Was It Purely a Cancellation Project?

François is senior product designer at Headspace. In 2017 he was asked to design a new cancellation process for Headspace users who decided they no longer want to use the service. At first, François thought this will be a boring task but it quickly turned into his pet project. In the end, he published an article on Medium, describing his process and providing guidance to other designers who want to design cancellation process too. 

In this a great example of a project that needs a careful balance of user focus and business knowledge because one needs to balance users' wish to unsubscribe and business' goal to retain users. How do you reconcile the two? Well, that's what we covered with frank. 

Show notes:

• 1:50 How did François get into design?
• 6:50 How did François survive the financial crisis as a designer freelancer? 
• 8:30 Why did François leave agency work and join Headspace? 
• 12:40 Headspace reached 1 million subscribers
• 14:10 The premise of François' article on cancelation process
• 20:10 How did François approach the challenge of designing cancelation process
• 25:30 Design principles of a good cancellation experience
• 29:00 Does being user-centered in a cancellation process drive business results?
• 34:00 The value of talking to non-designers in your organization 
• 35:25 Hacking Growth book
• 38:40 Growth tactics used at Headspace
• 41:45 What is the Headspace culture really like?