Splitter

Eungchan Kim, Justin Wang

Contents

User Profile

  • Primary
    • Group travelers, who share expenses for food, gas, hotel, flight, entertainment.
  • Secondary
    • Roommates, who share expenses for utilities, internet, groceries, toilet paper on a recurring basis.
    • Project members, who share expenses for materials and services used on a project.
    • Party or event hosts, who share expenses for food, drink, decorations.
  • Tertiary
    • Couples, who share most or all expenses on a recurring basis.
    • Individuals, who want to keep track of personal expenses for a particular ongoing or one-time event.

Hero Moments

  1. Save you and your friends a headache—figure out using the App how much each of your friends owes for that camping trip to Yosemite last weekend, where Adam bought the firewood, Becky bought the sausages and marshmallows, Charles reserved and paid for the campsite, and David paid for gas.
  2. Get reimbursed on time (finally)—send a reminder to your forgetful roommate to pay you back for last month’s groceries via the App.
  3. Add payments on the go—as you’re taking a road trip with your friends down to San Diego, quickly record payments for gas, food, or whatever other expenses come along the way in the App.
  4. Remember who owes you, and how much—make a note in the App that your friend Esther owes you ten bucks for a burger and shake from that cash-only diner.

Concept Sketches

  1. Option 1

  2. Option 2 (selected)

User Research and Top Findings


Interviewed 6 people who share house with others
Take quick notes while interviewing

  1. Users would rather input a transaction immediately after it has happened, rather than remember to do it later on desktop.
  2. Receiving timely payments from roommates is important.
  3. Users sometimes forget to pay bills, so a reminder would be helpful.
  4. Budgeting is important for certain expenses.
  5. People want to know the source of spending, or have transparency in others’ spendings.
  6. One of the roommates is typically in charge of paying money or bill first, then later receives payment back from others. This person usually reminds the others of the payment date and the amount. The others don’t usually pay much attention unless the amount of money due is unusual.
  7. Physical receipts act as evidence of payment.
  8. Some people keep shared receipts on a specific spot such as refrigerator.
  9. When on a trip, people tend to note payments on the go in their mobile phone’s Notes app.
  10. There are separate payments for each transaction per roommate, leading to a large number of transactions needed; transactions are case-by-case and not consolidated.

Scenario


Road trip

  • Populate members for the group trip.

    Alex is going on a road trip from Seattle to San Diego with his friends Becky, Cindy, and David. He wants to keep track of expenses for the trip and figure out how much everybody owes at the end. He creates a “Road Trip” event in the App and populates the Becky, Cindy, David, and himself as members.

  • Add expenses, before they leave on the trip.

    Becky’s in charge of making all the hotel reservations and David’s in charge of bringing snacks beforehand. Becky forwards Alex the booking confirmation emails while David texts Alex the amount he paid for the snacks. In the app, Alex adds both amounts as payments to be shared by everyone, one marked as paid by Becky for “Hotels” and the other marked as paid by David for “Snacks.”

  • Add expenses along the way, as soon as they are made.

    As they’re making their journey south, they stop to get gas near Portland, OR. Cindy is driving at the time and fills up the tank of gas and pays the amount with her credit card. Alex notes the amount she paid in the App, and adds “Gas” under payment description, to be split among all members of the “Road Trip” group. They repeat this process for each group expense that’s added along the way, including gas refills, more snacks, park entry fees, etc.

  • Add a personal expense.

    Towards the end of their trip, the group stops at a burger joint to get some food. Alex pays for David, who ran out of cash earlier in the trip, and adds a payment in the App to note that David owes him $8 for the burger, fries, and shake.

  • Send payment summaries to everyone so they know how much they need to chip in, at the end of the trip.

    At the end of the trip, Alex opens the App, checks the balances, and sends an email to the group so they each know how much to chip in. The email includes payment details so each person can verify the transactions.

Storyboards


based on above scenario

App Map


Prototype

  1. Recommend to use Safari on iPhone.
  2. Visit http://bit.ly/splitter_app
  3. Add to Home Screen
  4. Launch the Splitter!!!

Prototype Test & Top Finding


This app was implemented with Ratchet.

  1. Recommend to use Safari on iPhone.
  2. Visit http://bit.ly/splitterapp
  3. Add to Home Screen
  4. Launch the Splitter!!!

Final App Map