Background

The problem I am solving is when a group of friends go out for dinner and need to split the bill at the end of their meal. This experience can be frustrating and error prone when trying to corral everyone and make sure they pay what they need to. Meet “Split /Checks” An iPhone app one person can launch, scan the bill, and then pass around the table. Each group, or person, chooses what they ordered and can split items for sharing as well as review what they claimed. Then they pass the phone to the next group. At the end everyone can see how much they owe and tip can be adjusted.

Time Frame

My goal was to see what I could come up with in two days, then pitch a few developers to help build it.

Process

First I started by identifying the contextual factors like where this app would be used, the different types of groups, or the types of items that might populate the list. Next, I documented the “Status Quo” and made sure that the experience I was creating could beat “just writing it down.”

Challenges

The biggest design challenge was finding the best way to display the items while also making claiming them easy. So I cam up with the “basket” UI and went with a slightly skeuomorphic UI that suggests you can drag items into it. Another challenge was that the current libraries for OCR (Optical Character Recognition) couldn’t reliably transcribe the text on the receipts. 

Success

The project has been well received by those I have shown the concept to and said that they would use and pay for it.

Areas for Improvement

While I was able to find a developer, the project fell off his radar. I would like to update the interface to better match iOS7 and find a new developer to partner with to build the app.