Reducing churn for a global subscription service

TL;DR

Where we started. An ink subscription service was losing customers. We had 10 weeks to understand why and surface concepts worth testing further.

What we did. Four-person team. I owned the journey map, the Figma prototypes, and the Surprise & Delight print collateral. We split 15 prototype testing interviews three ways. We also ordered one of the client's printers ourselves and ran through the whole customer journey from setup to first print.

What landed. Three concept directions taken to different depths. Badging tested with users. Surprise & Delight designed and later shipped on the US side. Personalisation kept conceptual.

We interviewed customers, mapped the journey, and ran ourselves through it.

The brief was retention. So we set out to understand what was actually happening between signing up and cancelling. I built the journey map in Miro from synthesis.

We also ordered a printer of our own. Set it up, subscribed, ran through onboarding, sent the first prints. The things a journey map alone won't tell you (how pricing gets revealed across multiple screens, where value feels asserted rather than demonstrated, what the cancel flow actually looks like) came out of being a customer for ourselves.

The pattern that surfaced: the product worked. People were leaving because they weren't sure it was working *for them*, especially the lighter users.

Three directions, taken to different depths.

We landed on three directions worth exploring. Badging and milestones to reward usage. Surprise & Delight, an unexpected physical send to subscribers. And a personalisation strand: plan selection wizard, comms preference centre, usage-based print summaries.

I designed and built the Figma prototypes for each, plus the print collateral for the Surprise & Delight pieces. We took badging the furthest: 15 interviews across the US, Canada, UK, and Germany, three variants split evenly (badges only, badges with rewards, badges with rewards plus a spin-the-wheel mechanic). The sharpest finding: badging only really worked when tied to tangible rewards. Without them, users found it pleasant but not a reason to stay. We were upfront in the synthesis that our sample skewed toward long-term subscribers, leaving open questions about at-risk users that another round would need to answer.

Each direction had a different fate.

Badging handed off with the research findings clear. Surprise & Delight went into logistics work and shipped on the US side, a leaflet with free photo paper. Personalisation stayed conceptual. I don't have visibility into what happened with the rest after handoff.

You learn more about a subscription experience by being a subscriber than by reading the brief.

We ordered a printer of our own, set it up, ran through onboarding, sent the first prints. The brief described churn. Being a subscriber revealed what churn felt like: where pricing got revealed across multiple screens, where value felt asserted rather than demonstrated, what the cancel flow actually looked like.