iterating, iterating.
I wanted to take some time today to show you some of the user interface and experience changes that weâre making, exploring further, and maybe a couple of further sneak peaks.
Customisation
Weâre revamping how you sort your accounts and Pots. Each section will be customisable, and the âEditâ screens will be available from both a core âLayoutâ screen and their section menus on the Home screen. Weâve designed this so itâs extensible in the future to reorder the sections too (from the core âLayoutâ screen); for example you may want to see Pots above latest activity.
Monzo accounts (personal, joint, Flex) will be able to be âunpinnedâ so theyâll be seen with any accounts youâve connected, and weâre working on allowing you to âpinâ connected accounts to the top too (this is a bit more complicated technically though!).
Pots
Talking of Pots, we understand if youâve got quite a few of them, viewing them as a horizontal stack isnât the optimum way of getting visibility of all your balances. Some folks really value that, so weâre gonna throw in an option to allow you to view them as a list. Weâre also exploring how to split the Pot balances between personal and joint accounts.
Spotlights
In a previous post, @emmag mentioned something around âglanceable insightsâ. We call them âSpotlightsâ and they surface key data from your Trends tab: total balances, upcoming payments, targets. Again, like accounts and Pots, these will be fully customisable (youâll be able to turn them off altogether if you wish).
In the future we may look to extend to showing you even more here; for example, seeing helpful info when youâre abroad, like the exchange rate or your remaining ATM fee-free limit.
A couple of more thingsâŚ
Hopefully youâve noticed thereâs a strong theme on personalisation â we want you to be able to configure the Home screen to be your Home screen. Weâre actively working on a lot of this now, but it would be great to hear your thoughts and feedback on what Iâve shown so far! If thereâs any follow up questions, Iâll do my best to answer 
Before I go, Iâll leave you with a couple of extra early exploration teases (so take with a pinch of salt!): a gesture to reveal âSpotlightsâ, and a new Pot detail screen being worked on by @jayclark (heâll follow up on this another day). In the gesture GIF, you may even spot some UI refinements weâve been chiselling away at; thereâs so much more to come!
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This is great, thank you for the update.
My one thought is that the swipe gesture to reveal Spotlights feels a bit unintuitive. Itâs very Apple to hide useful stuff behind hard to remember gestures.
Also, not sure how I feel about the rest of the screen being blurred. It makes the content there feel disconnected from the rest of the app, and also could hide some key info/context? I donât know, maybe I might want to see my account balance while looking at Spotlights. It will of course depend on what it will ultimately show.
Edit: also, another horizontally scrolling list in an otherwise vertical UI 
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Love love love this! Might have to turn it back on in Labs.
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This all looks awesome!
Iâd prefer spotlights not to be hidden behind a gesture as itâs very useful glanceable information that in your images only takes up a row.
With spotlights in play, I wouldnât have to hop around different views in Trends as itâll all be on my home screen to digest immediately.
Is there a timeline on this being live in the app?
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All looking and sounding fantastic!
Especially the ability to pin connected accounts / unpin Monzo accounts. My joint is very unimportant for me day-to-day as itâs just a household bills account with various SOs set up to fund it, whereas my Amex is my main spending account, so this would be great.
Looking forward to the various bits appearing in-app 
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This looks great! When can we expect a sneak peak in Labs? 
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Looks cool. A few points from me:
- Iâm inclined to agree that itâs not intuitive to âswipe downâ to see insights, especially as swipe down is also how you swipe down to other things. I would prefer the re-purposing of the plus/premium tab to be âinsightsâ instead. I think they would look cool there.
- Love the option of pot lists vs images. And that you can choose both
- Still way to much going on at once, even with âhiddenâ items. I would prefer to have it where you could completely hide entire sections (e.g pots, list of recent transactions)
Just my thoughts of course, others will definitely have differing ideas.
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Thanks for the update. Looking forward to giving this a try.
One question that immediately comes to mind for me is if I choose to hide an element from the home screen, will I have to unhide it to access it, or will it be accessible from somewhere else? For example, I like that you are giving the ability to hide pots from the home screen. But if I canât quickly get to another screen where I can see a full list of pots (a dedicated pots screen) I suspect the Iâll make much less use of the ability to configure the home screen.
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Thanks for sharing. This is great. Loving the customisation of it. Looking forward to giving it a try.
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Customisation looks good. Pleased to see Left to Spend making its way back to the front screen!
Perhaps this is outside the scope of your work, but I would like to see more ârecent transactionsâ on the front screen with some better logic (e.g. last 24h, last 7 days, new since last checked app, etc)
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An absolute minimal option.
Accounts and connected accounts pinned to the top.
Pots in the same bubble/pill format underneath.
Nothing else - with an option to add or remove if I wish to. 
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This all looks great, especially spotlights, looking forward to when this goes live!
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One thing to add, and I know itâs been said before. Is that pending transactions should perhaps be exempted from the latest activity area as mines been totally useless over the BH due to things due to come out today.
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Thanks for all the feedback and comments so far everyone Iâll add a few bits to give some more context!
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Weâre at the early stages for the Spotlights gesture: blur or no blur, should you be able to âpinâ it so itâs always there (Ă la macOS dock optionality), etc.; still a bit to explore further to see what feels right.
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Re: hiding Pots and accounts, weâre looking at a transient filter to ârevealâ hidden items temporarily. This would allow you to check in on a balance before hiding it again (you can see this in the Pot menu screenshot as âReveal 1 Potâ).
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Weâre also looking at âlatest activityâ a lot (upcoming transactions, badging, how many, etc), hopefully @leepethers will be able to talk more to this soon!
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Absolutely love the Spotlight concept - but agree that the gesture to reveal it feels unintuitive! I am now so used to pulling down on that page to refresh my transactions - Will this gesture work inline with the refresh one? Do you have to specifically pull down on an account to show the insights for that account specifically? Maybe feels like there should be a button or icon to press as well
Also really looking forward to being able to re-order pots! (and show/hide!)
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Love this and love the direction its going, I think the spotlight should have the option to be pinned at the top or hidden behind the pull down gesture - personally Iâd like to be able to pull down to see it (how would a refresh work in future tho??) but I can see a lot of replies saying they want it there pinned.
Also, not sure if it was just for demo purposes but that blur when viewing spotlights is HEAVY, Iâd rather there be no blur at all
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