SnapSplit
Removing the stress from splitting bills with friends
Role
UX/UI Designer
Team
1 Developer
1 PM
Time
6 weeks
Overview
Context
The dinner check arrives, and we all know what happens next. Someone says "I'll handle it," thinking it'll be simple. Then they're stuck figuring out who had what while everyone else moves on to dessert conversations.
Snapsplit users were experiencing this exact pattern. They loved scanning receipts and seeing items extracted automatically, but then the bill host became the designated organizer while friends disconnected from the process. We were losing people right when they needed us most.
How might we make the person organizing the bill feel supported instead of abandoned?
Result
Task completion jumped 60% - people actually finished splitting their bills.
Users could now assign their own items instead of waiting around for the host to manage everything. We eliminated the bottleneck that was making everyone miserable.
Hopefully splitting the check now feels as easy as enjoying dinner together.
Meet our bill splitter
Our main user was simple to identify: young adults who go out together and need to split bills without the awkward math session afterward.
Friend groups at dinner, roommates buying groceries, people on trips together—they all want to pay what they owe and move on. Nobody wants to spend the end of a good night doing calculations.
Traits
We identified three key patterns in how these users actually behave:
Users want to stay in the moment. They don't want to shift from having fun to doing administrative work—assigning items and calculating splits pulls them out of enjoying time together.
Bill hosts feel abandoned. The person who volunteers to organize the split ends up managing everything alone while friends check out mentally, creating an unfair dynamic nobody enjoys.
They need to feel secure sharing money info. Even though the app doesn't process payments, users are cautious about entering financial details and sharing costs with their social circle.
Objectives
From understanding how people actually split bills, we knew the experience needed to be:
Fast and effortless. It should feel quicker than doing the math in your head, and intuitive enough that nobody needs to figure out how it works.
Fairly distributed. Everyone should contribute to the process instead of making one person handle everything while others wait around.
Trustworthy. The design should feel secure and legitimate enough that people are comfortable sharing financial details.
The real work happened as a team
I want to be clear—this wasn't me working alone. The best solutions came from team discussions and feedback from users who got so frustrated they just stopped using the platform.
The redesign is everyone's work: user research findings, usage data insights, and tons of iteration. From talking to people who actually split bills to building prototypes in Figma to creating the design system, the whole team focused on making something genuinely helpful.
Throughout the design process, the entire team continually iterated and improved the experience together.
Bill splitting flow
We rebuilt the process around four key stages. Each part solved a specific problem we'd heard from users. Here's why we designed it this way:
1. Receipt upload
Users start by scanning receipts or adding items manually. As they work, they see a running total and item count for what needs to be split.
The scanning tech was already working well, but we made the visual feedback clearer so people know when it's processing. No more "is this thing even working?" confusion.
2. Item review
Next, users review and edit what got extracted before anyone starts splitting. Remove tips, fix prices, add missed items—whatever needs adjusting.
This step builds trust by letting people confirm everything looks right before money gets involved. We found that giving users control over accuracy was essential for their confidence.
3. Group assignment (aka the game changer)
Here's our biggest shift. Rather than forcing the bill host to manage every assignment, we reversed it: everyone gets their own link to select what they ordered.
This shared the mental work and turned bill splitting into collaboration rather than a solo burden. Eliminated all that "who ordered what?" guesswork.
4. Payment & tracking
Finally, everyone pays their share directly in the app, and the system shows who's paid and who hasn't. Clear status indicators eliminated those awkward "did you pay yet?" follow-up texts.
Everyone sees the payment status in real-time, creating transparency without anyone having to chase people down.
Prototyping
Here's a prototype showing the new experience—built to be faster, actually collaborative, and stress-free for the whole group.
Testing
After 6 weeks of iteration, internal testing, and late-night design system builds, the redesigned SnapSplit was ready to launch. The feedback from our startup team and their friends made all the work worth it:
"Finally! I don't feel like I'm doing everyone's homework when we split the bill." "This actually makes splitting bills fun instead of awkward."
Sometimes I get so focused on making things work that I forget about how they make people feel. This project reminded me that good design isn't just about functionality—it's about not making people's lives harder. Hearing users actually feel relieved instead of stressed? That's why I do this.
Shoutout
Before I wrap up, I have to acknowledge the rest of the SnapSplit team. Working with people who are ambitious, creative, and genuinely talented made this redesign possible.
In startup mode, you're moving fast and juggling everything—it's not often you get to completely rethink how something works from scratch. The fact that we could challenge basic assumptions and rebuild the whole experience? That only happens with the right team.
Thanks to everyone who made this work.
