Poolit

Figma | Adobe CC

An app that makes pooling money simple. A personal project completed in August 2020

Problem Space

Pooling in money for a gift brings problems such as deciding how much money is to be raised, having to send that money to the person collecting and the awkwardness of having to ask for the money.

Goal

Poolit will provide users the ability to pool in money hassle free. It is meant to be easier than asking people to send money through other ways like etransfers. It has the following key principles:

It must be accessible.
It must provide a delightful experience for users with its simple and few interactions.
Remains focused on the core function of the app

Types of Users

Two main groups of users were identified – pool creators and contributors. For the most part, most of the users are contributors. However, it is expected to have some pool creators to also be contributors to the pool.

Key tasks

In brainstorming what features this app would require to achieve Poolit’s goal, some key tasks were required. Using the CRUD principle, the app should allow the pool creator to start a pool, view it, update it and perhaps delete it.

The contributors to the pool should be able to see the money goal, how much more is needed to reach goal and how much would their contribution help reach the goal.

Sketches

A few initial sketches helped with brainstorming and resolving the bigger problems.

This set of sketches explored how to include all the features of Poolit in the most straightforward way. It used a standard flow and was meant to serve as a starting point to identify user problems. It showed that it was tedious to go through six screens to create a pool.

These sketches explored the different ways to list the pools. Option 2 and 3 would inevitably require another screen to show more information about the pool as these two seemed cluttered as it is. The goal of Poolit was to provide the users a delightful experience when they make a contribution. Thus option 1 was chosen to further explore with the assumption that users will only be in a few pools at a given time.

Hi-Fidelity Mockups

After the initial sketches, it was determined that poolit required three core screens:

pool navigation
a pool creation flow
payment method screen

The following are iterations of the above.

The first iteration was wide in experimentation in terms of the interactions, and ways of navigation. Different styles of stacking cards was also explored.

In the second iteration the exploration was narrowed down to a simple card view with a vertical scroll, based on the assumption that most people will not be part of more than a few pools at a given time. This decision allowed to further explore ways the user could interact with a particular pool card to contribute to it.

A more visual approach was also explored below but it was discarded because it would not have been functional in terms of accuracy of the collected amount.

The third iteration was most promising because of its simple and few interactions to achieve a certain task. It also ensured that there was no stacking of user interactions.

Payment Options

Using a half modal screen, two options to contribute were explored. Decisions such as not allowing the user to change contribution amount on this screen was made to reduce redundancy.

Pool Creation Flow

The first iteration of the creation flow made use of a series of screens with the most obvious way for a user to start a pool. This process of creating a pool felt tedious and inconsistent with the goal of creating an elegant experience for the user.

The second iteration reduced the creation flow to one screen and followed a similar visual language as the pool card.

This third iteration of the creation flow integrates iOS standard components.

Information Architecture

The architecture of the app started off being a complex system. However, with various iterations, it was reduced to a simple one that resonated with the goal of the app – to be elegant and simple.

Color Explorations

Final Mockups

Key Takeaways

A complicated architecture wouldn’t necessarily solve the problem.
The simple the solution, the more elegant the experience of the user
It’s easier to start simple and then add on features rather than trying to
solve multiple problems in one go.
Understand what’s absolutely essential for a user to complete a certain task and the rest can be provided as options

Future Considerations

It would be nice if there is an option for the user to toggle between list view and card view to take power users into consideration. The app as it is, may be tedious for people who are part of many pools
It may be beneficial to have a profile system where users can view their past contributions and pools. This can also enable recreating a pool quickly.