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Overview
When going out or hanging out with a large group, it can be hard to figure out how to evenly split the bill among everyone, especially when tips and taxes are added. Dutch Pay streamlines the idea of splitting a receipt or bill among a group of people digitally and within seconds. Our team made both a live prototype of the app as well as a Marketing Proposal for our app to be based in Santa Barbara.
Introduction
Problem
Splitting a payment, especially a large one, can be very time consuming and extremely irritable to do especially with your friends and family. Is there a way we could improve this aspect of everyday life?
Why
From research, there is no standard way that students choose to split the bill. Apps, such as Venmo and Zelle, usually do not have a standard process to split receipts, leaving the current electronic payment apps left to be improved. Payments that need to be split must be done by hand or with a calculator, which is annoying.
Key Design Feature
To allow users to easily split a bill anytime and anywhere, we decided to prioritize the features in making it user friendly for all ages, but specifically for college students. Past studies have shown that users prefer to click rather than continuous scrolling, so the interface of the app utilizes smart functions and questions so that the user does not have to scroll to find certain features of the app.
User Research
Target Audience
We created Dutch Pay with our intended target audience being college students, as it is very common for students to go out for dinner and split the bill afterward. College students also experience more time pressures and constraints on money, making this application idea very convenient.
Survey
In order to better understand our target audience, our team collected responses from UCSB students to see how they would react to an app that would automatically split a bill for them. The survey questions focuses on the process of going out to eat with a group and how payment comes into play.
Survey Responses
Q: When out with a group, how do you normally split the bill?
"Take a picture of the bill and have people Venmo their share to whoever paid."
"Someone takes a picture of the receipt and is in charge of calculating each person's payment according to what they ordered. We then communicate via group chat."
"If the restaurant allows it, we usually give our own cards and have the waiter split the bill. If they only take one card, one person then takes a picture of the receipt to calculate how much everyone owes them later."
Q: For those who use Venmo, what would you change about the app?
"I would add group payments so that one person can charge a group of people similar amounts of money."
"It is annoying to be the one to pay upfront and then ask people to Venmo you back."
"There needs to be more options to split bills."
Competitor Analysis
Direct Competitor: Splitwise
A direct competitor that has the same function that Dutch Pay has is Splitwise.
Splitwise functions similarly to Dutch Pay whereby both applications are aimed at recording balances of individuals with the purpose of splitting expenses among a group of people. Splitwise’s main goal on their website is stated as: “keeping track of your shared expenses and balances with housemates, trips, groups, friends, and family.”
Our team next looked into user reviews of Splitwise. After doing our own research while looking at reviews of the app, we compiled a list of the main strengths and weaknesses of Splitwise.
Strengths
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Can split the bill with others
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can add friends and sort them into groups
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Has many features to plan a trip or vacation with a budget tracker
Weaknesses
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​UI/UX and User Interface is very not user friendly and not intuitive
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Lack of language options
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Many features are premium only and have to pay a fee of $3
To differentiate our app from Splitwise, Dutch Pay will make all of our features free. We also plan to make our interface much more user-friendly by making the app look minimal and easy to navigate. The appeal is directed towards college students with limited budgets and need for accessibility and convenience.
Main Goals
From User Research
After reading and analyzing the feedback from our surveys, our group saw the need for Dutch Pay and what features people wanted to see the most.
Based on how students manually split the bill, we decided to have the app split the bill in two ways: By total and by item.
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By total refers to splitting the bill or receipt with the total amount purchased by the amount of people in a group.
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By item splitting the bill or receipt by specific items and purchases made by each individual.
Brand Identity
Dutch Pay Brand Identity Overview
Based on our user survey, most people tend to prefer dark mode over light mode. For this reason, Dutch Pay is made with dark colors, allowing the primary colors to pop more in the app.
The following shows the brand guide of the app, from the colors to the typography used all throughout. With these contrast and vibrant colors, Dutch Pay looks aesthetically pleasing to the eye while still achieving the minimal and modern look.
Designing the App
Three Product Features
Based on our competitive analysis and user research, our team focused on three main features to highlight in our app:
splitting the bill by the total price
splitting the bill by item
making groups for future payments
Reflection
Being one of the visual designers, I think that this was a great opportunity for me to learn about the basics regarding the UI/UX Design process for app creation, as well as combine aspects of product design and marketing to create this app. While this may have been one of my first projects, I hope to learn from this experience to further develop my skills utilizing Figma and creating more prototypes in the near future.
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