SUBTRACKED
Crafted the end-to-end user experience for SubTracked, a subscription management tool that helps users manage and visualize the financial impact of their subscriptions.
SaaS
Expanding into B2C FinTech markets
SubTracked is Hody’s B2C division, offering Canadians tools to track and manage spending as the company expands from SME financial management into the consumer market.
Business Problem and Hypothesis
Hody's declining year-over-year revenue signals a need for service diversification to boost profits and drive growth. To address this, Hody is launching SubTracked in the consumer market, hypothesizing that its target audience needs support with financial planning and management.
User Problem:
SubTracked’s target audience struggles to track subscription payment deadlines, analyze their financial impact, and manage them within their monthly budgets.
Displayed above: A preview of our simple solution provided by SubTracked to help users visualize, manage and cancel subscription plans.
Understanding The End User
Research for this project was split into two parts – user and market research.
My user research revealed that people primarily manage their subscriptions on mobile devices, leading me to adopt a mobile-first design approach.
User Research:
We conducted virtual Zoom interviews with participants between the ages of 23 – 45, middle to high-income earners who now or in the future will employ a tool/service to help manage their finances and reoccurring bills.
Key Insights:
- Users struggle to track payment deadlines for small bills with varied payment cycles, like subscriptions.
- Small-scale financial management, payment tracking, and cancellations are primarily conducted on mobile devices.
- Users have difficulty keeping track of the number of subscriptions they have, their billing cycles, and their status.
- Key pain points include the complexity of canceling subscriptions and managing recurring payments within monthly budgets.
- Users seek detailed, precise visualization and quantification of their subscription spending to adjust their finances better.
Displayed above: SubTracked user empathy map. All sections informed by insights gathered from user interviews.
Analyzing The Competitive Landscape
The next phase of our research focused on analyzing competing products in the Canadian market and identifying opportunities for SubTracked to capitalize on and improve upon.
Key Opportunities:
Our competitor and SWOT analysis revealed several opportunities for SubTracked to better meet user needs:
- Increased convenience through APIs for automatic pausing and subscription cancellations.
- Enhanced search capabilities by connecting to iCloud and Apple IDs in addition to bank accounts, and cards.
- Granular, customizable, and categorized financial and spending analytics.
A Pragmatic Solution With An Intuitive User Flow
Due to our tight timeline, we used a lean UX process to collaborate and test design solutions quickly, resulting in a product that delivers practical subscription and financial management solutions. SubTracked offers a seamless user experience and intuitive user flow - from adding subscriptions to the platform to deleting and canceling subscription plans.
Displayed above: Primary user flows for SubTracked mobile application.
User flow 1 - Managing subscriptions
User flow 2 - Monitoring analytics
Wireframes
I began our design process with paper wireframes, which suited our lean UX approach by enabling quick exploration of various design solutions. This method allowed us to generate multiple ideas and efficiently filter out the most viable and feasible options.
.png)
Design Rationale
A Mobile-First SaaS Product
SubTracked is a mobile SaaS application that helps users manage subscriptions according to their monthly financial capabilities. It consolidates subscriptions in one place, connects multiple payment sources, allows users to pause or cancel subscriptions, and provides a detailed view of their spending.
View Subtracked’s primary user flow below, or, try the Subtracked prototype here.
Displayed above: Key screens from the SubTracked mobile application.
Screen 1: Subscription analyticsScreen
2: SubscriptionsScreen
3: Home screen
.png)
Displayed above:
Item 1: Manually connecting subscriptions on SubTracked.Item
2: Design component - connecting subscriptions via credit card.
%20(1).png)
Displayed above:
Item 1: Connecting subscriptions on SubTracked via bank account.Item
2: Design component - bank plaque
Displayed above: Video prototype of SubTracked’s primary user flow
Beta Testing & Improving
SubTracked is currently in beta testing to uncover any bugs, usability and accessibility issues, or other opportunities for improvements before it is released to the public.
Takeaways
My biggest takeaway from this project is the value of cross-collaboration and involving experts from different fields in the solution generation process. While designing SubTracked, we engaged full-stack engineers early on, ensuring they were aware of our proposed solutions. Their insights on feasibility, implementation timelines, and potential challenges helped us select the best options that aligned with both business timelines and user needs.