So over here, I was struck by the number of folk saying they don’t like the look and feel of the Monzo app:
I thought it was worth trying to unpick this a bit. Is it is the user interface? Font choice? Graphics? Colour palette? Too much info on the main screen?
There seems to be a lot of love/nostalgia for previous designs, so I thought a good way into the conversation might to see what people prefer. Prepare to poll!
(Side-note: It is surprisingly difficult to find stock images of the current Monzo home screen - there don’t seem to be any complete screens on the Monzo website, so I ended up using one from the Monzo Stand-In blog post, which also provided option 3a.)
User experience / interfaces are (un)surprisingly objective, but keen to understand what Monzo could do to improve things - minor tweaks or major overhauls (or even mock-ups) all welcome!
(Although it’s a bit academic as 1 wouldn’t really work with Flex etc).
I had it before it was announced! I don’t know if I was one of the small number of folk they always test with or whether it was an outage but I remember thinking “this is nice” and taking screenshots at the time… (I wonder if I posted any?)
I really like the current design, it works for me in a better way than 2 did, and I don’t think you could layer new products on it, but I did really like it when it was around, but wouldn’t fit the world today. The days of Pulse worked in a pre pay world, but once a bank it never did the job.
First of all, for me Monzo is by far the fastest, most responsive banking app - and I do have a lot of banking apps from more than one country. It loads the fastest, has its own balances up to date as soon as they appear on screen (as opposed to e.g. Chase taking ages to update them, all the while showing me out of date balances), and is just so smooth.
The pinned accounts view that includes connected accounts is the best in class IMHO. Very easy to visually parse, very clear. Transitions when tapping on an account are smooth and transaction screens clear and concise.
Transaction information screens contain lots of useful details, hide useless things like long internal references and make it easy to perform useful actions (category change, add to split, dispute, etc).
Connected accounts that are not pinned - I guess it might be nice to see those as images or some other way of horizontally scrolling like you can do for pots, it would reduce the amount of vertical scrolling.
Perhaps more customisation options, for example a way to rearrange items on the home screen (e.g. I might like to place the card carousel right underneath the pinned accounts).
Perhaps there is a better way to show the secondary sections that currently make the home screen a scrollfest, by hiding them behind one or more buttons somehow. I am no UI designer, I just know if I like something or not so I can’t suggest a way of doing this.
I like the current version best, especially the little pull-down to see the current spend figures etc. I do wonder how many people don’t realise this pull-down feature exists though!
I’m not entirely surprised, either, because if you use a lot of Monzo’s latest features… well, they simply didn’t/couldn’t exist on the old design. These features seem to be where the money is, so I can hardly blame Monzo for following that.
Equally, 20% preferring the old layout is a decent number. The old layout was objectively better if you were focussed on your current account, rather than Flex, connected accounts, etc.
I prefer the new layout. I like the customisable list of cards at the top of the home page and the combined transaction list below it. I have a handful of Monzo and external cards displayed and use it as my primary source of looking at my account balances and moving money in when necessary.
New layout definitely. Moving money around is a dream, using open banking to bring money in is easy. The Home Screen is great with all the sections. The payee screen could still do with some work though. Trends is great and seeing all accounts include connected ones is best in class. Shame about the historical data though.
I disliked the current version when it was first released into testing, it took me a long period of switching between the old and new versions as they refined the disign.
I prefer it now - for most of the everyday stuff I think it’s easier to navigate, and I’ve even grown to like the combined activity feed. There are a few caveats though:
I’d love to be able to position connected accounts in the Pinned area but have them unpin when thy were at a zero balance and reappear when they have a balance - for the three cards I use only occasionally for specific things.
I’d prefer both standard and savings pots to be split by account type, personal at the top and joint at the bottom for me (though those who use joint account as primary account may prefer that reversed).
The whole Savings/Investments/Pension section is just a mess in my opinion. I’ll never use investments or pension with Monzo, don’t need to see those tabs, and it just results in my savings pots needing a extra tap to access, whereas I’d rather just have them all presented in a column.
I find the Extra (or Perks, Max) tab to be a waste of a primary navigation button, whereas I find things I actually want to access (see limits, access statements, pay in a cheque, get my certificate of interest) harder to find.
Finally, although it’s not a layout/navigation things as such, some of the new graphics and animations are a bit cartoonist and have an unserious appearance (such as the unlocking animation when you enter the app via biometric unlock). Maybe I’m just a grumpy old man of 60 but it seems too childish for a bank that expects me to take it seriously.
Strong agree. I can kinda see where they were going, but it’s turned out a bit like seeming like a product team wanted its own area of the app, rather than what’s best for the user.
Definitely needs less friction with just each savings pot / investment etc listed individually on the main screen with one tap to go manage it. And open banking savings accounts should be able to be moved down there too!
This will never be fixed as Premium isn’t a thing any more, but it annoys me that the Monzo logo is a bit washed out on white. There used to be a better version but for reasons unknown it was downgraded.
Firstly good to see you back posting regularly @Peter_G
2, 1, 3 for me.
2 was peak simplicity, easy to see at a glance what money was where on summary with the ability to go into detail if needed. 3 has this, but it feels too hard to distinguish what detail to look at first. 1 was super simple but it wouldn’t work now as too simple.
Since the thread exists guess I might as well note down some gripes (literally just gonna swipe through the app and note down things as I see them). Generally I like the v3 design but it just feels… busy and useless at the same time… like there’s lots of stuff but none of it’s hugely customizable or useful to me at least personally (I might just be being an idiot though).
No actual dark mode - you’ve got light and dark (blue) mode… and there are the fancy background gradients that come with some plans but none of those actually look that good. I’m personally a fan of simple white on black with accents where needed to keep the distractions down and maximise legibility (Material You would be great). See my home screen as an example lmao.
No way to get rid of the “Edit” button on your spotlight… so if you have only 1 or 2 cards you’re permanently stuck with a large edit button right at the top.
No way to customize card design of external accounts. This one’s definitely more of a nice-to-have but it would be cool if there was a way to make external account cards look like their physical counterparts.
Certain sections on the home screen just can’t be removed - quite a lot of the app is like this where there’s an illusion of customizability but then some things are fixed. I’d imagine these things that Monzo wants to keep on the home screen are what makes them money.
No way to show individual pot balances under the “Savings and Investments” card - it’s just a combined balance and you’ve got an extra click to see what each pot has in it.
No way to pick and choose what investment accounts are shown on the above card - you can only pick savings pots.
If you’ve set custom images on savings accounts sometimes a placeholder is shown for a second or two while it loads (on the home screen).
In credit insights there’s no good “over time” indication (a graph would be nice). You can see how much each individual score has changed since it last changed, but this period isn’t fixed.
Overall though the app is great, but hey since this thread his here I thought I’d leave my 2 (or rather 8) cents. Personally I don’t find trends that useful (it seems to be really bad at noticing actual trends… so large transactions such as moving money between savings providers seem to mess everything up) but that’s not really a look and feel issue.
