A mobile solution to track, manage, and reduce expenditure behind subscriptions.
In our fast life, we hop on to free trials, intending to cancel before it starts charging, or subscribe to a service to watch some popular series or movies, planning on canceling it later on, or, even worse, don't use a service anymore but are still subscribed to it thinking that we will unsubscribe /cancel it before the next cycle begins.
However, most of us forget to actually act on those intentions! After all, we are humans and it's not so surprising to forget things. What comes as a surprise is when we look at the bank statement and realize what we forgot to act on.
Hence, it is safe to say, keeping track of all the subscriptions can quickly get out of our hand, leading to "avoidable" expenditure.
5 candidates, age ranging between 25 to 35 years old, were interviewed to study their go-to process to manage subscriptions and to understand their desired goal behind tracking and managing subscriptions.
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The Forgetful Engineer
The Industrious Student
Ensure maximum information, minimal interaction, and quicker access to task completion.
Create a process that requires less involvement from users while assisting them in completing tasks.
Deliver a uniform, clarity-driven information interface to minimize confusion and facilitate ease, creating a trusting environment.
Create an easy-to-understand and less conscious reasoning flow.
To obtain a clearer picture of the envisioned solution and ensure my ideas match the users’ needs, I spent time looking at various related and unrelated products for inspiration.
While browsing, I discovered multiple interfaces and interactions, which facilitated in filtering through all the amassed ideas and giving shape to a blurry solution.
I played with multiple viewpoints and decided to move forward with a combination of inspired ideas for the critical screens that would provide a clear, comprehensive, and approachable presentation of information that users can select and navigate through.
Once I narrowed down the critical screens, I tried to visualize how the users would interact and flow through the interface, what results from their interactions, and what the user would do next.
A quick guerilla usability testing was performed to understand if the early-stage hypothesis aligned with the users’ mental model, which helped capturing a few critiques and suggestions to structure my next iteration process.
Payment information would be helpful.
Subscription history is better than having latest receipt.
Reminders are definitely useful.
Categorized visuals for subscriptions do grab my attention.
The idea was to be a trusted friend who is helping you save money through the brand. It needed to be simple and casual to reflect care and friendliness; attributes which I picture the users to intrinsically feel while using the app.
Subtrac is a truncated version of the term “subscription-tracker” as well as of the term “subtraction”.
As a brand name, it is simple and direct to its purpose; tracking subscriptions and assisting to subtract unnecessary spending behind subscriptions.
The interface should be simple yet fun and vibrant to use so that it is less mentally intensive, avoids overwhelming users, and eases the task completion process. Whether it's their first time using it or the hundredth, the user should feel in control and at ease while using it.
The experience needs to reflect the attributes mentioned above, act steadily, and function together seamlessly. An intuitive experience helps establish trust, and a product that its users can trust builds confidence and dependency.
At this stage, assessing the interface's usability was crucial to evaluate the interface's design and ensure that it is intuitive and easy to use.
For the usability testing sessions, I decided on conducting two rounds with five users in each round, to validate issues and test solution iterations. All the interviews were conducted in person on my laptop, and each interview lasted about 30 minutes.
The testing shed light on some critical, major, and minor issues, which helped shape the next iteration process.
My last two projects equipped me with a better understanding of time management, which allowed me to plan out this project efficiently.
As mentioned in my design sprint project, Post Up, I wanted to integrate the sprint process in some essence into my future projects. In this project, I incorporated the inspiration and sketching phase from the design sprint process. Thoroughly planning the project allowed me to streamline the process and distribute time judiciously. Furthermore, in this project, I continuously involved the users throughout the research and design process, which equipped me with the necessary ingredients to iterate faster and more effectively.
Subtrac’s primary vision was to provide users with core functionalities that would enable them to track, manage, and reduce their subscription expenses effortlessly. The need was to link users to their desired goal/intention with minimal interaction and maximum information while focusing on trust, simplicity, and efficiency. The involvement of users throughout the research and design phase resulted in bringing success to the design solution.
If I were to continue on this project, I would love to learn variation in data visualization, study further simplification in the task completion process, and enable higher accessibility.
Moving forward, I would love to keep practicing streamlining the research and design process.
