Pools for gifts, trips, and more
Company
PayPal
Role
Content Designer
Team
UX Designer, Content Designer, Product Managers, UX Researchers, Legal, Marketing, and Developers
Company Background
PayPal is a leading financial technology company, offering a smart, secure way to spend, send, and save money globally.
Problem
Money Pools was deprecated in 2021 due to regulatory concerns. Many customers asked for it back.
Opportunity
Delight customers by bringing pools back to web and app with an enhanced user experience.
I began this project by understanding the customer problem. Without a pooling feature, people have to manually ask others for money and keep track of everything—which is super tedious and can be awkward. The pooling feature makes it easy to get money together with a group ahead of time.
As a content designer, I was responsible for content strategy spanning product UI, error messages, emails, and push notifications. My content strategy emphasized:
- Simplicity. Make it as frictionless as possible to create, share, and transfer money out of a pool by using concise, clear language.
- Social. Add elements of fun and connection, while respecting that there will be pools for "negative" reasons, such as a funeral.
For this case study, I'll focus on one area where my content work made a large impact: the intro privacy experience.
Requirements
From a privacy and legal standpoint, we needed to tell customers how their info will be displayed. The screen would be shown to all first-time users once, whether they start by creating a pool or contributing to one.
I put in legal's suggested copy, and it didn't even fit in a screen! (Also, the name of the feature changed from PayPal Groups to pools—that's a whole other story 🫠)
first iteration
I asked myself: How can I simplify the privacy concepts? Is there a clearer way of presenting the info?
Legal said we had to include these concepts:
- How people can access a pool.
- What people can see with a PayPal account.
- Tell people they had control over whether or not their info is shown in the pool's activity feed.
My first approach was to combine the ideas from legal's proposed version, focusing on what people can see with a PayPal account.
feedback
Legal said that we needed to include specifics about what can be seen, such as the name and description of the pool and how much money has been received.
Also, we had a discussion with the broader team about combining the intro screen with the privacy screen. This made sense, so a user wouldn't see duplicate content. Additionally, design leadership gave feedback about wanting to see more engaging visuals.
adding another screen for privacy details
At first, legal said that we couldn't include a link to another page with more privacy details. However, through a discussion with them, we came to a compromise of what had to be included on the initial screen and what could be linked out to on another screen.
Additionally, I added a first bullet and heading to help introduce the feature in a straightforward, approachable way. "Pooling with friends" illustrates a social aspect, while the "Birthday Gift Pool" text shows an example use case. I incorporate more conversational language ("chipped in") as well.
final INTRO SCREEN
Design and product leadership gave feedback about wanting the intro privacy screen to provide more information and value props about the feature. Also, they wanted to go in a different visual direction. Aaand, the UX designer also updated to a new design system! 😄
With all that in mind, in collaboration with my UX designer partner, I made these updates:
- Used a carousel to incorporate value props for tracking goals together (aligned with marketing) and sharing a pool.
- Added the main use cases for the pool feature to the first heading for clarity.
- Changed the link from "Learn more" to "More on privacy" to make it more descriptive to improve accessibility.
- Emphasized that you don't need a PayPal account to chip into a pool, as this was brought up as important to highlight by research.
Reflection
The intro privacy experience went through so many iterations (I didn't include all of them for clarity.) I'm proud of where we ended up after incorporating feedback from legal, design, product, marketing, and engineering.
Metrics
The pool feature launched in November 2024 in the United States, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK. We have limited analytics so far, including:
- 3 million in total payment volume.
Next steps
Create a north star vision. We're working on an overall vision for the experience, including group management and spending.
Make iterative changes based on metrics and research. Improve the experience in alignment with the north star vision.
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