International Roaming

Project summary

International roaming information and controls existed across different parts of the Spectrum experience. The opportunity was to make international services easier to discover, understand, and manage from the customer’s existing line-management experience.

The design brought together roaming control, rate discovery, usage visibility, and future international services into a more cohesive experience.

When customers travel internationally, they need to answer three basic questions:

1. Can I use my phone internationally?
2. What will it cost me?
3. Can I control whether roaming is enabled?

Spectrum already provided international rate information, but the information and line-level controls were not fully connected within the customer’s account-management experience.

Design challenge

How might we

Give customers enough context to make an informed roaming decision while keeping control simple and accessible at the line level?

The project evolved the experience from simply helping customers look up international rates toward helping them understand and manage international services.

The experience connects four jobs

Design principle

Principle

Hide the complexity, not the control.

The underlying roaming system contains multiple tiers and market-specific rules. Customers should not need to understand that internal complexity to make a simple decision about their line.

The roaming experience is governed by multiple roaming tiers, with different combinations of voice, SMS, and data availability. For example:

• R70 — Voice, SMS, and data for Verizon and LRA markets.
• R71 — Data roaming is off.
• R75 — Data roaming is on, with voice, SMS, and data enabled more broadly.
• R72 / R73 — Additional market/service combinations.

The important UX challenge was not to expose this tiering directly to customers. Instead, the interface translates complex product rules into a simpler customer-facing model:

Roaming is ON/OFF → Here is what you can do → Here is where to understand rates and usage.

How I think about it

One of the interesting challenges was that the UI looked simple, but the underlying business logic was not. I had to think about how much of that complexity belonged in the customer experience versus the system layer.

Rather than treating roaming as another isolated setting, the design establishes International Services as a dedicated destination within line management.

Why this matters

The information architecture supports both today’s requirement and future international capabilities.

This makes the feature more scalable than adding separate international functions throughout the account experience.

How I think about it

I didn’t want to design only for the immediate requirement. The name and structure of the destination were intentionally broad enough to support additional international features later.

At the customer level, the decision is binary:

Should this line be allowed to use mobile data while roaming internationally?

A toggle communicates both the current state and the available action in one place.

Why a toggle?

A toggle was preferable to a generic action button because it makes the current state immediately visible.

With a toggle, the user can immediately understand:

• Current state
• Available action
• Whether the feature is enabled

This is particularly important for a service that can have billing implications.

A roaming toggle is easy to understand, but the action has potential financial consequences. That creates a tension:

Design approach

The experience separates the immediate control from the deeper rate information. The customer can make a straightforward change while still having access to international rate information and usage context.

Principle

Provide enough context for a responsible decision without turning a simple setting into a billing workflow.

How I think about it

The trade-off wasn’t simply whether to use a toggle. The real question was how much context should surround that toggle. Because roaming can create unexpected charges, I wanted the user to have access to relevant information without making the primary interaction unnecessarily complicated.

The experience creates a direct relationship between the customer’s line and international controls.

A strong product experience is not only the happy path.

If a customer is traveling and attempts to disable data roaming, but the system cannot save the change, the consequence is potentially meaningful. The user needs to understand:

1. The change did not succeed.
2. Their intended state may not have been applied.
3. They have a clear path to recover.

Principle

For financially sensitive settings, system-state communication is part of the core experience.

How I think about it

I paid particular attention to the failure state because this isn’t like changing a visual preference. If the user thinks roaming is off when the system hasn’t actually saved the change, their expectations and their bill can diverge.

Spectrum already had an international rates experience where customers could search for a destination and understand:

• Voice rates
• SMS rates
• Data rates
• Rates while abroad
• Rates when calling back to the US

The design opportunity was not necessarily to recreate the pricing system. It was to make that information easier to reach from the customer’s existing account context.

How I think about it

A key product decision was knowing what not to redesign. The rate engine and information already existed, so the opportunity was to connect it to the customer’s account journey rather than unnecessarily recreate the underlying experience.

International roaming is not only something customers configure before a trip. Once roaming is active, customers may want to understand what they have already used and what they are being charged.

The design therefore connects configuration with ongoing awareness:

The new Line Info experience introduces an international roaming charge notification:

This shifts the experience from purely reactive settings management toward proactive awareness.

The trade-off

More visibility can also create:

• Anxiety
• Visual competition with primary line information
• Notification fatigue
• Reduced attention if alerts appear too frequently

Principle

Make potentially costly behavior visible without making the entire account experience feel like a warning screen.

The experience needed to work across MSA / mobile, .NET / web, and Spectrum.com.

The goal was not to make every screen visually identical. Instead, the customer should recognize the same conceptual model:

Line → International Services → Roaming → Rates / Usage

…while each platform continues to respect its existing navigation and interaction patterns.

How I think about it

For me, cross-platform consistency meant consistency in the mental model and terminology, not simply copying the same UI everywhere.

The .NET experience extends the same model to desktop/web.

The customer can reach International Services from their line and manage data roaming without leaving the account-management context.

The project establishes a foundation that can grow beyond roaming.

Current experience

• Data Roaming
• International Rates
• Roaming Usage
• Voice / SMS / Data information

Potential future experience

• International Day Pass
• Additional travel services
• More proactive usage guidance
• Additional international account controls

One of the clearest future opportunities identified in the project was an International Day Pass.

The broader goal was to evolve International Services into a one-stop destination for international-related capabilities.

The immediate feature solves roaming management. The larger product opportunity is creating a coherent international-services ecosystem.

Outcome

The design established a consistent international-services pattern across MSA and .NET, bringing roaming controls and rate information closer to the customer’s line-management experience.