Can you believe it’s over a year since @bruno started his mega-thread and kept us updated on the journey to new look Monzo?
A year later, I wanted to create some space for the Community to reflect on what’s worked well and what, with time and experience, might need tweaking.
Here are my thoughts:
The good:
The card-based paradigm works so so much better. And it’s super helpful in preparing Monzo for becoming that financial control centre that we will hear about!
Settings is now much much better
The app just looks more modern. The old version just looks, well, old - line something from history now!
But, with experience, I think there are a few things to improve that would either help add additional polish, fix problems or to set the stage for the next step of the journey.
Areas for improvement:
Seeing all accounts. Now, I love the swipe down mechanism, but I find myself consistently - even with months of muscle memory now - hitting the payments tab when I want to see all pots and accounts together (the pull down screen). Anecdotally, I’ve seen a few people come on here to need advice on how to find that screen, so it feels like an area for improvement.
Equal treatment for pots…. It still seems odd to me that something as fundamental as seeing transactions for pots hasn’t been implemented (by which I mean each pot having a transaction screen identical to the main account view). I think Bruno and others have suggested that this is a deliberate choice, but I’m not sure I agree that this is the right one.
…and credit cards. I know this is a longer term project but I think the time has come to set Truelayer aside and develop native integrations. Invest in a small team to do it and work through the most popular credit card providers. (And, much as I hate it, make it Plus exclusive for a year if that’ll help the business case).
Account hierarchy. This all gets us into the complicated world of account hierarchy. I’ve never been particularly happy that credit cards are shown as the same level of pots, rather than the Monzo current account. And now I’m left wondering if we might need a ‘master’ card (no pun intended) at some point that shows transactions from all pots and accounts in one feed - then pots under the Monzo card, (eventually) Starling Goals under a Starling account, then credit cards etc.
Payments. I know we go on about this a lot on the Community, but this is really a big gap in Monzo right now. In the context of the new navigation, the design still seems muddled when pot transfers are under the card and account transfers are under the tab. Indeed, I’m not sure that the payments tab makes any sense now, given that payments are account sensitive - I’d be tempted to change it to be a new ‘Accounts’ or ‘Home’ button, listing the accounts, with ‘Home’ becoming ‘Transactions’ or ‘Feed’. Payments could then be context sensitive from each card. Alternatively, keep the tab but fundamentally rethink it - maybe reusing the card metaphor to allow for transfers across accounts.
Anyway, that’s my feedback. Keen for one-year-on reflections from the Community!
Have to say, overall I do really like the new design. As you say it’s a lot more modern, and it’s just as quick and intuitive to use as you’d expect from Monzo.
Still waiting to see how it works with multiple accounts/cards as I only have a personal account in there, but I’m hopeful some of my credit cards will be available soon.
I had a quick look back and the two things I raised as issues back then are still issues now.
I won’t go into historical balances because there’s a whole other thread on that, but I’m still finding the way the back button on Android operates really frustrating. I don’t know any other apps that constantly throw the user out if they use the back button instead of returning them to the previous state. I really thought a function so fundamental to the way the app works on the OS would have been fixed by now but it just hasn’t happened.
Otherwise as I say, I’m happy with the new design and I look forward to seeing Monzo build on it.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve gone for the Home button, missed by 1mm,and been dumped out of the app - on Android the in-app home button is right next to the phone’s Back button. I then have to tap on the app icon again and authenticate again. A complete pain. Make it like Starling at the very least where they pop up a “Press Back again if you want to exit the app” type message.
Pots - lack of transaction history and inconsistent statement messages as a result of this. Irritating for personal and joint accounts. A nightmare for business accounts. My accountant would very much like me to move my business account away from Monzo because of the difficulties in reconciling the accounts.
Generally like the new layout, and I accept that my second point applies equally to the old layout.
You should feed this back to the Business Banking team if you get a chance, they’re the team most incentivised to implement this.
From a personal perspective, I think Open Banking implementations are now starting to get good enough that I would pay for a new Monzo Plus to have budgeting across external accounts, particularly if it can pull in my credit card balance directly and tell me the delta between that and what’s in the pot my Direct Debit comes out of, making it easy to sort that out in one tap (automatic movements can create problems as we found in a previous experiment…).
I agree. I’ve been thinking a lot about this - there are some small bits (like sweeps and automated payments into third party accounts on triggers like salary in) that feel relatively simple but which a Plus account themed around budgeting / account management could easily pick up. More in another thread (once I’ve got my thoughts clear in my head)!
Hi @Rika, I’ve fed this back previously but the whole pots thing is, IMO, a bit of a mess from the point of view of balances, transaction histories, etc. In some cases the views are completely misleading.
But they also give me an easy, highly visible, overall view for the first time of what money can be used by the business, what’s owed in taxes, etc., and I’ve no wish to go back to a traditional bank.
I’m not sure what example you’re looking for. Monzo uses a traditional iOS navigational tab bar in their android app as opposed to a more commonly used hamburger menu which tend to work better on android. It’s a simple case of not conforming to the platform’s respective design guidelines, which can create with friction with the OS, as you’re experiencing with Android’s back button. Monzo seem to have taken elements from both guidelines and used them in a single interface which causes inconsistencies on both platforms albeit for different reasons.
Not on my Samsung S7. It’s on the left next to the CLOSE ALL throw out.
Can these settings me manipulated within android settings one each phone then? Been so long since I messed with my phone settings. For example, my phone has the double-tap on the phone home button to open the camera.
With regard to the current Monzo UI, I was one of those who resisted it initially as I could not negotiate my way around the app, being so used to the simple original design.
I am more settled with the current design, however, that back button thing is a pain. As mentioned above, Starling’s app asks whether your sure, before you then leave the app.
Payments - already highlighted by many as one of the most untidy and unfriendly features. I have many payees who are my initials, followed by name of bank, just so I know which account of mine I am paying into. Merging all banks under my name would be absolutely useless. My Nationwide feed has many transactions where the payee is just my name as I cannot assign similar tag. At least, Monzo allows me to do that!
It’s not a technical statement at all. It’s an observation. Those documents provide the expansion you’re looking for. For those too lazy to read, here are pictures of an iOS nav menu and an android one, designed to function with their respective OSs.
Because when you use the iOS bottom style navigation bar, the menu options are positioned too closely to android’s system bar, which can result in mis-taps, which I believe is the issue you’re experiencing in regards to the home tab and android’s back button, unless I’ve misunderstood your issue.
The problem on Android is when a user presses the back button expecting to be to taken to the screen they were on previously, but instead they are booted out of the app.
Depends on the manufacturer, on my Note 10+ I have quite a few different options. I use the swipe from sides and bottom gestures so that my apps display full screen. I understand this is what you get on Google’s Pixel phones.
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