How Might We Redesign PayPal to Integrate Giving? A PayPal UX Case Study

Background:

Over the course of a week-long UX Design Sprint, Tina Chen, Ashley Kim, and Carley Calfee were tasked with redesigning the PayPal web app to integrate giving into the experience. Working through the University of Virginia’s Forge Launch academy, we were developed a case study using the following steps:

Problem statement:

When first taking the time to think about our challenge, we first brainstormed what giving meant to each of us. To the majority of the team, we interpreted the challenge to mean giving in the form of charity, whether it be to individuals in need or non-profit charitable organizations. While PayPal already has a robust charity-giving function, there were a number of problems with accessing and navigating this portion of the website, making our goal to ease the giving experience for users who wish to use PayPal to donate to those in need.

Research:

We conducted 10 interviews in total — 5 ethnographic and 5 nondirect. From our interviews we were able to better familiarize ourselves with PayPal’s donation system and figure out exactly what we wanted to focus on in our redesign.

Our first takeaway was learning about PayPal’s two donation systems: the Generosity Network and the Giving Fund. The Generosity Network functions very similarly to GoFundMe, where individuals are able to start their own campaigns to raise money for certain causes. On the other hand, the Giving Fund is a page which hosts many official charities, such as WWF and the Rainforest Alliance.

With our knowledge of these two donation systems, we quickly realized that PayPal lacked a clear way to direct users to these pages effectively. There was an absence of a “donate” function on the navigation bar and users would have to infer where exactly they could donate. Moreover, there was no clear differentiation between what would take you to the Generosity Network or the Giving Fund.

“I wasn’t aware that PayPal had an option for donations or charities.”

Our second takeaway was that many of our interviewees had concerns about the legitimacy of donating through PayPal. We realized that in our redesign we would have to focus on adding elements that added a sense of credibility to the organizations and campaigns within PayPal.

“However, for donations to specific individuals, I would need to see that he provides evidence that he is truly in need of help. “

“I need to know that money is going to the person I want to serve.”

Lastly, we also had to heavily consider the fact that many users revealed that they would not actively click “donate” themselves when browsing online. Therefore, for our redesign, we needed to find a smarter way to embed the donate option into their everyday activities on PayPal.

User Persona

For our user persona, we created a fictional user based on our interviews named Charitable Chelsea. She is a young twenty-something in college who is highly empathetic and very conscious of her social impact. She has strong senses of morality, and believes that her actions should follow her personal beliefs when it comes to doing good in the world. She desires to contribute to charities in both a safe and secure way, and is concerned about not getting the best “bang for her buck” through using platforms that take a percentage out or through donating to an unverified organization. She also sometimes feels unsure if she should give her money to one charity rather than another.

Use Case

Our use cases outlined the scenario described in our first takeaway from our interviews- the fact that there was no clear way that Chelsea could navigate to either of the two donation systems. Our main use case had Chelsea, who wanted to make a first time donation to WWF, navigating to the Giving Fund by clicking the “Send and Request” tab on the navigation bar, clicking on “Send and Request Donations” which directs her to the Giving Fund, where she makes her donation.

Another flow Chelsea could’ve followed would be getting to the Giving Fund by clicking the “more” drop down icon on the home page and clicking on “Donate to a Cause”. Alternatively, she could have also clicked on one of the large banners on the home screen that said “donate”, which would’ve directed her to the Generosity Network.

Journey Mapping

Through creating a user journey map, we went through the experience of a user as she would navigate through the current design of the Paypal app. Starting off at the login screen, she would feel excited over potentially donating to an organization, albeit unsure of how to navigate through the website given that this is her first time through. After thinking that she would need to click the “send” button to donate money, she clicks the “send and request” tab. On that page, she is confused, unable to see immediately where she should go for the next step. After a bit of frustration and searching, she finds a small button on the lower corner that says “donate,” which she clicks. The button brings her to the Giving Fund, a page that allows users to search for an organization and donate, and feels excited to finally be closer to her goal. After clicking the search button and searching for an organization, she is excited that she can find it easier. After finding her desired organization and clicking donate, she is relieved that she was able to get through the process and is feeling good about her action of giving to those in need.

Proposed Solutions

Based on the various user research that we conducted, we proposed three major solutions that we are focusing on for this project.

Improve Information Clarity

We want to make donation-related features more organized and easily noticeable to users. Currently, users would have three options to go to both the Generosity Network and the General Funding page on different sections of the home page. Most importantly, how these buttons/cards are laid out are not at all in a logical hierarchy.

Increase Charity Credentials

We wish to make improvements on the credentials of Paypal’s charity, especially for the Generosity Network, in order to inform users that everything on the platform is trustworthy. Currently, the website fails to do so, except for the credibility of Paypal itself as an online payments system.

Improve Smoothness of User Flow

For smoothness, we would focus on having clearer instructions for users after they favorite each charity. Right now, users can only favorite ONE charity, which is against the conventional favorite features on digital platforms. Besides, after hitting favorite, the page does not lead users to anywhere where they can find the log of their favorite charities.

Add Additional Features

Additional features that could potentially smoothen the user flow will be considered, such as adding a “Remind Me” button for the detail page of each individual campaign from the Generosity Network.

Design:
Flowchart

Before diving into the actual wireframes and mockups, we would like to first give a second to introduce the flowchart of Paypal’s donation process that we redesigned in order to give you a clearer sense of the high-level architecture.

Style Guide

In the below style guide, we compiled the colors, fonts, and button types that we used throughout the entire website.

Low-Fi Wireframe

Mockup/Prototype

Reflection

Redesigning PayPal was our first project in Forge’s three-week Launch Academy. We all felt comfortable with the visual design that already existed on Paypal, so we spent the majority of the week thinking about the optimal pathway users would take to access these already existing features.

Through improving information clarity, increasing clarity of credentials, improving the smoothness of the user flow, and adding additional features such as the “Remind Me” button, we learned a lot from our experience of redesigning the site.