User problem

The things I come into the Chime app to do quickly are multiple taps and scrolls away.

Opportunity

Chime’s members use our app daily to manage their money, opening it on average after every single transaction. Having control and visibility over their money is critical to this group, many of whom are living paycheck-to-paycheck and carefully monitoring ins and outs.

I saw a design opportunity to create a central place for top tasks like finding your debit card number and turning cards on/off—the latter being used frequently by members to avoid surprise automatic payments.

Meet Shortcut Menu. With no marketing or in-app announcements, it became the #1 entrypoint for these tasks within a matter of weeks with 95% of members who tried it switching their behavior for an average of 12 tasks per week. Following this successful experiment where we also saw 2% lift in spend and funding metrics, we launched Shortcut Menu to all Chime members. It’s become one of the most-loved pieces of UI in the app, frequently mentioned in member forums on Reddit.

Solution

✅ An easily accessible and repeatable menu surface for top tasks

✅ Includes tasks based on frequency of use vs. complexity “pain” in the existing app vs. member intent

❌ Such an extensive menu that it’s no longer a “shortcut”—link out to Settings instead

What I did

💡Dug into analytics/UXR to identify top tasks and audit complexity of existing paths

💡Designed easily discoverable affordance for “top tasks” related to each account type

💡 Leveraged common consumer iconography to ensure entrypoint comprehension

💡 Created new, scalable surface for use by all product teams at Chime (with guidance)

Why it matters

⭐️  Members found Shortcut Menu to be incredibly useful!

⭐️ Shortcut Menu was 1st step in maturing Chime app ecosystem with necessary infrastructure

⭐️  Inaugural project with new eng-design-PM squad that set collaboration model with team and rest of product org

Before Shortcut Menu was launched