Whilst students have general ideas about how to manage and send their shares of monthly bills, unpaid shares can become difficult to chase up in larger households. This means another student has to cover the payment, affecting areas of their life. There wasn’t a central place to access a rundown of who has/hasn’t paid shares and whether bill-payers were ready to pay with the total received.

The goal here was to provide autonomy for bill-payers and insight for share-payers. This was so that instead of sifting through online banking in/outgoings and chasing up via texts/calls, there was a singular place to take necessary actions before the end of the month. It would also help share-payers to budget for the coming month without relying on notes/memory.

Making share-payers aware of their role

One of my goals was to emphasis the share-payers tasks in the process of monthly bill paying. This is because it increased the likelihood of shares being payed on time and made share-payers aware as to how their actions affected bill-payers. However, I needed to do this without making the process of share-paying too lengthy or overly critical to share-payers who may have been paying late before. Providing context through intelligent copy was a way to do this.

Giving bill-payers a clear picture as to who isn’t paying on time

A clear addition that resulted in bill-payers being aware of received shares was daily and monthly tracking. Before, bill-payers would have to sift through online banking ingoing’s and then use messaging services to catch up with late payers. Communicating immediately who hasn’t paid and giving them contact options reduced the load at the end of the month.

Bill + share-payers have unified goal to meet monthly targets

A problem I ran into was keeping both bill and share-payers in the loop. Originally, housemates would nominate who would take on a specific role and never speak about monthly billing unless there was a late payee. However, this kept everyone in the dark and increased the chances of a recurring late payee. Therefore, I implemented easily accessible trackers to keep everyone up to date.

The research – students needed a single place to process monthly bills

The main goal of the research was to understand why there was miscommunication in households and how this affected the outcome of monthly payments. An initial interview with my sister helped uncover this problem. But, I needed first-hand accounts of households facing these issues. So I reached out to students at Bristol, Swansea and Warwick University with a survey. Their pain points became evident.

Early findings – students, although living together, didn’t communicate

Students who paid on time in my sisters household used a helpful combination of note-taking and reminders to pay and receive shares on time. However, late-payees didn’t make nay effort to keep on track. Why was this? This led to a new area being explored - awareness. Late-payees didn’t communicate because they didn’t feel they needed to. Although this was helpful to uncover, I needed to confirm these problems on a larger scale in other households.

A university-wide survey clarified pain points

I sent out a survey to three households at other universities containing an average of 4 students and found similar pain points. Many students said that conversations with late payees tended to be awkward, suggesting a lack of communication. Bill-payers were also found to use various other methods to keep on track e.g. spreadsheets and friendly reminders. It was clear that there was a clear divide between bill and share payers in terms of organisation and that by unifying both into a common aim, this could be negated.

Pain points + into user goals

- Some students can't efficiently and/or don't budget their share of the monthly bills.

- Chasing up late payees for their share of the monthly bills frustrates the bill-payers.

- Organising who and how they will cover for the late payees shares upsets the housemates.

I established two user groups: housemates (share-payers) and bill-payers. Working out their goals gave me a basis for exploring possible flows. As a housemate, I want to set up a standing order for my shares of each utility bill. As a bill-payer, I want to see who has sent me their shares before I pay the utility bill.

Pain points to prioritise for an mvp

The success metrics were to: increase shares paid on time + increase bill-payer satisfaction rate. Again, I used Spotify’s Thoughtful Execution Framework to prioritise short term opportunities and to have some semblance of a long term plan. Whilst opportunity 1 was a fairly direct and straightforward goal to fix, it would only work for an MVP. Given more time, I would do further research into solving the other opportunities in order to flesh out the experience and give further context to users.

OPPORTUNITY 1 - how might we get share-payers to pay bills on time + provide organisational tools for bill-payers?

OPPORTUNITY 2 - How might we educate sellers as to why paying shares on time is beneficial for both parties?

OPPORTUNITY 3 - How might we create lasting and beneficial communication between both parties?

Early concepts through priority guides

Before establishing structure and components, I made use of priority guides. Priority guides put a focus on content hierarchy within a 'mobile first' approach. Meaning, I could organise content and guide users through a more conversational flow.

Testing homepage in a realistic flow

I added the homepages to each flow and tested whether bill/share-payers could achieve their goals. Users faced little trouble getting from the home-screen to sending/receiving share-money. However, share-payers felt almost too responsible for the bills by being given responsibility to cover other individuals. I went back to my opportunities and realised I had sacrificed straightforwardness for context which was unnecessary for an MVP.

A/B testing clarified needs of share-payers

Giving share-payers the ability to cover other housemates was still important to reduce the burden on bill-payers. So after A/B testing various ways of doing this, I landed on a homepage that gave share-payers the context they needed to keep up -to-date but still the ability to cover. I inserted a ‘cover housemate’ button under the ‘add your share’ button and kept the card above solely for showing the progress of each bill.

The final flow

A clear button on the homepage allows share-payers to set and keep track of budgeted money for utility bills. This will reduce the chances of paying late by maintaining a monthly quota of bill money. A simple and focused monthly tracker allows bill-payers to see received shares and identify late payments. This will negate need to sift through personal bank in-goings.

What is the outlook for student households organising bills

I reached out to a friend at Bristol University who would test the product with his housemates. Interestingly, all housemates worked through the budgeting together, which encouraged late payers to set up their bills as well. Given more time, I would complete a contextual inquiry to see how users cover for late payers. Thus, implementation of a 'cover' feature would have more research behind it. I would also gather long term analytics of the app to see if the success metric of reducing late payees worked. I would also like to work alongside a developer on this product.

What I learned

Improving communication can do a lot of good -

From my research I realised that the reason why housemates were facing problems was due to poor communication. By improving and translating that communication into a product, these problems could be negated.

It pays to be a little curious -

If I didn’t take the initiative to learn more about my sisters household billing problems, I may never have come across this project. Always have your ears open!