Amanda Lee: Subscription Manager

Overview

This app is a subscription tracker, displaying a list of the user's subscription services that's the filterable/sortable on its category and price properties.

When flagged, a subscription item is added to the "Infrequently Used" aggregation, marking it as a service the user is considering cancelling.

For details, read on!

Type

Design/frontend: Javascript, React, HTML/CSS

Date

Dec 2020

Motivation

Consumers are increasingly using monthly subscription services — streaming applications like Netflix, software platforms like Figma, and ecommerce servies like Prime. It's often difficult to keep track of these recurring fees, yet a few of these $5-20 / month services can build up to significant expenses.

This project is a simple web platform that allows users to be more financially empowered about their spendings. They'll be well-informed of their ongoing expenses and can save by cancelling services they use infrequently.

Usability Principles

Usability of a platform can be broken up into 3 sub-criteria.

Learnability: how easy is it for users to accomplish tasks during their first interaction?
Memorability: when users revisit the interface, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
Efficiency: once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?

Features

The Subscription Manager's features optimize the above principles.

Simplicity: total of 3 dropdowns + 3 buttons, no extranneous visuals minimize distractions and make the interface easy to learn/recall
Tooltips: introduce/remind users of functionality, only appear on hover, so don't distract from core features

Product

For technical implementation details, view the Github repo here. To test the app yourself, check out the live site!

Here's a preview:

Takeaways

A major motivating factor for this project is my belief that a subscription tracker is a product that many people would appreciate, myself included. Thus, usability principles and empathizing with user pain points were very important in the creation of this app.

I really enjoyed viewing the idea from the perspective of a designer/developer in addition to a consumer, and I encountered design choice dilemmas that more challenging than I expected!

I'm hoping to build upon this project further with the more sophisticated features and functionality outlined in the README. Stay tuned for more developements :)