Intro to Core Experience 🎉

[Paulw (Paul)]

Yes you’re right, starting from scratch would probably help more than fixing what’s there already.

[Peter_G]

@giorgio

Payments tab is definitely one (of many) area that needs some attention! Do you have any thoughts on what isn’t working right now for you? @Heldiney and @chloelawrence

So so many things.

It seems to be that the tab is trying to do two things (social and payments). Both of them badly.

I’ll do a proper deep dive as part 63268 of my megapost, but here are some pain points:

• The design is old and the header and tabs at the top don’t match elsewhere in the app.

• The Payments tab is just a list of functions that becomes repetitive. The friends owe you bit always displays even if the figures are zero. The Pay Someone box opens up a nice UI, but your Recents list isn’t recent. And you can’t get rid of folk you don’t want to see there. Likewise you can’t remove or edit contacts from that screen.

• The Request Money link is identical. Is there a way to have a contacts list that you can then choose to pay/request from?

• The See Payees link then gives me a third way of seeing the same information. But again I can’t manage, edit or hide them.

• Then I get a section for shared tabs. But all my shared tabs are settled. This is a waste of screen space. If I tap into it, I see the app’s most basic UI. I’m down for streamlined elegance, but this looks unfinished.

• And if I do have shared tabs open, there’s the same UI disarranged sparceness. And last time I used one, there was no warning or no calculation before settling up. That was unsettling (this is a pun. I’m sorry). More here.

• We then get to Bill Splits and Requests - which aren’t even driven off this screen (they start from the transaction screen). More wasted space.

• I have to scroll down to find the section most useful to me: Frequent. But again they’re not really Frequent. I have one person I’ve paid once in third position and a seemingly random group behind that. I’m still confused about the difference between Frequent and Recent (I mean, I know that the English language definitions are, but the Monzo interpretation of each is random).

• Finally, I have Recents. Again.

Now, when I finally try and make a payment…

• Monzo only remembers one reference (you used to be able to pick until the last “upgrade”)

• If I initiate a payment by selecting a previous transaction from the feed, the “Account Type” field is reset so I always need to pick it. And a random previous reference is populated.

• Not all bank logos are shown. The community even has a lovely wiki to make life easy for you!

• There’s no way to apply split categories for a bank transfer. You have to pick a category, go back to the feed after and then split it there. But if you do that too quickly the change in category won’t take and it’ll ping back.

As for the Scheduled tab:

• No references are shown for standing orders (when I have five payments to myself I kinda need to see the reference)
• The ordering appears to be random and there’s no clear distinction between what is coming out this period and what’s next.
• Subscriptions (that you can create yourself) are mixed in with direct debits.
• You only get last paid details for direct debits if you don’t have a subscription set up and only get next payment date and value if you do. Both are valuable bits of info.
• If you tap on “Add Scheduled Payment” at the bottom you can’t pick from your payees - it just expects you to enter details manually.

I’m really sorry if it feels like I’ve gone in on this tab. But it’s horrible. The worst experience in Monzo. Please remove it, disinfect where it was and start again.

(I’ll be back with some ideas on what I’d like to see in that tab instead )

[Peter_G]

Between the Core Experience and App Evolution teams, another candidate for an overhaul is the Plus/Premium tab.

Some relevant thoughts:

Monzo Plus: Thoughts on Design

So Monzo Plus is here. And I thought it’d be good to have a thread to discuss design! And, by which, I mean a much more expansive use of the word - this isn’t visual design, but how the whole app hangs together. Let me start by being honest: I’ve been not quite sure about Plus. I think that some of the features show promise even if they are currently under-baked (open banking, looking at you), but more than that, I think some of the design choices are a bit off. I think it fundamentally feels a…

And a topic about it:

Fixing the Tab of Death! (Plus/Premium Tab)

Way back in 2020 I offered some thoughts on Monzo’s design. About Monzo Plus, I said: I think some of the design choices are a bit off. I think it fundamentally feels a bit too much like a bolt on, that’s not integrated with the core Monzo experience … I see the attraction of the Monzo Plus tab , but it feels wrong to me. More recently, I laid down a challenge to Monzo: move the credit tracker out of the Plus/Premium tab to Trends, which is more naturally belongs. I called the Plus/Premium t…

The tl;dr is that it’s a whole bunch of different things all thrown together - some links within the app, some actual functions, some shortcuts to features best put elsewhere.

I know that some folks like the tab (I don’t for the record) but if it does stay it’s another candidate for a first principles review.

[darylbaxter (Daryl)]

Great to hear.
If Pots to Pots came out soon I’d open a Fixed Term Pot straight after, I’m sure many others will too.

[Peter_G]

@Peter_G

• The create Pot flow and UI could do with a bit of TLC and updating. It just feels basic and very Mondo right now.

To come back to this, I think a major part of polish - and moving from a good to a great - experience is about joining up different parts of Monzo.

For example, I’ve mentioned previously that exposing the receipting API to the app might be useful in splitting categories and for splitting bills/shared tabs. And that adding itemised Flex receipts to transactions to show what you’re paying off might add a wow factor.

But the same thing applies to Pots. It would be superb if the new pot flow was focused on what the user is trying to do. Are they trying to save money? Savings pots. Are they trying to pay for bills? Bills pots.

Imagine that in one flow you can set up a pot, choose which bills to pay out of it, set up a standing order to feed that pot to a certain value every one, and set up a virtual card to pay directly from that pot. And making that all super evident and straightforward from the UI. That would be Monzo magic.

[12jprince (James Prince)]

Really dont like this new user design experience by Monzo if im honest - seems too child like with pastal colours and big bold fonts. I would prefer to see a more clean, crisp approach that looks slightly more to the previous user experience Monzo had.

[kolok]

Ben Strak

[JIMMWX (Village Idiot)]

From reading that thread I found out @avb is a fanatic. Interesting times…

[dinosm]

Little annoying things that could be better:

• Bills pot / Left To Pay: this is good to have, but tapping it should show me the list of all the payments that make up that total. As it stands, it’s semi-useful, but it changes when something happens (like I add a new regular payment, or a previous regular payment was taken out but the amount was slightly different) and suddenly the app tells me there is not enough money in the pot but I am not readily sure as to why.

• Shared Tab / Recurring bills: I recently discovered I can split recurring bills but only in half. Why? I have a recurring bill I split in a different way (always the same way), surely I should be able to set it up either as a % or as a set amount for one person and the rest for another? I know the current situation is because the amount can change from month to month, but % or set-amount would work with the amount changing monthly.

[Peter_G]

@Peter_G

Here’s a big one for me: tweak the Left to Pay section under the manage tab for bills pots so it’s clear what transactions are in this period and what are in next. At the moment, tapping Upcoming gives me a chronological list of payments that will come from that pot. I’d like a nice division between what’s left this budgeting period and what’s in next. With subtotals please!

Here’s a real life example.

I pay council tax ten months in twelve. No payments in February or March.

Now, there’s a left to pay figure in my bills pot which seems slightly lower than usual, but not quite low enough to have excluded the council tax bill (I think). The bill would have been due on the 3rd but now it’s the 6th.

Basically, I’m after better transparently in the bills pot of what’s gone, what’s to come, and whether Monzo think the bill’s just late or whether it’s been written off for it month.

[Peter_G]

Part 14226 of the megapost:

• I’d like to see more made of #Tags. I use them as subcategories but also for thematic things. For example, I create a tag for holidays (e.g. #China2019) or if I’ve a project on the go (#GarageConversion2021). In an ideal world, I’d like them to become first class citizens with autocomplete on Android and to be able to display them as an alternative to merchants or categories in Trends.

• I’d like to see notification history. The ones that really interest me are the “your DD is £x higher/lower than previously”. But that information vanishes when I clear the notification.

• This leads me to something I’d love: Trends-esque graphs for regular (or any) payment. Imagine being able to tap into a direct debit and see a line graph of how much it’s cost you every period. Then the ability to tell it how much to expect for future periods…

[Peter_G]

Another small quality of life improvement: can we change categories and add notes for future Monzo transactions?

I mean standing orders and direct debits that are showing in the feed for the coming days…

[richycran (Rich)]

@Peter_G

This leads me to something I’d love: Trends-esque graphs for regular (or any) payment. Imagine being able to tap into a direct debit and see a line graph of how much it’s cost you every period. Then the ability to tell it how much to expect for future periods…

Or #hashtagged transactions.

Would love to know what the profile of my #bigshop is over time and whether my attempts to buy less of allthecheese (so pricey now!) is making a difference.

[chloelawrence (Chloe)]

Thanks so much for telling us all of that, Peter! It is so helpful and I’m making notes of all of your points as it’s definitely an area we want to improve (you’ll be glad to hear!). I’m also very keen to hear your ideas too on what you’d like to see instead

[Heldiney]

This is super helpful, Peter—thank you for making the time to clearly describe your thoughts to us. Like Chloe said, what would solutions look like to some of the points you described?

[nathanthomson8 (Nathan)]

Ohh i just remembered one and ive posted about this elsewhere but ill rebring to your attention.

When paying someone for a bill split the notes should be autopopulated with the retailer name so that when i search for say “mcdonalds” these transactions will be shown also.

At the minute it shows as “For: mcdonalds” in the feed which is fine but this isnt stored in notes so is pointless when it comes to searching

[tomerlandsen (Thomas Erlandsen)]

I would love to see improvements in how Shared Tabs work, particularly when it comes to budgeting. My partner and I use shared tabs to add lots of smaller payments for things, then once a month or so we settle up.

The problem is that the settling up payment is treated as one payment categorised as “General”, so it breaks budgeting completely. If we’ve categorised all the individual payments we’ve put in (bills, groceries, entertainment, etc), then when you settle up that information should be taken into account. The settling up payment should be split into the different spending categories that reflect how you actually spent the money. Going into that single settling up transaction could even show a breakdown of all the transactions and how they balance out to that one (sent or received) lump of money

[dinosm]

I think this might fall under ‘core experience’ as it probably straddles microservices and/or app features/areas…

Flex purchases I make don’t immediately show up as selectable in my Shared Tab, so I can’t immediately log them in the tab to be shared. I haven’t sat to measure exactly how long it takes before a Flex transaction shows up, but it’s more than 3-4 minutes (by which time I am doing something else like having left the shop and driving), which makes me forget to add them to the tab later.

[Peter_G]

Here’s a small tweak but massive quality of life improvement:

When you’re settling up a monthly recurring payment that falls on the last day of a month that doesn’t have 31 days, ask whether I want it to have it repeat every 28th (if it’s February for example) or on the last day of the month (whatever that is).

And on a similar theme, I’d like more sophisticated management of recurring payments. For example, I have a direct debit that goes out three times a month, for different values and with different timing (one out on the 1st, one the 10th and the last the 28th). It would be good for the recurring payments mechanism to be able to flex to handle this. I’ve set this up as three monthly payments with the direct debit originator, but they all have the same reference, but I’d like to be able to tell Monzo it’s actually three payments recurring monthly, rather than fudging it into fortnightly repeating.

[BristolMatt (Matt C)]

Something that is bugging me at the moment, especially now that I am trying to use Trends more, is that whenever I get money transferred back to me as part of a bill split from my partner, I have to constantly go in and categorise it. I have a category with my partners name that I exclude from Trends, but every time I have to manually set that category. Is there no way to have all incoming transfers from a contact be attributed to a certain category automatically? Not sure if I am explaining this very well!

(Don’t use shared tab as a lot of the time things aren’t split evenly)