Subscription Saver

Problem

Active millennials struggle with managing and keeping track of subscription spending which is causing them to lose track of what and when they are spending on subscriptions.

Solution

A dashboard that keeps track of upcoming payments and gives the user visibility of how much they spend for subscriptions with the feature where they can cancel their subscriptions.

Group Project: Nikki Burdyn, Joe Rainer, Stefanie Dinh Nguyen

Research and Planning

In this research project, we planned and conducted interviews which enabling me to gain a deeper understanding of their challenges. The interview questions will assist me in empathizing with users and the challenges they face while managing their recurring subscription services.

After Interviewing people, I used the data to organize an affinity diagram to help visually assess the struggles the user was faced with.

We use several methods and an approach that involves a brainstorming mind map, including an 'I like', 'I wish', and 'What if' exercise. By utilizing these methods, we are able to get different perspectives on how we can later translate a user's needs into the design.

Definition & Ideation

I used our findings to develop Olivia Thomson our user persona. Key findings and problems Olivia tells us about are

She forgot about her upcoming payments
Being in control and managing a lot of subscriptions is what struggles her
She doesn’t use the service fully that she is paying for
Her subscriptions are getting too expensive

How might we help and improve Olivias subscription management so she can easily locate, track, manage, and become notified of all upcoming subscription payments to ease her frustration?

The subscription saver app we developing will help her to keep track and manage all her subscriptions in one place. It will help her have more visibility about her spending on subscriptions. Due to our time we got provided for this project we had to prioritize most important options and what was quick to develop. We figured it out in our team with the prioritization matrix and discussed our first flow through the app.

Competitor Analysis

Before we begin creating the design for our product, we perform SWOT and competitor analysis, which helps us to understand the pros and cons of our competitors' features better. This analysis provides us with the necessary inspiration we need to create functional design sketches to start with.

Key notes and take aways of competitors

Functionality

Subscription categories
Customizable interface and ordering
How you upload and manage data (manually/sync etc.)
Add bill/subscription is hidden
Allows profile customization (income, vehicle, residence, location)
Easy to onboard, difficult to customize personal financial account
Freedom to choose own financial goals
Ability to filter (price/payment date/alphabetical)

Features

Notification of upcoming payments
Subscription management (upgrade, cancel?)
Keep track of spending
Upcoming payments
Budget planning/designing
Identifies interest/savings tips/bank fees
Statistic dashboard (avg. spending etc.)

A brainstorm broad concept of how the app screens will be lay out and steps a user would follow from the dashboard overview until a user make their first subscription management by canceling or check on details about payments and due date. We hope to guide Olivia through the process in an easy-to-follow manner, ensuring seamless navigation for her at every step.

Prioritization Matrix and User Flows

Features to be included:

Overview of all subscription/recurring payments
Dashboard that has all subscriptions
cancel/upgrade feature

Sketches and Wireframes

Our team focuses on creating both functional and user-friendly designs for our prototype. Our approach to making the ideal wireframe for our prototype began by working with the idea sketches each of us came up with, and we individually created wireframes and tested them to get feedback on our design, so Olivia could go through the subscription cancellation process successfully.

We transformed, iterated our ideas and user test findings into the final Frankenstein wireframe that we agreed on

User Testing Result

Giving Olivia the task to go through the process of cancellation, she had to find the cancel subscription button and had to choose a date to cancel the subscription. We gave her two choices, either cancel now or cancel on a later date she can pick out from the calendar.

Our Assumptions was:

Users have a lot of subscriptions but they have only one to three subscriptions
While designing our wireframe we tried to use icons to show where we had the options and settings on our app located for cancelling the subscription. Some of our testers have voiced their opinion that they couldn’t find it. They were confused and couldn’t find the settings because they were looking for the actual wording. We assumed that the icon was the easiest and fastest way a user would recognize to click on to get to the cancel subscription button.

We found out that if the user picks to cancel on a later date a simple statement that the app will handle the cancellation process or cancellation is in progress was not enough. The user wants more visibility, know everything, and mostly in detail what is going to happen or is happening at the moment.

High-Fidelity Prototype

Conclusion

How did we help Olivia?

Education towards financial empowerment
Tools for complete subscription-service management

What did we give Olivia?

All subscriptions listed in one place to easily navigate
Ability to manage and not forget/miss payments
Ownership with cancellation flexibility

Looking ahead at the next features we would like to apply:

Upgrade subscription option

Advance services from the app in 1 place
Find similar free/trial-based services

Finance tools

Link to bank account
Spending history/metrics/categories

Budgeting tools

See upcoming payment outcomes
“What-if” option for planning what subscriptions to use or lose

What would I do differently

Conducting a second round of user testing to address confusion and improve our product or interface. To ensure our second round of user testing is more effective and helps eliminate confusion, consider our test participants represent a diverse range of target audience. Include individuals who did not participate in the first round of testing to get fresh perspectives.

Key take aways

The key takeaway for me from our project is that time creep, forced our team to prioritize and simplify the design process. This led to several positive outcomes that made our team prioritize and focus on essential design elements, avoiding unnecessary complexities. This simplicity can contribute to a more intuitive and user-friendly app.