Reversing target bars

Given that I am amongst user who WANT pies charts (and in pies chart the target could be fitted in a new innovative way), and that I am not a fan of the current expenses visualization…

Targets are a good idea. My personal problem is that the coloured bars of the expenses targets are decreasing from right to left, and this makes me confused for the first 5 seconds after opening the section.
Has any other had the same feeling?
I was wondering if maybe a more immediate way would be the bar to decrease from left to right, being the natural “going” direction.
Otherwise, this personal issue could be caused by the low thickness of the bars, and would maybe be clearer with thicker columns; but I consider the first solution more effective.

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They have :slight_smile: this was discussed here -

& here -

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Alex you don’t have to explain me how to see them. I can find many ways by myself.
But when you’ve finished your explanation, and I open the app the next time and get confused, having to think at fuel or anything… well… the designer work has failed. It has to speak by itself (and it does, after 5 second of brain freezing), and most of all it has to be IMMEDIATE.

My personal opinion is that should be opposite (even if less fancy!!).
My first thought was to maintain the “fuel” idea but reverse the direction.
Then now I think also the last proposed idea will work great: small green line raising from left, becoming yellow, orange and red to the right. Will catch your eyes and explain everything immediately.

AND, I have the same issues when I read numbers: sorry for being based on a dual-core, low-ram brain guys, but when I read “147£ left of 200” I need to think a lot to get it.

I got told I was looking at it wrong too. I was also advised to ‘give it a month’ and all will be well.
Haven’t changed my view and the screen doesn’t work for me.
We are obviously now into ‘too many people are used to it now so we can’t change it’ territory, as I predicted, so you and I are obviously going to remain confused Marco :wink:

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It’s good to see you sharing your feedback.

As for

I’d be very surprised if you ever hear someone from Monzo say that. Just take a look at the old versions of the app from the blog & you’ll see that almost every Monzo feature has been overhauled since the launch of the app!

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Not attempting to stir anything up here, but I’ll just add my two cents.

Because I knew the feature will also relate to savings targets (when virtual savings pots are released) as well as showing how much you have left to spend, I was able to understand this immediately and I think that’s why the Monzo team decided to design it as is now ahead of the feature release so that we’re already use to it in advance. As opposed to designing it one way, we get use to it, then change it after savings pots are released.

If there’s enough demand for change, then it will change. Monzo are probably the most UX focused bank around so it wouldn’t make sense to ignore their users feedback.

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No idea if this is possible but could Monzo have some “advanced” settings which allow user to customise the app eg flip certain features to read the other way etc?

It is possible but as you can imagine, if Monzo had a setting like this for each feature you’d probably end up with an inconsistent user experience (balance increasing right to left on one screen & then left to right on another, for example), users having to discover & experiment with settings and a very confused customer support team (who’re wondering why their guides aren’t making sense) etc.

As a general rule I personally consider settings bad because they mean added complexity.

With the best will in the world, one size fits all solutions are unlikely to suit every user first time around but Monzo will iterate on the design to take into account user’s feedback like Marco, Andy & mine (well, maybe not mine :wink:) .

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Why not have a poll to ask:

Do we keep the confusing back to front bar graphs
or
Do we flip them around so people understand them

:joy:

if its a close result do we have a re run :slight_smile:

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You just have to be clear is the pass level as a percentage of those eligible to vote i.e. all community users or just of those voting, otherwise a vote of 52% may only reflect say 1/3 of us.

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as long as everybody knows the rules and understands the question and what the result means :slight_smile:

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“Reversing target bars” means “reversing target bars”!

Months later, nobody has a clue.

Joking aside, could we actually have a clear definition of what the alternative suggestion is rather than just saying this is wrong without having a majority agreeing what’s right?

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Correct me if I’m wrong but my understanding is that generally, users have been asking for the following changes:

  • Rather than the bars displaying the amount that a user has left to spend for each category / the total, the bar should display how much the user has spent
  • The bar should then increase from left to right, as the user spends more

Hopefully we can all agree that both changes would have to be made, as it would look very strange if the remaining funds bar started full but then reduced in size from left to right (which is what reversing the current design would do)…

And once again, writing this illustrates what seems to be the underlying issue here; users are expecting a feature that tracks how much they’ve spent (with the amount that they’ve spent increasing over time), rather than how much they have left to spend, which is why the current design seems strange.

But as I’ve tried to explain in my previous posts, it makes more sense to me & probably for anyone who might need an overdraft from Monzo (once the product is launched), if Monzo users to focus on how much money they have left / available to spend, before their next payday…

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Simply mirror the bar across the y axis - then it would still be a fuel gauge but will be less confusing than it currently is

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