PayPal Business App

Design operations and research

I established an efficient design operation process for a team of two. This included implementing a centralized file system, documenting changes, and maintaining a transparent sprint planning site.

As a leader, I emphasized a research-informed design practice. We conducted bi-weekly design tests using various techniques, involving product managers and engineers in asking questions and debriefing.

In just a year, our team conducted more user research studies than any other at the company.

Mentoring and team building

As a Lead Designer, I focused on developing the skills of associate and intern designers. Through paired design, I provided feedback and resources to enhance their work. I assigned challenging projects to help them grow and facilitated discussions with stakeholders to resolve conflicts and move initiatives forward.

Starting small: Visual refresh and pattern library

To align the app with PayPal for web, I simplified the font variations from 16 to 4, reducing the app size.
I introduced a tile system for the home screen, ensuring a flexible layout while maintaining information integrity, system which became widely adopted across teams.

While not solely responsible for maintaining the style guide, I oversaw its consistency and the correct application of patterns in the app, adding implemented patterns to the app's supplemental library.

Ethnographic Research

Collaborating with our research team, I conducted a diary study to inform our product and design strategy and gain insights into the needs of our users. We visited small business owners in the U.S. and India, observing their work.

Takeaways

• Merchants who sell goods, require a high level of customization in their invoicing and product offers. They often create bundles and promotions, and use invoicing every day.
• Service merchants want to make the most out of their time, and spend less time doing billing activities and more providing services, and easily recover from the effects of service cancellations.
• Both have in common a need to grow their customers, reduce friction in the tools they use to run their business, have a reliable way to receive payments while on-the-go, and have a clear overview of how their money is moving.

The study resulted in well-defined personas and journey maps, which effectively communicated the SMB merchant story to our team and leadership. It also shed light on the neglected audience of service providers, leading to new opportunities in our roadmap.

New Roadmap

I helped my team brainstorm on new initiatives for our yearly roadmap, focused on improving efficiency of payments for merchants on-the-go and establish new opportunities.

Home Framework

The app's homepage lacked guidance for small business owners on important tasks and objectives at PayPal. They desired actionable data, insights, and relevant tasks tailored to their business needs.

Our mission was to create an at-a-glance view that highlighted overall status and pending actions, personalized to each user's journey with PayPal.

In collaboration with the web home screen team, I developed a scalable Home Framework that consistently presented information across platforms. I prioritized discrete areas for critical information, ensuring a sense of permanence and providing guidelines for other teams to add notifications, features, and cross-sells.

One challenge was maintaining the web home screen hierarchy while condensing it into a single feed on the app, without overwhelming the user.

I addressed this by creating expandable notification zones and setting guidelines for notification permanence and cross-sells. We conducted a pilot program to display different levels of importance in notifications to merchants, allowing us to fine-tune our approach and provide a seamless user experience.