Settled
Product Design
Right reminder.
Right time.
Every time.
Helping users act before forgotten renewals become expensive mistakes.
2
A/B Tests
1
Persona Prioritised
100%
Flows Rated Easy
2
Testing Rounds
Role
#
Product Designer
Team
Solo - just me!
Timeline
4-Week Sprint, 2026
Platform
Mobile/iOS
PROTOTYPE WALKTHROUGH
The problem isn't that people are disorganised, it's that they're prompted at the wrong time. I designed Settled end-to-end: from a wide-open brief through six user interviews, two rounds of usability testing, and an A/B test on notification tone. Starting with no product direction and an intentionally broad scope, I used research to narrow the problem to a single insight about timing and avoidance behaviour. Four weeks later: a validated concept, a complete design system, and three tested core flows: onboarding, renewal nudge-to-switch, and a deferral model built around how reactive users actually behave. The final solution connects to a user's inbox, surfaces upcoming deadlines, and delivers a well-timed nudge with a clear action: pay, cancel, or switch provider in seconds.
1) Full provider first-time opening app, 2) renewal nudge → switch, and 3) snooze/ remind me later flow.
RESEARCH & INSIGHTS
The real problem wasn't disorganisation — it was timing.
Insurance renewals. Utility payments. Rent. Subscriptions. Passport expirations. Medical appointments.
Adults are expected to track dozens of recurring obligations with no single system designed to help them do it.
The real burden isn't just financial- it's also cognitive.
74% of UK adults have felt too overwhelmed by stress to cope, with life admin consistently among the leading causes. (Mental Health Foundation)
For the estimated 2.5 million people in England with ADHD, executive dysfunction makes planning and task initiation structurally harder- not a personal failing.
RESEARCH · PHASE 1
Survey: No existing tool is designed to hold it all for them.
Recruited participants aged 18–55+ targeting adults who manage their own life admin. Designed to understand not just what tools people use, but how they feel about the whole thing and where it breaks down.
Insurance renewals and subscriptions were the top two priorities people wanted automated. But the open-text responses told the sharper story: people don't just want reminders. They want the cognitive burden lifted entirely.
I don't have a system in place and honestly if I wrote everything down it stresses me out more — I'd rather just leave it until the deadline.
People know they have things to track. It's that no existing tool is designed to manage it all for them.
RESEARCH · PHASE 2
User Research: The real burden lives between the tasks, not during them.
Focused on 18–30 year olds, a group actively transitioning from student life into adult responsibility, where habits and systems are still forming. Five key patterns emerged across all six participants.
Reminders are easy to ignore when you set them yourself.
4/6 users described dismissing self-set reminders, only acting when a real consequence like a financial penalty forced their hand. Awareness of a deadline is not the same as feeling compelled to act on it.
The mental load lives between the tasks, not during them.
5/6 users described a persistent background anxiety about tasks that hadn't been started. The burden isn't the admin itself; it's the low-level awareness that something might be slipping.
Financial admin and subscriptions create disproportionate stress.
6/6 users identified subscriptions, renewals, and service comparisons as the most anxiety-inducing category of admin. Unlike calendar tasks, the consequence of inaction is financial- money leavingg quietly, without a prompt.
Fragmented systems aren't a failure — they're how people manage different kinds of thinking.
6/6 used multiple tools in combination, each serving a distinct cognitive purpose: calendars for high-level scheduling, notes for brain dumps, reminders for time-sensitive triggers. The fragmentation was deliberate but it left no single view of what was actually due.
People haven't chosen their tools. They've inherited them.
5/6 users adopted their current tools by prior exposure. Gmail led to Calendar, iOS led to Reminders and Apple Calendar. They described their systems as "good enough" not because they worked well, but because switching felt harder than staying.
ARCHETYPES
Admin failure looks different depending on who you are.
The interviews produced two clearly distinct behavioural profiles. Rather than treating them as a spectrum, I modelled them as separate personas because designing for both at once would have meant designing for neither well.
I prioritised designing for the Procrastinating Juggler, and this wasn't a close call. Their problem has a sharp root cause (wrong timing), a measurable consequence (financial loss), and a clear design direction that isn't just "build a better to-do list." The Optimiser's problem is real, but it requires deep integration with existing tools and a longer trust-building runway...more than a five-week sprint could responsibly attempt.
HOW MIGHT WE
Protect the Procastinating Juggler from financial loss caused by forgotten payments, renewals and subscriptions?
FEATURE SET
What Settled does that no existing tool does
User flows: Onboarding · Notification to switch · Notification to delay, The three paths a user takes through Settled.
LO-FI WIREFRAMES + USABILITY TESTING - ROUND 1
Features were stress-tested before the brand was applied.
All flows rated easy. Six issues found, two critical.
CRITICAL FINDING · 4/4 USERS
Billing deadline missing from the reminder screen
Without seeing the original deadline, setting a reminder is guesswork — the feature defeats its own purpose. All four participants raised this independently, including the Optimiser.
← → Drag to compare
CRITICAL FINDING · 4/4 USERS
Notification copy read as aggressive, felt like a scam text
Fear-based framing risked rushed decisions. All users flagged the tone. The A/B test in round 2 confirmed savings-led framing with mild consequence in the subtext — as the winning format.
LHS: A/B tested two versions of notification copy. RHS: Top shows initial notification copy during lo-fi stage. Bottom shows the final hybrid approach for notification copy: savings led title with urgent tone for body text.
SECONDARY FINDINGS · 2-3/4 USERS
Small frictions, compounding cost
Each issue was raised by 2–3 participants and rated easy to get around but left unchecked, they would have quietly undermined the calm, effortless experience the product was designed to create. All three were fixed in hi-fi.
THE OPTIMISER'S ROLE
To catch what the Juggler group couldn't
Validated — carried forward unchanged
Core concept: automated detection understood and valued by all four immediately. Gmail connection and privacy copy: smooth and explicitly trusted by participants. No-judgement deferral tone: "Not yet" landed as supportive, not guilt-inducing. Switch flow structure: in-app comparison and provider handoff described as intuitive.
REFLECTIONS
What the Testing Taught Me
01
On Using AI to accelerate lo-fi iteration:
AI-generated layouts compressed the time between idea and testable screen. Producing multiple information hierarchy options side by side made visual decisions faster than imagining them one at a time.
02
Testing can generate solutions, not just validate them:
The winning A/B variant didn't exist before testing. The final notification format was a hybrid suggested by a participant — neither option tested originally. The test created the answer rather than selecting one.
03
Copy is a design decision, not a finishing touch:
Notification tone shifted significantly between rounds and should have been tested at lo-fi. The primary moment of contact between product and user deserved more iteration time than it received.
What I'd do next
01
designing for the returning user:
The current flows handle setup and initial nudges. The next design layer is retention - what keeps the user coming back, building trust in ratings, and deepening their relationship with the product over time.
02
bills payment flow:
Designing the in-app bills payment experience is the clearest remaining priority. A user tapping a reminder and completing a utility payment in-app was a known gap - time constraints kept focus on the three highest-risk flows, leaving this as the most significant undesigned surface.