Project Kill Bill Messages

Technically, all the billing-related information lived in the Billing section of the Verizon app. However, within the Billing section, there was a module called Bill Messages where some notifications and alerts went.

When the user clicked on Bill Messages, they saw two tabs: Account Information and Important. Account Information showed autopay and some other notifications. Under Important was a long statement with terms and conditions.

If there were new messages in this module, it just stayed buried in there. The user didn't receive a nudge of any kind.

Bill Messages was flying under the radar: No one owned this "ghost module," and there was no clarity on why it was built the way it was. There were several legacy systems in place, and it wasn't entirely clear which engineering or design team had inherited this module.

Since My Fios and My Verizon apps had already merged into one experience, there were more complications: Users who hadn't yet created a single Verizon ID to access both these accounts had to log off and log back on to see Fios and Mobile notifications separately. Bill Messages added to the confusion.

Because my team didn't have access to UX research, I had to get scrappy: I went to Reddit and pulled some user quotes. I also used Glassbox to gather more UX data.

After doing some digging around and talking to designers and engineers, I drew up a proposal with a short-term plan and a long-term plan. 

I presented all the data I'd gathered, proposed some solutions that we could fold into another billing and payments overhaul project led by an experience manager, and laid out some next steps for engineering and design.

Phase 1 involved eliminating the modal and redistributing the messages in the well-established notifications section or the priority tiles on the home screen. For that, I needed a log of all the messages that were routed to the Bill Messages module so I could find the appropriate home for them based on urgency and impact. The information under the Important tab, for example, needed to be broken up into separate sections and placed where relevant. Any major alerts around price changes, deals, etc., needed to go on the home screen.

The Bill Messages module would be eliminated, and the messages would be routed to priority tiles or notifications.

Phase 2 was the longer term solution: streamlining all the messages that the user received regarding billing and payments. Aside from the in-app notifications and messages, the user might be getting notified on SMS, email, and other channels we aren't aware of. The larger goal would be to unify all these and make them consistent without overwhelming the user.

Verizon's rebranding was also a good reason to bring up opportunities like this, which required the whole team to align on what we wanted the new brand to stand for, and what, in terms of experience, we could stand behind. I presented to the design leadership to win allies over and then spoke to the engineering leadership to get answers and get the ball rolling on reforming this part of the experience.