Subcription

Management

UX, UI & Visual Designer

NOV - DEC 2020

Andrea Piacquiado for Pexels

Subscriptly

Subscription management made effortlessly for Android Mobile

PROBLEM

How might we remove complexity from users with simplified management of reoccurring services?

ENVISIONING THE SOLUTION

Since spending is so much easier than saving — discretionary spending is an area that can be easily manipulated to accommodate other parts of your essential or life-event budgets. Monitoring, opting to renew subscriptions, record keeping & receiving notifications builds awareness of your services & how much money is going out. This mindfulness makes a happier relationship with your finances — providing gratification within a single source of truth.

CREATING FROM THE BOTTOM

An individual conceptual project actualizing research, design & validation phases of human-centered design. Inclusive of problem space, secondary & competitive research, card sorting, ideation, information architecture, wireframing, guerrilla & usability testing. Three iteration loops on mid & high-fidelity mockups, visual design, and UX writing. The entire project took place remotely.

"I try to remember everything."

DEFINING THE AUDIENCE

Are you frustrated by forgetting to cancel a subscription and then getting carelessly hit with a costly expense? Do you feel overwhelmed by not exactly knowing how many subscriptions you have, nor how much money is going out? Do you want to make the handling of all your service subscriptions effortless? If you answered, “Yes!” sign up for Subscriptly!

THE IMPORTANCE OF A UX/UI PROJECT PLAN

CHARTING A PATH

The project’s constraints had a restriction of 90 hours, driving me to analyze which research methods to use. Forecasting a plan to get from ‘A-to-Z’, meaning research to 3rd round of iteration helped outline my direction in advance. While the business requirements provided user stories, target user & expansion market information were provided — the discovery phase focused on competitive analysis, heuristic review with an overall summary & persona creation.

"I don't really keep track.
I probably should."

THE IMPACT OF RESEARCH

IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEM SPACE

What inspired me from problem space findings — is that participants have numerous ways they keep track of the services they subscribe to. Yet, most respondents use either a banking statement or don’t keep track, letting themselves get charged without much thought.

SEEKING ANSWERS IN THE COMPETITION

Analyzing other financial & service management apps — Truebill, Bobby, Subscription Management & Mint — onboarding, user flow, paid vs. freemium models, writing & visual design was assessed and compared/contrasted. I was curious about:

How do users identify their subscriptions?
How are users notified of upcoming payments?
How can users opt-out of a reoccurring payment?
How do users classify non-USD currency for subscriptions?
What other options do users have with their subscriptions?
Are users able to categorize their discretionary spending?
What type of fees do companies charge for these services?
What other features are offered?

DISTILLING THE DISCOVERY

In my card sort questionnaire, quantitative research revealed that of 30 respondents: 21 want the opportunity to store all of my subscriptions in one place, and 21 are trying to be more budget-conscious.

EXPANDING THE INSIGHTS

I learned a significant insight! The Dashboard is the most frequented screen — serving as a control panel for all reoccurring services. It should snapshot the history of paid expenses, receipts for recordkeeping, upcoming charges with budget allocation, and a summary of spending by date range while giving each subscription access.

During heuristic evaluations, there are six critical items I wanted to be sure to incorporate into Subscriptly:

Not requiring sign-up — allows users to test-drive freemium; while an onboarding tutorial will provide the value-add for upgrading to premium.
Select and use consistent wording throughout — in lieu of multiple synonyms of new, custom, subscription, bill, expenses.
In-app purchases — if made through the app store, auto-fill the account information for upgrading ease.
Seamlessly pull information from the initial screens into input fields by assisting with auto-population.
Provide only relevant information per screen.
Dark mode still needs to meet WCAG standards.

MEET JACK

The brand focuses on a user base of over 30, equally distributed between men & women, trying to be more budget-conscious. Although this product is currently used in the US, the company will be expanding into the German market. Jack is a conscious creator.

INTRODUCING SUBSCRIPTLY

The brand strives to be your go-to friend — trustworthy, caring & casual folding into your daily life with minimal effort. Subscriptly was just meant to be! At a glance, you get a diagnostic on your reoccurring subscriptions and know exactly where you are financially with your discretionary spending.

HOW I GOT HERE

KICKING OFF IDEATION

There are four key features: onboarding, adding subscriptions, canceling an auto-renewal service, and navigating the dashboard screen. Combing those into an interrelated user flow plans the clicks to cruise in app.

When accessing the app, I am deliberate of mindful design: a linear flow from onboarding to creating an account, adding subscriptions to assessing your spending on the dashboard — the interaction is direct, friendly, and low-key just like your best friend. These essentials for subscription management are the MVP.

SKETCHING SCREENS

Quickly jotting ideas down on paper & reorganizing the information per screen provided clarity while adopting a design kit from Android’s Material Design for Sketch.

MY SUBSCRIPTIONS

DASHBOARD

MY SUBSCRIPTION DETAILS

FIRST ROUND OF FEEDBACK

Excited to test my sketches with the public; guerrilla usability testing was the method of choice. The evaluations & observations gave me insight into the difficulties of the experience & user flow. Although the participants were able to get through 90% of the tasks, validation gave me 4 critical areas for improvement: onboarding, icons, automation, auto-populate.

FOCUSING ON THE FLOW

Incorporating ease to subscription data entry, I supplemented several screens to refine my wire flows. By boosting automation of services’ details, linking bank accounts, credit cards, and/or cash apps, this adds benefit to a core value — signifying effortlessness.

MOLDING THE MOOD

Subscriptly makes handling your subscriptions effortless. The brand tagline encourages the prioritization of discretionary spending with ease. To monitor, track, unsubscribe & record keep — the app’s niche market — these features are designed to pointedly address financial pressures. The inspiration for illustrations, color, and imagery infuse these goals into the assets.

BETTING ON THE ASSETS

I was required to find a UI Design Kit for Sketch, imagery, illustrations, and typefaces that existed, rather than original designs, I scouted several resources to identify the just-right dark mode assets with color, component layout manipulation & scale editing. Material Design, The Noun Project, Unsplash, and Dafont became the leading means to characterize the collateral for Subscriptly. The selected colors are calming and meant to evoke a sense of inclusivity, comfort & trust.

Boosting UX Writing for context, the participants improved task completion from guerrilla testing to a 100%
fulfillment — a 10% improvement.

REVELATIONS FROM USABILITY TESTING

ROUND TWO OF FEEDBACK

This round of validation gave me 5 critical areas for improvement: automated timing loop, tabs for classification of renewal subscriptions, the importance of freemium, adjacency of similar information, and remaining budget to remove all unknowns.

Several users questioned whether they could customize the app with sort/filter features to order subscriptions by price or alphabetical arrangement. Additionally, there was interest in rearranging the dashboard cards as they’d like to see the information catered to their specificity. These features would be explored as Priority 2 user stories.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM GUERRILLA TESTING & USABILITY RE-TESTING

Language — Keep this app comfortable for all users to understand why they are here. How do you make this, so people have to use this app? Provide suggestions on how to use this app. Is it promoting savings? How is it optimizing expenses? How does it make your life easier? Is there a social or community aspect to it?

Automation — Reduce or eliminate manual input altogether & introduce ease by setting up your Merchants from any of your cash apps, such as Venmo, PayPal, Cash App, Apple Pay, etc., or by directly logging into your subscription account.

Freemium — Participants want the option to test drive the app before committing to purchase.

Customization — Participants want the ability to sort, filter, and see what they want.

THE CHALLENGES

In my research phase, the most challenging aspect was card sorting. Without using this information architecture testing method before, I didn’t know how the software extracted the data. Multiple statistical formats required lengthy amounts of time to interpret.

Modifying Material Components for the interface was complicated to refine for the Subscriptly color palette and compromised the WACG standards. Although selected colors meet AAA + AA WACG contrast guidelines — when I implemented the Android UI Design Kit, the overlays and elevations significantly impacted contrast ratios.

"Hurry up and make your app. I need this."

WHAT'S NEXT?

Ideation — What happens for future subscription purchases paid through bank accounts, credit cards, or cash apps that are already aligned with the Subscriptly service?
- Alert in App or Notification Email “Let me help you add that in right away,” or “New subscription found” requiring approval by the user to connect to Subscriptly.
- Google Chrome plug-in allows integration at sign-up of new reoccurring service.
- Friendly Reminders such as “Nothing to go overdue” or “Are you still using this service?”
- Advertisements “Noticed you liked this, you might be interested in…” suggesting a service that might be of value to the user.
- Integrated Merchants, for example, Disney+ has a feature that once you sign up, it will integrate with Subscriptly.

Integration — Have the designated country selection at account creation identify the regional Merchants list.

Target Audience — To include Head of Households where multiple subscriptions are held & need to be tracked.

PROJECT OUTCOME & RECAP

This capstone provides a niche market solution to monitor, track, unsubscribe & record keep your subscriptions — to pointedly address financial pressures. The brand derived from this — Subscriptly — making discretionary spending awareness easy & effortless.

To refine & define the new Subscriptly app, I relied on 30 card sorting test responses, 4 competitive market studies, and 10 usability tests over research & design. It started with a deeper understanding received from competitive research & data extract from card sorting, yet allowing the guerrilla and usability testing conversations to validate or reiterate the user experience.

Although usability tests revealed that users could get through most of the red routes, they struggled with data entry for multiple subscriptions. Discussions with users revealed they value ease of form field data via automation, auto-population, and retrieval of service details by linking bank accounts, credit cards, and cash apps. This added feature allows them to smoothly connect accounts for their discretionary spending minutiae to be calculated on the backend.

Retaining a manual entry option is a direct impact of testing insight. Minimizing friction — the participants want to test-drive the app before purchasing even with a low, one-time fee of $3.99. These responses made me realize the importance of freemium & trial models.

Subscriptly is trustworthy, caring, friendly & casual — just like your best friend. I have dreams of making this a viable app, but in the interim, check out my prototype: Subscriptly

If I did launch this app, I would be looking at conversion rates to understand user engagement — how many people download the app, site visitation & frequency, company integration, and premium upgrade subscribers. These metrics would influence further iterations & testing.

AS A UX, UI & VISUAL DESIGNER, I LEARNED...

That reading is not preferred over scanning
How imagery & illustrations contribute to the vibe of a brand
By thinking bigger with the incorporation of automation features is a huge time-saver & highly desirable
A minimal app cost is still a deciding factor for users & freemium is always sought for trial purposes
How working within time constraints of 90 hours requires tasks to ebb & flow within research, design & validation phases

PROJECT TIME & EFFORT

This is an outline of how I got there, however it does not include the time I spent to ramp up on Google Material Design as it is a completely foreign operating system. It took approximately 15 hours of time in addition to this UX plan to understand the basics of how the layout, visual design, language, and tonality work.