Worth noting I think; not sure if this is related to the new layout or to v2.61 (on iOS) but I received the update this morning, shortly after received a notification for a new transaction.
I clicked the notification, the app loaded and showed the transaction history, then took several seconds to update before loading the transaction detail.
I was not recording this so do not know exactly but it was slow enough that I thought it was not working. I would estimate that it was at least 5 seconds but could have been as many as 10 seconds.
Not a briliant experience so thought I should mention it.
Updated feedback for 2.61.0. A lot of it is the same as before, but there are many important outstanding issues in the new design.
Context: iPhone X, iOS 12.4. I have a personal account with one pot and a joint account with three pots.
Overview of all accounts
The gesture to go from the Home screen to the account overview is not easily discoverable.
This new gesture does not feel intuitive.
It is only activated by pulling the bottom half of the screen and not the cards/pots.
When activating the gesture, it seems strange that the entire screen including the profile photo and search is animated. I think it should feel like you’re zooming out of the account, not the entire app.
[FIXED]The animation feels disjointed. The vertical rectangle (of the whole app window) zooms out and then awkwardly transforms into a horizontal rectangle (of the card/pot image).
Having the overview of all accounts and pots in the top left is frustrating: it’s not obvious and it’s the furthest away from my thumb.
You cannot see how much money is in each account + pots.
Navigating between accounts and pots
Having to reach to the top third of the screen to move left and right feels like a lot of effort. It would be much more natural if you could swipe left and right on the big white panel.
The big white panel (transaction list/pot details) can be in three positions and it’s not easy to consistently place it where you want. It feels like it’s my job to keep managing which position it’s in and keep adjusting it.
It feels like it takes a long time to move between accounts. Every personal account pot makes it slower to get to my joint account, which discourages pot usage.
Nav bar
The nav bar is not persistent, which makes it harder to understand where you are and get around.
Different screens have different ways of getting Home. For example:
In the account overview, select an account in the middle of the screen
In Summary, press Close in the top right
In Settings, press Back in the top left
What’s going on in my account
You can’t see the affect of your spending on your balance through the month as there is no graph and no running balance.
The “£x left for y days” thing does not have the days to go indicator, so you cannot easily see how much money you have vs how many days remain.
The placement of Summary in the top right feels arbitrary.
In Summary, you can no longer switch between personal and joint as there is no tab bar at the bottom.
Misc
There is now seems to be a Settings menu inside another Settings screen. Click on your face in Home -> Settings cog in account overview -> Settings
Having used this for a month, I think the new navigation is significantly worse than the current one. It doesn’t meet a number of important needs better than the existing design: knowing how much money you have, knowing how quickly you are spending your money and knowing what you have left to spend. On top of this, there are multiple issues that the new design has created, such as inconsistent and slow navigation between items.
I understand the reason behind the new navigation, but it will definitely make the Monzo app experience worse before it makes it better (for all of the reasons above). I expect that eventually the new design will show its value as other aspects of the app are redesigned, but at launch it will probably feel like a step backwards.
Also when you say you can’t see how much money you have, it is all shown on the Accounts screen, including Pots. If you want to know after commitments, then summary will tell you per account.
I’m finding the behaviour of the back button really inconsistent with the way Android generally works. IMO the app should only ever exit via the back button if you’re on the home/main account screen, however if you’ve swiped to a pot, instead of returning to the main account screen the app closes. Also if you’re viewing a pot and have the feed expanded, the back button will again close the app instead of returning to the previous state - in this case the pot with the feed lowered.
The other thing is historical account balance. A neat solution could be that tapping the ‘spent today’ figure switches the number to show your balance that day. A bit like how in some media players you can click the time played figure and it will switch to a time remaining figure. You’d need a little prompt initially to show users that it’s there.
This is my biggest issue with the new nav or any work arounds. If somethig is not immediately obvious and it needs to be explained, it’s more complicated that it oaught to be.
There is already a prompt for the most significant changes; there are little red dots on elements that don’t immediately look like they are buttons. The red dot goes away once you’ve tried it.
Oh you mean a single total? I am on Android, and it provides a total for the personal account plus Pots, and the joint account plus Pots. Clearly you would never try to add those two totals together as it’s not all yours
