Category: Uncategorized

Small business owners want to tap into the power and reach of the Cash App network. So we set out to make Cash App a truly useful and robust tool for their business payments.

My roles: Content design lead, product design partner, UX research partner.

The situation

Many Cash App users are also small business owners. Historically, some of those business owners take business payments via their personal accounts and use all of the features. They like Cash App because of the powerful network effects.

The complication

Though Cash App does a great job of supporting peer-to-peer (P2P) payments, the app falls short for small business owners. Most features in a personal Cash App account are no longer available on business accounts—features that many business owners have grown to rely on.

Business owners may find themselves forced into a business account due to business detection protocols, and account switching between business and personal accounts is not yet an option.

A rudimentary business account version exists, but its benefits are limited to compliance and a tax statement. Even the sister commerce company, Square, has a stronger set of incentives.

The question

How can we attract small business owners and support their operations?

The answer

By developing a robust product and experience that actually meets the needs of small business owners while keeping it cool (and brand aligned).

The process

The company hired new design staff to take this on: two product designers, a design manager, and a content designer (me!)

We started working with existing staff, including product leads and UX researchers come up with a vision for what we called Cash for Business.

• Conducted a competitive analysis to record features, positioning, and messaging
• Conducted two rounds of user research that included study design, survey writing, and post-survey analysis
• Engaged in deep platform visioning: high-level strategy work, product feature exploration, and positioning
• Crafted detailed user personas and business use cases
• Sketched out feature sets to close gaps in the existing product to meet user needs and expectations
• Prioritized and started developing the P0 feature: Tap to Pay

The work

The work unfolded in stages, with some of the workstreams happening simultaneously.

The results

Leadership loved it.

One leader said, “This is the best work I’ve ever seen at Cash App,”

Another commented, “There’s so much great stuff here that this should be a startup within the company.”

The retro

What didn’t go well on the project?
Legacy issues restrained our potential. Past versions of the app were built on an architecture that limited how far we could take some of the new product features.

We weren’t able to get prioritization to execute on it. Due to a re-org, the team itself was dissolved, and the work was not completed.

What went well on the project?
We went beyond products and built a vision. Instead of focusing on the products alone, we dug deep on the user context, getting to the core of their needs.

Strong collaboration across the board. In-person meetings at a critical point in the project helped us leap ahead based on our earlier work.

Leadership loved it. I shared this earlier, but they loved loved it.

The payments space is constantly evolving, and the user experience must evolve along with it. We needed to bring a key part of the business into compliance, and do it elegantly.

My roles: Content design lead, product design consultant.

The situation

Peer-to-peer payments started with the idea of transferring money easily from one person to another with a minimum of friction. Make it simple, and the public will naturally gravitate to your product—especially those that may have been left out of the existing financial and banking systems. A low bar for entry can open access for many.

The complication

As the product gained wider adoption, regulators took note and began to apply the rules that other banks and financial products follow. The rules include verification of individual and  business identities to ensure that everything is safe, secure, and in line with laws and regulations.

Building out a system that works with the existing product, numerous client states, and legal/compliance needs is a massive undertaking. We risk customers leaving if the process seems too complicated, but it needs to be thorough enough to pass the legal litmus test.

The question

How can we meet new regulatory needs and keep as many users as possible?

The answer

By designing a flow that elegantly balances user expectations, regulatory realities, and compliance requirements.

The process

We couldn’t jump in and start designing without understanding some key things:

• What the regulations require, and how they apply to our users
• What can the platform execute
• What help documentation we need to support the change
• How we are positioning these changes
• How users fare in similar flows (behaviors, data, etc.)

This was a project without a clear start date; it was a situation where this type of work had been happening for some time, but now was entering into a more intense, urgent phase ahead of external deadlines.

Sometimes, a project has a tidy kickoff. Other times, players join mid-stream and make sense of things as they do the work. That’s what we did here. New product manager, new product designer, and a new content designer (me!).

The work

Figma was our home. Components made up that home’s furnishings. We lived in it, welcoming guests from across the neighborhood in the form of business partners throughout the company.

Any minor change to wording within the experience could jeopardize the success of an entire product type, so we needed to remain empathetic and vigilant to the company needs as we brought the situation into compliance.

Most of the work happened in partnership with a dedicated product designer. Together, we workshopped the flows screen-by-screen for the three user types and the varying user states.

From there, I took the experience and flows we’d crafted together and focused deeply on the content itself. And it took focus: business logic, engineering capabilities, and legal/compliance constraints, all handled within the tiny confines of the app’s regular screens, dialogue boxes, and push notifications.

Our business requirements shifted a few times while we were working on it, requiring changes in the experience—sometimes just a language tweak, and other times a reimagining of large portions of the flows.

Content design at this level of business complexity is a little like juggling—three balls in the air is workable after some practice. With 39 separate user states with many of which were dependent on one another, we were juggling all of the balls.

The results

When this work made it in front of design reviews and experience reviews, we were applauded for our deft handling and distillation. In the end, I created:

• New screen and component designs
• New user flows and pathways
• All content, including UI copy, push notifications, and emails
• Writing and messaging guidelines

What started as an unfathomably complex series of scenarios ended as a concise experience that met all of the requirements on time. We broke new ground, created new components and writing guidelines, and ushered in a new era for the company.

To get an idea of the scale of the project (and for fun), here’s a zoomed-out view of one of the user types in the Figma file:

It was one for the ages, this project!