Designing Nex-Gen Profile Ecosystem

Designing a Unified Identity Framework: Decoupling Subscriptions for Next-Gen Profile Ecosystems

Estimated Reading Time: 5-10 Minutes

Executive Summary:

Seamless Listening, Simplified Accounts:
SiriusXM's Transformation Journey

SiriusXM faced significant challenges in user and subscription management following its mergers and acquisitions, resulting in disparate systems, user frustration, and increased customer service inquiries. Through a comprehensive restructuring of Personal Information Management Systems (PIMS), a unified solution was designed to decouple subscriptions from users and devices, enabling seamless sharing. While the full implementation is ongoing, the mobile profile section has advanced to development, demonstrating progress in streamlining the user experience.

Project Details

Streaming Radio Customer Profiles & Identity Management
Design architecture solution for addressing multiple subscription across customer accounts across multiple sytems across business units.

Role: Lead Sr. UX Product Designer
Project Timeline: Oct 2019 - March 2020
Division: Radio - Streaming
Project: Lifecycle Profiles & Identity

The Challenge/Problem:

Unscrambling the Web: SiriusXM's Post-Merger Identity Crisis

SiriusXM's growth through mergers with XM Satellite Radio and the acquisition of Pandora led to a fragmented ecosystem of Personal Information Management Systems (PIMS). This created multiple, disconnected systems for subscriptions and account management, making it difficult to identify users across platforms. The direct consequences included negative user feedback and a surge in customer service calls, highlighting a critical need to simplify subscription and account management for users and integrate these solutions across all company divisions.

The Solution:

Blueprint for Clarity: Unifying SiriusXM's User & Subscription Experience

The solution involved a strategic overhaul of SiriusXM's PIMS, focusing on several key architectural and design principles:

Decoupling Subscriptions: A core aspect was separating subscriptions from specific users or devices, allowing a single account holder to manage multiple subscriptions without device limitations.
Restructuring Disparate Verticals: The project unified two fundamentally different subscription models (one-to-one user-subscription vs. one-to-many) into a cohesive system, ensuring no disruption to existing business operations.
Enabling Seamless Sharing: The new design facilitates easy sharing among groups and across multiple devices, enhancing user flexibility.
Wireframing and Prototyping: Extensive user-based wireframes were developed for the existing SXM mobile app and in-car experience, ensuring alignment between streaming and in-car functionality.

The Results:

Paving the Way: Tangible Progress in SiriusXM's Digital Evolution

The solution involved a strategic overhaul of SiriusXM's PIMS, focusing on several key architectural and design principles:

Decoupling Subscriptions: A core aspect was separating subscriptions from specific users or devices, allowing a single account holder to manage multiple subscriptions without device limitations.
Restructuring Disparate Verticals: The project unified two fundamentally different subscription models (one-to-one user-subscription vs. one-to-many) into a cohesive system, ensuring no disruption to existing business operations.
Enabling Seamless Sharing: The new design facilitates easy sharing among groups and across multiple devices, enhancing user flexibility.
Wireframing and Prototyping: Extensive user-based wireframes were developed for the existing SXM mobile app and in-car experience, ensuring alignment between streaming and in-car functionality.

Getting Started:

Doing the Leg Work

To do this, I first needed to understand the company's makeup to know how and what makes this necessary. SiriusXM was originally made up of 2 companies that merged: Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio. After they merged to form SXM, the company found workarounds for system issues. When SXM acquired Pandora, this became a more front-and-center issue. Multiple systems and subscription and account management structures across all resulted in a real need to find a better way for the company and subscribers to manage PIMs.

Examples of data flow map across the division

The goal is to identify subscribers across both realms and treat them as a single entity. I also needed to understand the subscription tiers between the two divisions. For instance, System A, their structure ran 1:1 - one user one subscription, and the other System B; they ran 1 to many.

The Challenge

Finding Solutions To The Questions

The challenge was in finding solutions to these questions:

How do I create a system where subscriptions are decoupled from the user or device but still associated with a single account user?
How do I restructure two fundamentally different verticals into a single entity that encompasses them without breaking or cannibalizing either business model?
How do I create a system that allows sharing between groups of people and across multiple devices without restrictions?

ROLE: Lead Sr. UX Product Designer

ORG: Radio - Streaming

PROJECT: Lifecycle Profiles & Identity

TIMELINE: Oct 20219 - March 2020

An example infographic diagram flow of profile and account separation

I needed to find a solution to this question: How do I create a system in which subscriptions are decoupled from the user or device, yet still associated with a single user account? How do I restructure two fundamentally different verticals into a single entity that encompasses both without cannibalizing one business model by the other? How do I create a system that allows sharing between groups of people and across multiple devices without restrictions?

Kick-off meeting with PO to map out project Status View later named Vehicle Status. To view, flow click here.

Wireframes + Prototyping

Now armed with an outline flow of how to structure the new system, it was time to build a user based on the current and existing SXM mobile app and existing In-Car experience. Considering that both of these experiences already exist, my task is to design wireframe screens that follow the current styles for each platform, car, and streaming, and define how a user would navigate.

The website platform, though included in the thought process, was not fleshed out in the design. At this point, the focus was on making the streaming platform match what existed for the car.

Example of mobile design of integrated profile feature.

Wireframe & Prototype build to show how the profile solution integrates into existing mobile applications.

Summary of Accomplishments:

Today, the UX and design work on the PIM Profiles Project continues. The project was so large and interconnected with so many different divisions across the company; it was best to break it up into two parts: Profiles and Identities. The mobile profile section moved forward in development for the current iteration of 360L in the car. Other aspects of the project, specifically Identities, have dependencies and are currently being worked on for later release.

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