PROJECT
Mone
ROLE
Founding Designer
DURATION
Oct 2018- Mar 2021
TARGET
B2B LATAM
About Mone
Mone is a fintech startup solution focusing on making payments accessible for everyone, especially for the informal sector in the LATAM region. I was there since the idea stage, conducting research, creating the informational architecture, iterating our products, and exploring new features and business opportunities. View Site
The product
At first, the Mone team wanted to create a MVP enabling a QR code API for easy checkouts. After conducting the user research, we found out that the majority of the prospect users sell through social media and WhatsApp, and they get paid with bank transfers. We then decided to adapt our solution to their needs and sales behavior by creating payment links, Payment sites and in-person payments.
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The problem
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Making payments accessible for the unattended and unbanked sector.
70% of the economy in LATAM is informal
The percentage of the region's population that use a smartphone is expected to reach 78% by 2025, and it's predicted that 90% of all Internet connections in Latin America will be made through mobile devices by 2022.
The majority of that sector is completely unattended for Payment solutions
How does 70% of the population in LATAM receive and manage digital payments if they don't have a website?
The goal
Launch a MVP in a timeline of 6 months, then iterate.
Gather enough user feedback and information to prove the concept of different solutions.
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My role and responsibilities
I was responsible of leading the user research and designing the entire Application. From the idea stage, Information Architecture to the UI. After our MVP launched, I was in charge of the iteration up until a Beta 2.
Idea Stage
Prototype
MVP
Beta 1
Beta 2
Understanding the user with data
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We’ve created some surveys as well as Zoom meetings.
Basically asking what are they using to receive payments at the moment and how good/bad it is. From there, we created a operational flow.
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Understand the problem, and level of pain
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In a few words. What is the most difficult part of receiving payments?
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In a few words. Tell us about the last time you had this problem
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What, if anything, have you done to try to fix the problem?
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From 1-5, how much have you spent to solve this problem?
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From 1-5, How often do you have this problem?
Takeaway: Problem is extremely frequent, seller don't like to get paid in cash, there's no easy solution.
User Personas
Conversations and surveys were made to understand how their problem can be solve
Traditional flow​
How do they sell?
User journey map
We’ve created a user journey map for each user persona.
It’s basically an exercise where we divide the entire journey in actions, tasks, feelings, and we can also find some improvement opportunities.
Common user pain points
Current payment solutions are too expensive and require a website or hardware
Zero control of their sales
Friction with buyers when asking about bank transfers
Cannot close the sale in social media
User Flow and Information Architecture
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To have a better understanding of how would the user benefit from our solution, we’ve created some flows based in user personas and a main one.
Sitemap
Initial wireframes
Mone was originally thought as an API for checkouts with QR codes. After conducting all the user research and align it with the market research, Mone’s MVP evolved into an API, online checkout and in-person POS.
Start the design
1-Sales today
2- “Who” made the sale
3- CTA to create a payment
4- Filters button
5- Export button
6- Date and more info
Start the design
1- Direct access to create payment
2- Instructions
3- Notification
4- Share options
5- Order details
6- QR code and price
Internal Usability test
One of the biggest challenge was that in 2019 QR codes were not well known for payments. Having not only the simples way to create and manage payments but a look and feel that is trustworthy, was one of the biggest challenges.
Some findings:
-Landing page makes it look too advanced/complicated/tech
-The first thing the user sees is the payment manager, they want a faster way to create a payment
-They can’t find the “share” dropdown
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Prototype
We’ve created a prototype for most of the
designs to showcase the user flow and
get internal feedback.
Refining the design
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We went from being extremely “tech” to show some examples of “what type of user” can benefit from Mone, and make it more human.
Using Hotjar’ heat map, we saw hat 86% of our users don’t see the rest of our landing page.
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Refining the design
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We needed to reduce the need of our help desk, so we’ve created a help center with video tutorials of every step and process in Mone. As well as a page to educate about the benefits of using QR codes to receive payments.
Before and After​
UX improvements
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We saw and compared hundreds of recordings using Hotjar’s tracking system.
UX improvements
1-Since our smart table was a very old template, we needed to
Design a filters section that was align to our UI.
2-Smart table template needed a manual cron job, so we’ve added a “refresh” button.
UX improvements
- Since we had many features but the user mainly needs to create a payment and check the status of the payment, we’ve added a “…” that once it’s pressed, it opens up the rest of the features
UX improvements
Unique sound is enable for every successful payment
UX improvements based in user feedback
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1. Understand how is Mone doing in 3 simple qualitative questions and 1 quantitative
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What do you like the MOST about Mone?
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What do you like LEAST about Mone?
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What is Mone missing?
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Please rate Mone from 1-5
2. Find more opportunities in improvements from, product and service ​
UX improvements
1- Dashboard let’s the user have a quick view of the different statuses of sales.
2- “refresh” button that activates manually the cron job.
3-Each card takes you to the main page of each section.
4- After some more research we saw that sellers needed to receive payments faster. So we’ve created a “Payments Site” where their clients can access it at any time and make payments.
5- User can copy the URL link
6- User can download a static QR code that can the print it or post it anywhere, this QR code takes you to their payments site.
7- Static QR code that takes you to the payments site
Payments site
1- Seller’s unique ID and Transaction ID, this was designed to provided more trust to the buyer.
2- User’s business name and logo.
3-What we basically did was to turn the tables around and make the buyer enter what the seller enters when creating a payment.
4- Provide a video tutorial for the buyer
Pay subscription to unlock more features
Pay subscription to unlock more features
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Pay subscription to unlock more features
1- We needed to charge for a “premium” version of Mone, what we did was basically re-use our own tools. The user can select a plan (there’s discounts depending the time) and generate a QR code to pay.
Takeaways
I've always wanted to be part of a fintech startup and what better than a team that wants to make payments accessible for everyone in the non attended sector. I still believe QR codes could take the lead in frictionless payments.
It was a challenge to understand a market where cash is king.