Halfsies

Halfsies had a working beta and a healthy number of sign-ups, mostly students and young professionals sharing a flat. The trouble was what happened next: only 31% of new users were still active in their second week.

The beta opened on a dashboard with fourteen widgets, including a pie chart of spending categories, a running balance per housemate in red or green, and a “settle up” button that pulsed. The founders had built what they would want themselves. Their users weren’t accountants.

I ran eight remote interviews with people who had signed up and stopped, and five in-person sessions with households who were still using it. The quotes that stuck were not about features.

“Every time I opened it, I felt like I owed someone money. Even when I didn’t.”

The red and green balances turned a friendly arrangement into a scoreboard. People didn’t want to know the exact amount every day; they wanted to know whether things were fair, and to be told quietly when they weren’t.

One sentence instead of fourteen widgets

The new home screen leads with a single line written in plain language: “You and Ines are square”, or “You owe Ines €12.40 for the electricity”. Below it is a list of recent spends, newest first. The charts moved to a separate page that about one person in ten opens, which is the right number.

Colour that doesn’t accuse

Balances lost their red and green. Amounts owed are shown in ink, and the only colour on the screen marks things that need you to act.

Every empty state and error, rewritten

With the support lead, I went through 180 support emails and rewrote 46 messages in the app. “Transaction failed: invalid split” became “The amounts don’t add up to €54.00 yet. You’ve split €50.00 so far.”