We're working on a new look for the Monzo app

EDIT: There have been many updates to this thread over the past few months. If you’re new to this thread, please start by reading our last State of the World update here:

Original post below

Hi everyone :wave: We’re making some improvements to navigation of the Monzo app and would love to get some early feedback from you!

We started thinking about a new navigation for the Monzo app a few months ago and have an early prototype that brings some of these new elements to the app. This is just one potential approach we’re exploring and we don’t know yet if it’s the right one. That’s why we’d love to bring you in on the journey so we can figure this out together. Goes without saying it’s a work in progress and is not representative of what the final thing will look like.

What’s changed?

This is not an extensive list, but gives an idea of the direction we’re going.

  • Fewer tabs
    We removed the Summary and Account tabs. The nav bar now takes you between Home, Payments, and Help.

  • Card + Timeline
    When you open the app you’ll see your Monzo card peeking behind your Monzo feed. You can collapse the feed to reveal your card actions. The card section is similar to the what we had at the top of your Account screen.

  • All Accounts
    There’s a new section with all your other “account objects” (Pots, Overdraft, Loans, and external cards). It’s accessible from the View All button in Home.

  • Profile on Home
    You’ll see your profile photo at the top of the Home screen (previously in Account).

  • Notification centre
    We’re using a new section to communicate with customers about our new features.

  • Pulse graph
    It’s gone. It’s not really serving the purpose it was designed for anymore, so we removed it for now. In the future we’ll add new charts where they make sense.

  • Summary
    Accessing your budget will no longer happen from the nav bar. While we’re working on new kinds of budgeting features there is no Summary. We plan to add a way to get to Summary very soon, even if just temporarily, so that you don’t lose it if you’re trying the new version.

Get involved :family_man_woman_girl_boy:

We’ll be talking about some of these changes at our April Open Office in London. You can find tickets here.

Early Access :raising_hand_woman: UPDATE: EARLY ACCESS CLOSED

If you want to start using this version you can sign up for early access. This is pretty much a work in progress, so you can expect hitting issues on a regular basis. Here’s a flavour what might happen to you:

  • You won’t have some features for now (like Summary!) :man_shrugging:
  • The app might crash a lot
  • There’s no in-app customer support for issues related to the new navigation. In-app chat still works exactly as before, but you’ll only be able to get help on issues related to your account, not the new version of the app.
  • We’re changing things on a weekly basis and new functionality might be removed without notice
  • And of course the other countless bugs and things that can go wrong! :bug:
  • Your money is always safe :moneybag:

How to get it :rocket:

The new navigation is not going to Monzo Labs. If want to use it now you can signup for early access through this form. Keep in mind that if you request early access, you won’t be able switch back and forth between the current navigation and the new navigation. If at any point you’re stuck and really need to revert to the old navigation you can do so through customer support. However you can’t opt-in again after this, think of it as a break-in-case-of-fire glass :fire_engine:

For the early preview we’re giving access on v2.44 for iOS (going soon for Testflight) and v2.45 for Android (going live late next week / following week).

UPDATE: EARLY ACCESS IS NOW PAUSED. PLEASE READ THE POST BELOW FOR MORE INFO.

89 Likes

The graph is gone! HALLELUJAH!!

Although personally I’d want the right most ‘view’ to be the default. I do not need to see my card everytime I open the app (i rarely need to see it at all).

I don’t use Summary as I have a weekly salary and won’t until it allows more options (custom categories, differing scheduled payments, knowledge of incoming ‘salary’ that I can define, etc) so I’d love to see an option where I can ‘turn it off’ completely and have these screens instead).

38 Likes

Shame it’s missing Summary. I rely on it so much I couldn’t use a beta without it!

56 Likes

Do you only see “spent today” if the feed fills the entire space?

As with any major change, it will take time to adjust. In the meantime I’m going to light a :candle: for the graph.

5 Likes

I’ll jump in and try this because I like to push forward.

But the loss of Summary is a biggie. I use Summary daily and it works very well for me.
But I can revert to using YNAB in parallel for forward planning until the new budgeting features land.

I’ll give it a shot and break the :fire: glass if it isn’t working for me.

15 Likes

Sounds really good but I use summary more than anything to track my left to spend. So on this one I will need to sit it out. Please whatever you do dont ever take summary away for good unless you can replicate the budgeting functionality.

33 Likes

Summary was pretty useless to me on a weekly salary, so I’m happy to plunge into this test

12 Likes

Signed up - looking forward to seeing what is up with the new layout :face_with_monocle::face_with_monocle:

5 Likes

Love this, hope to try it.

1 Like

I assume no matter what my card will still work(As I can live without the App if I’m honest) :rofl:

1 Like

I wish I had your wage :pound::pound::pound::pound::pound:

10 Likes

We’re not sure if Summary will be gone entirely – in particular, some of the things Summary solves should definitely exist in the future. It might look differently, it might be exactly the same with a different entry point, we might re-introduce the tab!

Right now, we’re just testing as quickly as possible how simple we could make the app again. I’d love to learn: “what do people miss from Summary?” and see if we could do it better in the future.

12 Likes

Oh wow. In two minds over this one!

Really love the idea of a cleaner, streamlined app. But! I can’t do without Summary - and was really hoping that they’d be an option to have something Summary-like (or a safe to spend figure) where Pulse is at the moment.

A couple of thoughts on losing Pulse: I agree that it doesn’t really work - mine peaks then flat-lines every month. But! I think we need to have an easy way to scroll back in time, given that some of us have years of history now. A new search would be super helpful to come with the new look!

34 Likes

Wow, this looks absolutely fantastic, sign me up! :smiley:

Can’t wait to see the final product too!
Amazing work, all!

4 Likes

The “left to spend” figure is so crucial. When I used to bank with Natwest I’d be constantly deducting the 10 or so Direct Debit amounts from my balance to work out what I could actually spend. I’d be really sad to have to start doing that again.

Easily seeing the split between committed spending (bills) and day to day spending is useful too.

29 Likes

Part of this project will be learning these things and figuring out if we can solve them in different ways. I agree, the most value for me from Pulse is the “quickly travel through time”. I think we should be able to solve this in a different way, and we’ll try a few things to do so :slight_smile:

17 Likes

I love the look of this, and expect to struggle a little without summary but have signed up regardless as I guess you want people both who want summary and don’t!

I will miss the breakdown of my spending between categories, but mostly I use the summary ‘left to spend’ figure as my true balance when looking at the app, so not seeing what balance I can actually use will be the most difficult.

7 Likes

I was about to say the same as @Peter_G regarding Pulse. I don’t care about the actual graph, but the three can’t-do-without features Pulse provides for me are:

  • Quickly scroll back to previous months or years
  • At-a-glance shows me whether I’m in my Personal or Joint account; without this, I can see getting confused frequently
  • See my balance on a previous day

I’d love to try the new design, but sadly can’t do without certain parts of Summary for the Joint Account. In particular, see how much we’ve spent on ‘Groceries’ so far in the month is key (I don’t necessarily need full-on budgeting).

7 Likes

Yep, totally agreed. It’s by far the most important part of Summary for me. If anything (imo) we should make this more prominent in the app, rather than isolated to one tab.

25 Likes

Excellent! Loving that you’re retesting the fundamentals. For example, I don’t want Summary - I want to see the safe to spend figure. I don’t want Pulse - I want something visually more attractive than just the feed (don’t @ me graph haters!) but also better search / time travel in the feed.

9 Likes