Designing a wearable payment solution for PAYTM

Why?

Paytm is one of the most used payment app in India. Today, it has evolved from just a payment app into vast segments. You can book a flight, train, bus, and track them. Shop from Paytm, book movie tickets, play games, and much more. Still, the majority of usage depends on the transactions, handling transactions of over $4 billion monthly.

The major challenge is what functionality should be available in the watch so that it works as an extension of the mobile app, and how seamlessly and easily a user will be able to make payments. To understand this we need to understand the expectations of the watch and what users would need so that their life becomes easier.

Let's Understand what are the expectations from the Apple Watch

First of all, let's see who uses an Apple watch. I don’t, yet! since I never felt its a necessity but we can say that someone who has an Apple watch must be having an iPhone. A watch that costs ₹20,000 — ₹45,000 will be used majorly by upper-middle-class or affluent people. Middle-class people generally won't buy these expensive watches in India, if they do they’ll go for less expensive options like Samsung, Motorola, or Huawei. In short, we can say its an item of Luxury or Status symbol, which is created to add more ease to your life and helps you to get the most out of your time.

The Apple Watch is not a smaller smartphone. Period. It was not intended to be, and it’s clearly not how you would perceive it if you had it on your wrist. Rather, it’s an extension of your iPhone, making things more convenient.

— Mary M. Michaels, Global Director of Training,Human Factors International

This quote from Mary M. Michaels, tells us quite clearly what is expected from an Apple Watch. It is supposed to be an extension of important tasks that you will be doing on the go! We need to understand here that its a wearable device, not a smartphone!

For example, you are coming down from your office and suddenly you remember that you haven’t booked the cab yet, you can quickly book a cab from your watch with just one tap. You saved your time of taking the phone out from your pocket, opening the Uber app, then setting your location, select the cab you want and then click on Book-Cab. These are too many steps that you are going through every day, the purpose of the watch is to simplify your life, add more ease to the current process. So the app automatically picks your location and decides the most used cab service you have been using and just shows you the Arrival Time & Book-Cab button on the watch App. Nothing else, and WOW! Now you can do that task in a fraction of seconds which used to take 5min.

One great feature I liked about the Apple Watch is the TIP feature in the calculator app. It shows a great number of efforts being put by Apple in order to ease the user's life. In the US it's a culture to pay TIPS and people generally pay 20% tip. So, when you are at the reception and calculating your bill amount on your apple watch, it will show you default 20% TIP and the total amount you need to pay along with the TIP. Generally, people do lunch together, so they have gone one step further and you can divide the Total Amount among the number of people right from the calculator app.

The major use of the Apple Watch is to keep you on track and make your life better. Notifications are the most crucial part of the Apple Watch, be it about the call, message, a reminder, or fitness app tasks.

It's important to understand health factors as well while designing for a wearable.

Apple watch gets heated when used for a longer time. To increase the battery life and accommodate all the features and sensors it will require big batteries and they will generate heat! We cannot run away from it, the design should be in such a way that it takes minimum wake time. If a watch is being used for a long time it may cause burns or any skin infection which we want to avoid at all cost!

Now I think we have enough understanding of the Apple Watch and what can be expected from it. So let's figure out how can we simplify the Paytm app user journey through a wearable.

Expectations from Paytm Apple Watch app | Understanding the User and the Problems

This is a hypothetical project for me so I haven’t done any Surveys or testing for the findings. The expectations I am going to discuss below are based on the observation of my daily usage of the Paytm app and by my friends. But I think it captures almost all aspects required for any user.

I am a UX Designer, and I regularly work with Graphic Designers, Creative Writers, Developers & Project Managers. We all come from different states, are of different age groups, and have different requirements with the Paytm app. I use it to pay my daily food bill, uber bill, and buy movie tickets. Some of my friends use it for Train and flight Booking as well.

Let’s understand a few personas assuming they wear apple watch and use Paytm on their iPhone to understand their daily payment cycle and where we can ease their efforts.

Let’s understand my routine first!

I have coffee and breakfast when I reach the office. For lunch, whenever I order food I order a new variety most of the time. After lunch, my colleagues and I go out for tea. In the evening I have my Cheese Veg Sandwich, every day! I never order anything else, since I have tried all of them and I know this is the one for me. Then when I am leaving I like to have tea, call for my uber, and wait for it while I am having my tea.

Shikha Mehta | Age: 17 | Student

Shikha belongs to a well-educated affluent family and goes to a good college. She gets weekly pocket money from his dad in her Account. She is well versed in technology and uses a few payment apps. Post-college, she likes to hang out with her friends and try new cuisines in different restaurants, calls for an Uber, and heads back home.

From these scenarios, we can say that there are two types of payments, one is the recurring payment that is being done to a specific vendor and the other is a new payment. So if we can reduce the time spent on these payments, it will save a lot of effort.

Solution

As per the fair understanding of the personas, the above 4 functions will suffice to ease the user's efforts.

The UI is designed considering the Guidelines by Apple and Paytm. The icon is taken from the Paytm Phone app icon, which is already known by the users, hence it’s easier for them to recognize. The internal buttons, fonts, and graphic elements are based on guidelines by Apple.

Instant Pay at Store through Hover

Apple Pay and Google Pay use this method to instantly pay to the store then and there, just click on the app and hover your watch and its DONE!. This flow is just one tap pay hence it will be expected to have this flow in other payment apps.

Other Payments

If you want to make payment to someone else, the first and easiest step would be speaking. So Voice will be the first option, where user can speak for example “Pay 500 rupees to MOM” or “Pay 250 rupees to 991834563”and it will be done. If due to some issues Siri is not able to pick the right words the user can select a contact from his recent or contact list and make the payment.For Recurring Payments, like in my case of tea and sandwiches which I eat daily and pay the same amount to the same vendor, the watch should give me those options by default, where I can just tap and pay.

Receive Money

You can receive payments from anyone scanning your QR Code.

Notifications

This can be done by scrolling the Digital Crown, which is the only way to show different sections in any app in Apple Watch. You’ll see all the notifications about your transactions, orders, flight, train, bus status, and a lot more, and these notifications will also pop in the Apple Watch default Notification center.

As the Apple Pay app, the Paytm app also should be broken into two parts few configurations will be required to be done via Phone(add card/money in the wallet), and rest all remote tasks (Pay, Recieve, and Notifications) can be done via Watch.

Below is the prototype of the Paytm App, designed on Figma. I think this app will help ease the flow and will make the user’s life easier. Let me know in the comments section if there is something important that I left out or any other suggestions :)

Apple Watch App Interface Guidelines

To design the UI of the app, its important to understand Apple guidelines for Apple Watch, know its limitations, do’s and don’t. After going through the research guidelines I am listing few major guidelines below which is important for a designer to understand.

Use a black background

Avoid displaying your logo in your app.

Don’t include a launch screen.

Avoid displaying too much information onscreen at once.

Create visual groupings to help users find the information they want.

Use the full width of the screen.

Don’t include a launch screen.

Avoid displaying too much information onscreen at once.

Create visual groupings to help users find the information they want.

Use the full width of the screen.

Use a menu to replace buttons when appropriate.

Limit the number of side-by-side controls in your interface.

Left align elements.

San Fransico font is used across the Apple Watch, you can add new fonts but it’s always recommended to use the default font

Detailed guidelines can be seen here:>https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/watchos/visual-design/typography/