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Sub Tracked

Tracking you subscriptions Easily

Company Overview

It’s hard to keep track of all the products and services that we subscribe to each month. All we see is money deducted from our accounts for services that we might not even need or want anymore. Sub Tracked has a product that keeps track of all of your subscription fees on websites, apps, services, etc. over the years.

My Role

UX Research - Sketching - Wireframing - user Testing.

Duration

May 2024 - June 2024

The Objective

Create a mobile version for Sub tracked

For my Capstone 2 project at Springboard, I was given the following problem. Tracking your subscriptions can be tedious and with everyday life, most people forget about them. It gets really frustrating when we see our credit card being charged from subscriptions we may forgot long time ago. Or even worst, when a subscription price goes up without us noticing it or being notified by it. Sub tracked is trying to break that gap.

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For this project, I was given a very early stage company that tracks your subscriptions. It only exist in Desktop, and they want to make a mobile version of it.

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In order to create the mobile Beta version, it needed to do the following:

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1. As a current user, I want to see all of my subscriptions in one place so that I can get a comprehensive view of my spending on subscriptions


2. As a returning user, I want to unsubscribe from a subscription so that I can reduce needless spending


3. As a consumer, I want to be notified if any of my subscriptions are about to be auto-renewed so that I can make a decision about if I want to renew the subscription and continue spending money

Research

Company Brief - Studying Industry Leaders - Empathy Maps - Project Plan
Company Brief

Sub Tracked provided me the following information:

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  • The majority of their users are over the age of 30

  • Their user base is an equal split between men and women

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Their Target User:

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  • Over 30 years of age. 

  • They use phone and desktop equally.

  • Middle class.

  • Trying to be more budget-conscious

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Information about the Brand:

  • Brand personality — a trusted friend who is helping you save money

  • Brand attributes

    • Trustworthy

    • Caring

    • Friendly

    • Casual

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Competitive Research

Sub Tracked provided me a list of companies that were their direct competitors. The goal was to study their UX and UI design while trying to solve the 3 objectives previously mentioned.

Track My subs

See all Subscriptions

Unsubscribe

Receive Notification

Rocket Mortgage

See all Subscriptions

Unsubscribe

Receive Notification

Stopper Subscription

See all Subscriptions

Unsubscribe

Receive Notification

Project Plan

After Studying and understanding our competitors. It was time to create a project plan in order to meet the deadlines outlined by the company.

Research Plan - Survey & Empathy Map

Background


With this User research, we want to understand 2 things mainly. 

  1. How are people tracking their subscriptions?

  2. What do they dislike about how they are tracking their subscriptions? 


We will be using Quantitative and Attitudinal Research techniques to understand pain points and screen possible user testers.

Objectives

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  • What apps, websites do they use to track their subscriptions?

  • What do they like about it?

  • What do they dislike about it?

  • How many times a month do they do it?

  • How much will they pay for it?


Methodology 


For this study, I will use surveys. This method will give us enough quantitative research along with attitudinal information. This will allow me to better understand users and to pinpoint things that can be improved, when creating this mobile version.
 
Participants

 

  • People who use phones and desktops equally.

  • Middle class.

  • Trying to be more budget-conscious.

  • Over 30 years of age.

Survey Synthesis

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The survey was filled by 10 participants. The data gathered is as follows:

  • 80% of participants prefer a mobile version rather than a desktop version to track their subscriptions.

  • 50% of participants only check their subscriptions once a month.

  • 50% of participants forget about their subscription renewals.

  • 90% realized their subscriptions have increased by checking their bank accounts.


Based on these insights I was able to card sort the following information in order to create my empathy map.

Difficulty tracking subscriptions

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  • People find it difficult to track their subscriptions properly.

  • They struggle to notice when their money is being spent on subscriptions without their knowledge.

  • Tracking subscriptions is a challenge.


Forgetting about subscriptions

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  • People often forget about their subscriptions and struggle to keep track of them.

  • Forgetting about subscriptions leads to frustration and stress.


Need for help with tracking

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  • People express the need for help in tracking their subscriptions.

  • They consider reaching out to someone for assistance.


Frustration with charges

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  • People feel frustrated by charges related to their subscriptions.

  • They complain about subscription renewals and increased prices.


Unsubscribing from unused subscriptions

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  • People express the desire to unsubscribe from subscriptions they no longer use.

  • They want to reduce stress by canceling unnecessary subscriptions.

Empathy Map

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Time to put together all the data we gathered into an empathy map. With this, We will have a clearer idea of our users.​

Journey Map

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With Empathy map created, next step is to create their Journey maps.

Design & Pre Testing

Sketching - User testing

We are nearing the end of this project. Time to make sketching, test it with user and implement that feedback onto High Fidelity Designs. After High Fidelity Designs are done, Last step will be to test it again and gathered final feedback.

Sketching

User testing went pretty smooth. We only found 2 issues that users did not like.

  1. On the second screen from sketches, users did not like the placement of the information icon. Some did not even saw it.

  2. Upcoming page, 5th from the sketches, calendar was too big for users. They would it to be smaller, to allow more fo teh subscriptions to be read easily.

Prototyping & Testing

High Fidelity - Testing
High Fidelity Designs

Time to use our first round of user testing and incorporate those changes onto our High Fidelity Designs. The 2 changes we will make are:

  1. For the upcoming page, calendar will be visible just for 1 week. Users will be able to drag it down to extend it if needed.

  2. Information Icon will be next to companies logos, it will be easier to notice it.

Second round of testing done and 1 of our previous problems has been solved. Calendar worked wonderfully. Users quickly understood they can expand it fully to cover all the screen.

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Unfortunately the information icon did not succeed. Main concern was that it did not had enough contrast. For our last round of testing we will use a different color. One that will be more contrast and a bit more eye catching.

Takeaway

With the second round of testing concluded. I was not able to test the new icon color and contrast onto users. I think now it has more contrast and is easier to catch. Only concern will be on logos where the same color is predominant. It will get lost. Possible solution, will be to add a stroke to separate them or a drop shadow to add depth into it.

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Overall, the project was a success. And with the culmination of CAPSTONE 2 project at Springboard. I am ready to take on real projects appealing user centric products.

© 2017 by Esteban Garces.

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