With the rising prevalence of subscription-based commerce, it can be quite challenging to stay on top of auto-renewals, let alone remember all the subscriptions you've signed up for. Subout tackles this challenge by providing a comprehensive solution to locate, manage, and organize all your subscriptions through a single, user-friendly dashboard. As a designer, my primary objective was to enhance the overall user experience on a mobile platform. I aimed to expand Subout's market reach and introduce innovative features that set it apart from competitors.
Research • Design
Conducted user interviews and usability tests, organized user stories and flows, designed wireframes and hi-fi prototypes
Solo Student Project • July 2023
Conceptual project conducted over 4 weeks
Between free trials and the ease of signing up for a service with saved card details, subscriptions can get out of hand and forgotten.
Connect payment methods to easily locate subscriptions and see total costs in one spot
Connect payment methods to easily locate subscriptions and see total costs in one spot
For select subscriptions cancel right from the app
Set up auto-recurring payments with others for shared bills and subscriptions
Users can accept and deny payment requests, and modify their split payments with friends at any time.
In order to better understand the challenges faced by my users, I conducted a survey to gain a general understanding of users relationship with subscriptions as well as to find participants to interview more in-depth. Through this process, I gathered valuable insights from 46 survey respondents and conducted user interviews with users who mentioned paying for subscriptions they were no longer using. Asking questions like: How do you keep track of your subscriptions? How do you feel about the costs and amount of subscriptions you have? How do you manage shared subscriptions with others?
The results highlighted a concerning pattern: most users manage their subscriptions by occasionally checking their bank statements. Surprisingly, the second largest group admitted to not keeping track of their subscriptions at all. As a result, a vast majority of users end up unknowingly paying for subscriptions they don't actually use.
To gain more insight into the market, and identify best practices as well as opportunities for Subout I looked at three different products. I chose two direct competitors (Rocket Money, and Bobby) as well as one indirect competitor (Venmo) that has a feature that I thought would be helpful to my users.
Easily finds all of your subscriptions
Can cancel within the app
No option to manually add subscription
Monthly/yearly spending is not emphasized
Very simple interface for manually adding subscriptions
Doesn’t find all of the subscriptions you may have forgotten about
Most used app for sending payments
No option to set up automatic reoccurring payments
Can send payments to multiple people but doesn’t split payments evenly for you
After conducting the first round of research, my primary objective was to zero in on the key tasks and requirements of users. I also wanted to identify an additional feature that would effectively address an existing gap in the market, and more importantly, be genuinely useful and beneficial to users. I narrowed this down to four tasks that I could test:
Users cited they don’t usually receive a notification that their subscriptions are renewing but may get an email after they’ve been charged. If they are receiving email reminders they usually view the email as promotional material and may not see it.
Opportunity
Consolidate subscriptions from all payment methods in one place, and create a system that offers customized reminders so users don’t have to search for what they are paying for and when.
Users feel that they aren’t paying too much for subscriptions month-to-month but when they calculate total costs annually they reassess what they are spending. Different subscriptions from different accounts creates the impression that spending isn’t high.
Opportunity
Create a visual of total amount spent on subscriptions and provide clarity on what the user could be saving.
Over 65% of users share subscriptions with others, while there are many apps that allow money transfers and bill splitting, very few have a feature to set up automatic payments.
Opportunity
Create a system that allows for people to set up an automatic payment to someone they share a subscription with when the cardholder for the account is charged.
How might we alleviate the stress of splitting payments?
How might we help users understand their spending?
How might we streamline finding and managing subscriptions?
The first challenge was tracking down all subscriptions, I offered options to seamlessly connect various payment services and accounts, minimizing user friction. For those who prefer not to provide banking information, I also provide the flexibility to manually add subscriptions.
Users are then directed to their personalized dashboard, where all their subscriptions are consolidated in one convenient location. This comprehensive view allows users to gain a clear understanding of the yearly and monthly costs associated with their subscriptions.
From the home screen, users can effortlessly cancel their subscription right in the app. To prioritize user confidence and prevent accidental cancellations by presenting a second screen that prompts them to confirm their cancellation decision. Upon successful cancellation, users are reassured with a confirmation message.
It was important to provide a reminder system for upcoming payments, which was crucial to users feeling in control of their finances and limit unnecessary spending.
This feature empowers users to choose the timing that suits them best, whether it's hours, days, weeks, or months before the subscription renews. To ensure users actually get their reminders, I provided multiple communication channels for reminders, including email, SMS, and banner notifications.
Many apps allow you to send payments, but there aren’t many that allow you to set up a reoccurring payment.
This design solves a gap in the market allowing users to select a subscription or create a custom cost for charging/splitting and choosing between a one time or a reoccurring payment.
I conducted usability testing sessions with four participants, using the initial wireframes. The primary objective was to assess the usability of the flows and gather insights on areas that required improvement before moving onto hi-fi mockups. During the usability testing sessions, participants were given the above tasks and encouraged to interact with the wireframes and provide their feedback on the overall usability. Open-ended questions were used to elicit additional insights from the users, allowing them to share any suggestions or concerns they had regarding the interface or user experience such as: How likely would they be to use this app? What would make them more likely to use it? And what did they like about it?
Two users clicked “Edit Details” to set a reminder. In the list of options that pop up for each subscription “set a reminder” is at the bottom so to improve discoverability I moved it to the top so it would be the first option seen.
There were a couple of issues here. It wasn’t obvious to one user that the reminder that was set to ‘on’ , was a repeating reminder. They thought that it was a one time reminder, and that the on/off button meant it was simply activated. Another user thought they needed to fill out how many days before the auto-renew was happening in addition to setting a custom date.
I revised the design to give users the flexibility of having the reminder repeat or happen one time. To avoid confusion about inputting the number of days or setting a custom date, I simplified the process by focussing on the predefined options that align with common user expectations. This eliminated the need for users to calculate or input specific dates manually.
I initially thought users would go for the split bill option by clicking directly on the subscription so had not made a fully functioning flow to create a split from the ‘split subscriptions’ navigation. However, the majority of users wanted to split using the bottom navigation.
I gave users the option to choose a specific subscription or create a custom payment, and from there they would be taken to the original split payment screen.
When crafting Subout’s UI, my objective was to establish familiarity and instill confidence in the user. I chose a calming blue color to symbolize integrity, stability, and trust in line with color psychology.
The overall app design is clean, minimal, and features rounded edges, creating a safe and approachable interface. These design choices aim to enhance user comfort and confidence while using Roam
In my initial research users expressed that seeing the total cost of their subscriptions was a top priority for them. Knowing how much they were spending, and what they could be saving was crucial. I set about providing that information in different ways throughout the product, with the home screen being the main viewpoint to see their total costs and subscriptions.
I broke the design down into how much was being spent a month, how much that spending related to the previous month, how many subscriptions a user had, what those costs would look like in a year, and then a list of every subscription they had.
However, the design lacked a strong brand visual identity, but more importantly wasn’t clear on how the spending reflected split reflections.
So after talking to users I added:
This project was more complex in terms of user journeys and emphasized how critical usability testing and user feedback are in uncovering alternative routes and potential road blocks in the user's experience.
01
More ways to customize the experience
Feeling organized and on top of subscriptions seemed to be users biggest concern and measure of success.
Although it wasn’t mentioned heavily by users I think it would be helpful to add categories to help see what subscriptions can be cut (especially for all of those streaming services). One user also mentioned being able to have a tab where they could see the history of their cancelled subscriptions incase they ever wanted to easily renew it.
02
Finding the right users is key
One of the main features differentiating this subscription app, was the ability to create an automatic reoccurring payment with a friend.
On other bill splitting apps as well as Venmo there isn’t an option to set up that auto payment that can help users avoid awkward conversations or forgotten payments. It would have been super beneficial to this project to have narrowed user interview search to college aged students or those with roommates, so see how this feature could be improved to better suit their needs.
