EXPENSIFY

ROLE

Lead Product Designer

PROJECT

Expensify’s chat-based app is a platform where users can connect with friends and encourage real-time collaboration. In an effort to position this app as a one-stop shop for users to build connections, we identified a few objectives for this project:

  • Make it easier for success coaches to onboard new customers to the app

  • Empower users to collaborate in real time

  • Provide a range of features that enable users to connect in the manner that makes them feel most comfortable

  • Design an experience that is easily understandable and comfortable for users

  • Prioritize parity between web and mobile apps to ensure a consistent experience regardless of platform

With that said, we decided to introduce more means of communication besides written messages. Features include:

  • Screensharing capability to help success coaches more easily onboard and troubleshoot with new customers

  • In-app calls for users that prefer collaborating in real-time, as well as a chat feature to accompany calls that is archived even after the call ends

  • The ability to invite users to a call, thus introducing group calls

  • The option for video calls should users prefer face-to-face communication

  • Screensharing with video calls to allow users to customize how they best utilize the app

WIREFRAMES

V1 of our product was one-way screen sharing so our success coaches could do demos with customers.

I explored a few different options for screen sharing on mobile.

The next iteration was to introduce peer-to-peer voice calls, with the ability to group call up to eight users, which is the maximum amount for a group DM.

Conference calls:

The final iteration of this feature was for users to have the option to screen share, video call, and/or voice call with their peers. Here are some explorations of how that could look:

Ultimately, after many iterations during the wire framing phase, we made some key decisions:

  • Users should be able to multi-task while on a call, so users on web should still have access to their Chats and attend to other tasks without hanging up

  • Screen sharing for mobile users should automatically go to full-screen — we wanted to avoid over-engineering by adding another orientation when it feels suboptimal and distracting for the viewing experience

  • Screen sharing for web users should also go to full-screen — this ensures that the viewing experience is optimized and consistent with mobile

RESPONSIVE RESIZING

Maintaining a consistent experience was a top priority, and responsive resizing illustrates how the experience translates across different screen sizes.

CALLS AND INVITE FLOW

Here is the same flow for mobile:

SCREENSHARING

Here is the same flow for mobile: