Pulse graph messed up by big transaction

I made a big transaction (I transfered my savings into and out of Monzo because I used Monzo as my linked current account) and now my pulse graph is messed up for the month.

I excluded the transactions manually but that didn’t fix the graph. Is there any solution?

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Unfortunately not. That’s just how the graph works I’m afraid :confused:

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I have come to the conclusion that the graph offers no real value, despite @hugo promising great things and explaining that it’s baked in to the app to such an extent that it can’t be hidden or removed.

I understood if I had an overdraft facility it would predict when I might go into the red, but it doesn’t do this – the ‘future’ is just a short tail which seems to bear no relation to any actual algorithm.

In having my salary credited to my account in the middle of every month, followed by a succession of direct debits means the graph is scaled to fit a large peak and the main spending bumps along the bottom of the graph area, virtually flat for most of the month, and utterly useless.

image

Graph feels like an early idea which got lost as the app updated. Will there ever be any point to it?

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You’re totally right. I think we haven’t moved fast enough to make the pulse fulfil its potential. It wouldn’t surprise me if we nuke it soon and try to replace it with something simpler.

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I think this sounds like a great idea. Can then use this space for quick links or something more useful. Though would still need to display a given days balance as this is incorporated into the pulse currently and not in the transaction list (where I would prefer to have it)

I am all for graphical data but I think it should be incorporated in the summaries.

Currently not sure what to take from this:
image

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Yeah, I’ve always liked it as an indicator of how far through the month we are but I was waiting for the forward projection of all my direct debits etc to give it real value.

The current reality is that Summary (with my simple monthly income pattern) has pretty much done away with the need for all of that - the only benefit the pulse graph would offer is through its presence on the first tab rather than the second.

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I use the Pulse to quickly navigate back in my transaction history (swipe right to past month, then tap and drag to get to a date), there’s no other good way to deal with years worth of transactions. So whatever you replace it with, please keep (or improve) the navigational functionality! :pray:

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I totally hear you, there’s lot of value on this and one of the reasons why we designed it. We took the idea from Fantastical so it’s a proven pattern that we know serves the purpose very well.

The part I think we’ve missed is to make the representation of the balance perform as an actionable piece of information. We had solutions for all the problems (removing outliers and one-off purchases, for example) but the actual implementation of those things is quite tricky and, as a product, we’ve prioritised covering more surface (delivering new features, etc.) over polishing previous elements.

That leaves the Pulse in a hard place so that’s why it will probably make sense to move into something easier to build, maybe not that theoretically powerful but more sustainable with the cadence of delivery we’re aiming for. In essence, it’s better to have a modest but nicely build and functional house than just the blueprints and the foundation of an amazing mansion.

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THIS RIGHT HERE is what makes :monzopride: Monzo so great.

Thanks for taking the time to come here and interact. I’m feeling full of regret for using the words utterly useless because, in truth, I’d prefer something graph–like over menus or links. I just feel Pulse is being left behind, or the heavy lifting is being taken by Summary.

Monzo know when direct debits and other Committed Spending is due, and should be able to predict my salary so the prediction features of any Pulse should be ace. Just not right now.

But I just wanted to reaffirm that I wasn’t whinging, and that I supported your defence of Pulse back when its demise was being called for. Anyway, thanks for addressing my post.

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I was hoping they would implement the swipe up to close it into a flat border line and swipe down to make it appear again as a line chart.

Annoyingly as Starling forum is closed I can’t find if the animated example was from another app or mocked up in Invision. It was nice how it smoothly folds to a single line and expands back into the spend.

It was like this in pink but didn’t fold up. I can’t remember if the person who posted all the UX/ui has a monzo.

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I know exactly what you mean. Just to be clear though, what’s stopping us from doing these things is not the lack of ideas or solutions, it’s the actual capacity to deliver all these UI refinements (they’re very costly to implement and maintain) vs quick shipping and iteration on new features that our customers really need.

I think it’s the right thing to do, we just need to be a bit less ambitious with our UI (which in most cases has been entirely my fault) and do less but better.

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I’ve been using a service called MoneyHub for the last couple of years and it’s been incredibly useful for budgeting and seeing how I’m spending month on month. The most useful screen by far is the ‘spending analysis’ screen which compares how you’re spending this month compared to last month. I would love to have something like this in Monzo as that actually provides useful data on your habits. And since monzo has all my direct debit data it could help predict if I was going to over spend each month. Another useful screen is the spending budget screen which tells you in real terms how much you can spend per day in order to stay within your budget. Again, if monzo could handle this data too and add predictions based on previous months spending, then we have something really useful.

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I predictive graph would be nice
As it should know when people generally have salary paid - so base the graph off an average of the last three (For the predictive part of the graph)

OMG THIS!!! DO THIS!!!

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Try to take something out of this!Screenshot_20181225-140244__01

P.S. It’s not even useful in the sense that once I get my salary paid in I still see the current month’s pulse which I no longer care about. Therefore I normally use the Summary to predict my expenses and see what’s left of my salary (also chucking important things like rent pay into a Pot so that I don’t consider it as money that I can spend because it isn’t).

2P.S. It’s amazing that we can actually discuss these things in a forum with Monzo’s Head of Design! This is the reason I invested in Monzo multiple times. :heart: For normal people to be able to have a say in their Bank decisions. :monzo: Very surprised Starling killed their official forum.

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