Activity
Redesign

Design goal

Integrate Unit Test and Simulation functionalities to improve the COPD & UAT team's experience in performing their shared responsibilities.

Activity in PayPal

The Activity section is one of the top 3 most widely used features of PayPal with over 2+ million daily active views. Activity is the repository of all transactions done by a user. It represents all “payments, requests for payment, or promises thereof.”

It helps users:

Track: Quickly check their transaction status
Locate: Find a specific activity for more details and cross-reference with their bank/card statement
Act: Manage post-transaction actions like raising a dispute, tracking a shipment, asking for a refund

Why Redesign?

$50 million spent on VoC: Customer care contact rate impacts were around $50 M
User feedback: Various qualitative studies had revealed that our customers wanted Activity to empower them to feel confident and informed
Improve engagement: 51% of users left the page without taking any action.
My gut feeling: UI was 5 years old and needed to coexist with other areas of application

What is my role?

I was the lead designer on the project. We kickstarted this project in February 2019 - just six months after my joining date.

Stakeholders:

As the experience gatekeeper of Activity, I collaborated with my product managers, research partner, analytics, developers, content, and other design partners during this project.

Our journey

Research

We conducted qualitative user research to figure out the major pain points from the users.

Qualitative Research

Key objective of the research was to:

Understand how customers use PayPal Activity on mobile
Identify opportunities to improve PayPal Activity user experience, and
Build product redesign roadmap for Activity

Key Findings

We found the common triggers for users to visit Activity. They were:

For cross checking account info
Routine scan of their spends
Notifications of sends and spends

Key values that PayPal Activity brings:

Track: Go through Activity to keep track of money flow and make sure everything is as expected
Locate: Locate a specific transaction to gather & use the info
Act: Take actions on the transactions

Workshop - Card sorting

We asked the participants to define each card and sort them by importance

We asked the participants to group transactions

Important info related to a transaction:

We learned that the users were looking for the following indicators while viewing the Activity.

Date

Merchant, Sender, or Receiver

Amount

Status

Hearing the voice of customers

The pending payment status comprehension was costing us nearly ~$20 million in VoCs. We heard the customer calls and Help Center tickets to notice some of the common user concerns around pending.

Word cloud analysis

Why is the money movement not instant? 
Who needs to fix the issue, sender or receiver?
When can I access the money?
What do I need to do to move from Pending to complete?
Why does my transaction say complete, but I still have not received funds?

How others are solving it ?

Help PayPal Inc. users to track, locate, take actions of their activity with very little friction, fear and better comprehension.

Provide an uplifting feeling and control to do their jobs better.

Solution Discovery

Design Sprint

We kickstarted the solution discovery with a 3-day design sprint with 12 participants from engineering, product, and design. We also invited the design team from different parts of the organization.

Sprint Outcome

Design Iterations

Iterations one: Future Activity

Track:

•Activity selection for Consumer and Casual sellers

•Spend summary

•Reorganized pending and completed buckets into Upcoming and History

•Color coding for the amount to represent the status

•Introduction of Avatars

Locate:

•Upfront filter

•Contextual date picker

Act:

•Upfront statement download

•Relevant actions upfront

Iterations two: One Activity

iPhone X (375) Copy 2App exploration.png

Track:

•One Activity for PayPal

•Transaction cross verification with balance

•Incorporation of Bills and upcoming payments

•Spend Analysis

•Coversational UI

•Upfront payment method info

Locate:

•Date categorization

•Upfront filter for ‘Need attention’ transactions

Act:

•Upfront statement download

•Relevant actions upfront

Iterations three: Activity as a feed

Desktop (1170) Simple - Option 3 Copy.jp

Track:

•Widget for recent Activity

•Spend Analysis widget

•Incorporation of Bills and upcoming payments

•Spend Analysis

•Coversational UI

•Improved action and Status discovery

•Related Activity view

•Different view modes for transaction list

Locate:

•Dynamic transaction cell to present relevant information upfront

•Search suggestion

•Event tile for pending transactions

Act:

•Upfront statement download

•Relevant actions upfront

Converge: Reviews, feedback & scoping

Peer Review

Leadership Review

Stage one:

• Making it easier for the users to find ‘Upcoming bill payments’

• Solving for ‘Pending’ transaction by making it easier to discover

• Making it simpler for users to take actions on transactions

• Surface important information upfront; ETA info-account level info, Notes for P2P

• Introducing new capabilities like downloading monthly, yearly, or custom reports

Stage two:

• One Activity for all PayPal Inc activities including non-financial activities

• Cross verification with the transaction (balance, bank account)

• Experience improvement of Transaction details to decrease comprehension issues

• Surface important information upfront; ETA and rich media

Stage three:

• Persona-based Activity experience (Casual Sellers, P2P, Credit, Super shoppers)

• Transactional to social experience tapping emotions to their advantage

• Spend management- Serve customers better through better control on their spending

Final Design & Prototyping

Activity home tile

Home Screen- Activity Tile - Upcoming.jpg

Activity main page

Transaction detail screen

Stage one:

• Making it easier for the users to find ‘Upcoming bill payments’

• Solving for ‘Pending’ transaction by making it easier to discover

• Making it simpler for users to take actions on transactions

• Surface important information upfront; ETA info-account level info, Notes for P2P

• Introducing new capabilities like downloading monthly, yearly, or custom reports

• Help users to make informed “actions” more simpler, faster

• Improved statement download & report problem functionalities

• Cleaner view of Transaction Details

Invision prototype

Prototype testing

We conducted user testing with 11 users.

User testing questions

Comprehension/mental models:

• How do customers interpret the buckets of Upcoming vs Recent?
• Do they understand why certain transaction goes under Upcoming vs Recent?
• How do customers interpret Payment Due?

Usability:

•Discoverability of Filters & Search
•Can they quickly find a transaction that is incomplete?
•Can they quickly locate a bill?
•Can they take actions on the transactions

Test results and recommendations

Top info that Activity needs to communicate clearly

• Has Money moved for the user?

• Is there any action needed from me?

• Upcoming and Recent buckets suffice the user's needs. However, there was a need to have a third bucket containing transaction types that do not fit under the two categories.

Usability recommendations

• Improve the discoverability of search, Filter, and more icons

• Update filter icon

• Reduce entry points to Activity