Venmo is a popular app for sending payments to other people, and they wanted to expand their services to make a difference in the world by introducing a way for users to send money to causes they care about via their app.
Our team was tasked with designing a way for users to browse and search “causes” and then make donations to those causes.
Once we moved past paper sketches, I owned the UI design of both wireframes and interactive prototype. I designed the v.generous logo and defined the associated brand guidelines, and helped write copy in our brand's voice.
We knew our solution needed to align with Venmo's core values of quick, easy, and secure. We observed two key pain points in our research of existing donations platforms: users were overwhelmed by options, and they were wary of the transparency of how funds would be used.
Our team's "ah-ha" moment came when we realized the power users of Venmo, i.e. those most engaged with Venmo's social features, skewed significantly younger and participated heavily in viral personality quizzes.
We designed v.generous, an emoji-based charity personality quiz that recommends causes based on quiz results. Recommending a focused selection of causes also addressed the decision paralysis that we identified for all users, and we included language throughout to assure users that 100% of their donations would directly benefit the cause.
