Do you find money stressful? I think it would be fair to say 99% of the human population does. Do you find your banking app to be cold and barely functional, kind of like a concrete bench? Probably.
Venmo’s popularity is partly attributed to its ease of use, but it's also partly because it feels casual and welcoming. When designing the bill payment feature for Capital One and other major banks, my goal was to make their UX less stressful.
My Role
I was a Senior Product Designer at BillGO. I led design for various projects, but most of my efforts were focused on the B2B2C bill pay platform. My efforts were very collaborative, especially with our UX researcher, Dana, and some of our other designers.
Our core audience was primarily middle-class elder millennials, but the platform served a broad spectrum of users. Gen Z users made up a smaller segment, but they presented unique challenges in retention and engagement. My design approach prioritized accessibility, emotional clarity, and adaptability for all users.
Capital One met with us to report that a majority of users were disengaging early, often within days of onboarding or even during the onboarding. We set out to uncover what was causing users to drop off.
I proposed an initial hypothesis: that bill pay was not just a functional task, but an emotionally loaded one. Users weren’t just looking for utility, they needed reassurance, predictability, and a sense of control.
We kicked off the initiative with a month-long mixed-method ethnographic study. Participants across age groups journaled their daily money habits, including their bill pay behaviors, routines, and emotional triggers. To expand our qualitative understanding, I also led internal walkthroughs with employees, asking them to talk through their personal experiences using competing platforms. These sessions revealed deep usability gaps and unmet emotional needs.
Across interviews and studies, we uncovered major pain points:
Lack of clear confirmation after a bill was paid.
Confusing language around due dates and auto-payments.
UI patterns that created cognitive load without communicating important information.
Inconsistent display of data across billers.
Unwelcoming visual design.
Ultimately, each of these issues created uncertainty and eroded trust gradually, especially for Gen Z.
I worked closely with engineering and product to eliminate high-friction flows, rework confusing language, and introduce calmer, more supportive UI patterns. We focused on scheduling, payment confirmation, and clear alerts—all areas where a lack of clarity had caused frustration. One of the biggest areas of focus for us was language design. We couldn’t completely get rid of cold hard legalese, but I was able to make major upgrades.
The redesign led to a meaningful drop in early churn and an increase in user engagement. While full retention data was confidential, usability testing showed:
Faster task completion across key scheduling and payment flows.
Fewer customer support tickets related to payment status.
Stronger qualitative feedback around tone, clarity, and emotional ease.
The design work also influenced broader platform decisions, including improvements to the CRM dashboard and internal support tooling.
If you design with consideration for users’ emotions, you can take a product from good to great.