Google Bills Calendar
Problem
Money management is a difficult, daunting task. What could be added to Google Pay to help users manage their money more effectively?
Solution
A bills calendar that shows users when and where their money is going. Shared bills, bill reminders, progress, and total spend help users challenge and justify their recurring expenses and spending habits.
Google Bills Calendar
Fall 2021 · 10 Weeks
SCADpro Collaboration
It was so fun to work on the Google Pay team! The designers from Google were very helpful and pushed our thinking, but also were impressed with the quality of work we provided.
Google Bills Calendar
Fall 2021 · 10 Weeks
SCADpro Collaboration
It was so fun to work on the Google Pay team! The designers from Google were very helpful and pushed our thinking, but also were impressed with the quality of work we provided. I had a blast leading the team and interfacing with the Google team directly. I learned about how to work with difficult direct reports and how to inspire a team around a common goal. I'm really proud of the features we came up with and I'm very sad Google shut Google Pay down.
Problem
Money management is a difficult, daunting task. What could be added to Google Pay to help users manage their money more effectively?
Solution
A bills calendar that shows users when and where their money is going. Shared bills, bill reminders, progress, and total spend help users challenge and justify their recurring expenses and spending habits.
Project Manager
I led the project by assigning work, checking in with teammates, and determining the direction of the project.
UX Designer
I designed the experience of using the product based on research, testing, and intuition.
User Tester
I designed and executed user tests for rapid feedback and iteration on hypotheses.
I led the full fourteen-person student team and directed our four-person Bills Calendar sub-team. I set direction across the project, ran the check-ins with Google, and drove the Bills Calendar from research through two rounds of usability testing to the final screens and flows.
The Bills Calendar: a clear overview of every recurring expense that helps people challenge and justify their subscriptions. It rated highest of our three final concepts in usability testing.
Bills Overview
See the month at a glance and add new bills. A timeline lays out due dates and amounts, a running total tracks what is committed against what is paid, and any bill can be split with others by entering a share and a contact.
Bills Overview, a monthly calendar with a due-date timeline and running total
Upcoming Expenses
Recurring expenses organized by due date or by category. Free trials are tracked so they can be canceled before they convert, detected charges can be added in a tap, and expenses that vary show a predicted value.
Upcoming Expenses, bills grouped into Free Trials, Suggested, Up Next, and Later
Insights Breakdown
Judge a subscription on its real value. See the total spent this year and since sign-up, and compare it against a familiar category like coffee. A monthly Netflix habit shown as about an hour of work at your hourly rate makes the cost tangible.
Insights Breakdown, Netflix cost compared against coffee spending over three months
For people new to managing money, recurring expenses are the ones that quietly pile up.
The stakes
The financial-health picture behind the brief.
67%
of people in America are not financially healthy
21%
of 18 to 25 year-olds are financially healthy
15% / 24%
of Black and Latinx Americans are financially healthy, against 39% of White and Asian Americans
Our brief was inclusive financial experiences for 18 to 25 year-olds who are financially coping or vulnerable. Interviews kept returning to one behavior: people renew subscriptions they have stopped using, forget monthly and annual fees until they disrupt a balance, and have nowhere to see everything recurring at once.
In their words
Two user needs
People do not realize how much they are spending on recurring transactions, and they cannot tell whether a subscription is still worth keeping, so it renews unquestioned. The design had to make both the cost and the value of recurring expenses visible.
The choices that shaped the product, from where we started to what testing changed.
Three concepts, one that led somewhere
We explored three directions in the first round of testing.
Money Stories Map: visualize transactions on a map to show people where their money goes.
Transaction Logging: a three-tap way to log purchases that will not log themselves.
Savings Challenges: set a shared goal and compete with friends to save.
What the design had to prove
Out of sight
People don't take upcoming expenses into account when making purchasing decisions.
Prompted to weigh
If people are prompted to consider the utility of a transaction, they can manage it more effectively.
The long view
Understanding the long-term cost of a recurring expense helps people judge the value it gives them.
What testing changed
The second round pointed to a set of design changes, and confirmed the pieces worth keeping.
Organize by category, not just date. People wanted subscriptions grouped, like streaming under Entertainment, each with its own total. I added a category view alongside the calendar's due-date view.
Predict expenses that vary. Utilities change month to month, which made them hard to plan for. Variable bills now show a predicted value from historical averages or the biller.
Rework 'Suggested'. People read the suggested-expenses feature as an ad nudging them to subscribe. I reframed it as recurring charges detected from their own activity.
Split with contacts. Adding a bill lets people set each person's share and contact details, so the app can handle payment outreach automatically. Testers saw strong utility here, so it stayed.
What round two validated
The calendar clicked
Every participant found the calendar view intuitive and valued the focus on due dates for planning ahead.
Free trials mattered
Tracking and canceling free trials before they convert was a standout, since people routinely forget them.
Comparison drove mindfulness
Comparing one expense against another pushed participants to challenge or justify each subscription.
The Bills Calendar in the moment that matters: deciding what to keep.
A month of new subscriptions
Last month we signed up for a few streaming services: Hulu, Netflix, and Disney+. They were fun, though the three libraries together were more than we could ever watch.
A rent alert
One night, mid-episode of Squid Game, a notification warns that next week's rent might not be covered.
Where the money is going
We look for expenses we can ease up on. The three streaming services turn out to be over half of our subscription spending, which feels like too much.
The long-term cost
The breakdown shows the yearly cost, not just the monthly one. Keeping both Hulu and Netflix would run over $100 a year each, which is hard to justify.
Keeping what earns its place
We hold on to Disney+ for its catalogue of classic films, Marvel, and Star Wars, and let the others go.
A confident cancellation
Having challenged and justified each one, canceling the subscriptions that were worth less becomes an easy call.
How it landed, and the questions still open.
SUS score
89.7
the highest of the three final concepts
user testers
8
in the final round
What we learned
The calendar visual works
It organizes expenses clearly, and people want to sort them by both time and category.
Value is more than the monthly price
People rarely register the long-term cost of a subscription. Comparisons to their own discretionary spending made that cost feel real.
Variable and yearly bills are open questions
Expenses that change each month, and yearly charges, still need a clear way to be shown and predicted.