# CJM As-Is - Tendd

**Focus:** Emma (The Anxious Non-Looker, 29) x J-MAIN - "When I suspect I am paying for things I forgot about or never use, I want to see all my recurring charges clearly in one calm view, so that I feel in control of my money without needing to become a finance person." (personas.md Persona 1; jtbd.md Part 1)

**Scope note:** One focus only. Ravi (privacy-first path, jtbd.md J5, flows.md Flow B) diverges fundamentally and deserves his own CJM card later. Claudia (the cut-and-win journey, jtbd.md J2 + E2, flows.md Flow C) is a variation on J-MAIN entry but her defining journey is a separate candidate card.

**Mining mode:** LITE (re-projection of existing research + autosuggest + observed friction; no deep review mining). Chosen at Step 2.

**Status:** Critique and targeted re-research done (Step 6, LITE). As-Is map complete. HTML artifact comes in Step 10.

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## As-Is journey skeleton (Emma today, without Tendd)

The honest shape: Emma is an avoider, so today this job mostly does NOT complete. The path is a cycle of avoidance broken by a trigger, a reluctant half-attempt, friction, and retreat, not a funnel that ends in success. Phases are derived from her real path (personas.md, jtbd.md), not a generic Awareness-to-Retention funnel. No emotions or barriers here yet (Step 4).

| # | Phase | Phase goal (job link) | Actions | Touchpoints / channels | Source |
|---|-------|----------------------|---------|------------------------|--------|
| 1 | Baseline avoidance | Keep functioning without confronting the money question; protect the "responsible with money" self-image (anti-goal of J-MAIN; E1) | Pays rent and bills on time; does not open the banking app proactively (about 3 months); holds a vague mental estimate ("probably more than I should"); when a charge notification arrives, notes it and closes it without investigating | Phone notifications; banking app (left unopened); no product | personas.md Context and P1; O22/BP1; O25/BP4 |
| 2 | Trigger | React to a prompt that makes the money question unavoidable for a moment (secondary job: not caught off guard) | A surprise charge, a renewal email, or a statement she cannot ignore arrives; a passing "I should really look at this" | Renewal email; bank push notification; card statement | personas.md O22, O24/BP3, secondary job; strategy.md Segment A pain |
| 3 | Attempt to look | Try to see what she is actually paying for (this is J-MAIN attempted) | Opens the banking app or statement, or downloads/opens a subscription tracker and starts onboarding; begins scrolling transactions | Banking app; a competitor tracker (Rocket Money / Emma / PocketGuard, competitive-analysis.md) | personas.md Context and P3 ("tried twice") |
| 4 | Hits friction | Decode and make sense of the charges (J3: understand what a charge is) | Scrolls a long transaction list; meets cryptic merchant codes ("SPOTIFYAB STOCKHOLM") she cannot decode; or meets a connect-your-bank wall at step 1; or faces a dashboard dense with numbers and graphs | Bank statement (raw codes); tracker onboarding (bank wall); tracker dashboard | personas.md P2/O23, P3/O21, P4/BP1; competitive-analysis.md P2 |
| 5 | Retreat / incompletion | Escape the discomfort and restore the "I do not want to know" equilibrium | Closes the app or statement without a complete picture; or closes the tracker at the connect-bank screen; keeps the incomplete mental model; the background dread persists | App closed; back to ambient avoidance | personas.md P3 and P1; O25/BP4 |

**Conditional endpoint [?] - "Relief, if she pushes through":** research shows people who DO complete a reveal describe it as relief ("a little pay raise", "the mental relief ... was priceless", O7/O14/O15) - but that evidence is from motivated users of OTHER apps, not from confirmed avoiders. Whether Emma-the-avoider reaches this today is largely unknown: this is the riskiest assumption H0 (strategy.md section 5; personas.md 1E). Drawn as a [?] endpoint, not a confirmed As-Is phase.

**Open [?] on the skeleton (candidates for Step 4 / re-research):**
- [?] The first-person emotional texture in the avoider's own words at Phases 1-2 and 5 (trigger, avoidance, retreat) is thin in current sources; most quotes we hold are post-reveal from other apps. LITE Step 4 re-projects what exists and flags the gaps.
- [?] Whether Phase 3 attempts happen more via the banking app or via a tracker app, and the drop-off proportions, are unknown (no public data; personas.md 1E).

---

## Emotions and barriers (Step 4, LITE mode)

Rule: every emotion and barrier stands on a source. No source means [?], not a drawn emotion. Intensities are LITE estimates derived from signal strength, not measured. Strength: one mention = signal; repeat across sources = pattern. A single-source emotion is marked weaker than a pattern.

| # | Phase | Thoughts / questions | Emotion (sign, 1-5, strength) | Barrier | Quote (source) or [?] |
|---|-------|----------------------|-------------------------------|---------|-----------------------|
| 1 | Baseline avoidance | "I probably spend more than I should, but I don't want to know." Shame thoughts: "I am irresponsible", "I should have figured this out by now." | Negative, 3, PATTERN (O10-O13 anxiety data + O22 avoidance + P1 mechanism, cross-confirmed by the 44%-avoid-accounts figure) | Self-image threat plus fear of a spiral; looking feels worse than not knowing, so the account stays unopened | People avoid looking because they "assume that what they find will confirm the worst about themselves"; shame thoughts "I am irresponsible" and "I should have figured this out by now" (maggiebakerphd.com, verified verbatim in Step 6). "44% of adults have intentionally steered clear of their financial accounts ... because of anxiety or dread." (studyfinds.org; cross-confirms personas.md 1E Discover 44%.) |
| 2 | Trigger | "What was that charge? I should really look at this." | Negative spike, 4, PATTERN (O22 anxiety-exceeds-avoidance; O24/BP3 action-on-surprise) | The spike is momentary (inferred from O22 + O25); avoidance usually reasserts before she acts | Surprise-charge reactions reported as shock and frustration; example: a customer found Adobe charging $14.99/month ($119) for a service used once and forgotten. First-person framing: "I forgot to cancel my subscription and now I have been charged." (nbcnews.com surprise-charges; quora.com. Sourced in Step 6; news-reported reaction, tagged signal.) |
| 3 | Attempt to look | "OK, let me just see what I am paying for. Where do I even start?" | Negative-leaning, 3, SIGNAL for the reluctance (personas P3, single-persona "tried twice"); PATTERN for the effort (how-to guides confirm the manual path is multi-surface) | The manual path is fragmented and tedious: statements plus app stores plus email plus each app's own settings | "Go through your last three months of bank and credit card statements line by line and look for recurring charges." (LITE search: engadget / consumerreports how-to guides. Supports the effort, not an emotional quote, so the emotional quote is [?].) |
| 4 | Hits friction | "What is 'SPOTIFYAB STOCKHOLM'? Why do they want my bank login already? This is too much." | Negative, 5, PATTERN (O23 cryptic codes + O21 bank-wall + P4 overwhelm + LITE-confirmed obscured app-store charges). This is the deepest pit today. | Cryptic merchant codes she cannot decode; a connect-your-bank wall at step 1; a dashboard dense with numbers; app-store charges hidden behind Apple/Google | App-store charges "will likely be listed as a payment to either Apple or Google, so it's harder to see what you're paying for." (LITE search: engadget / consumerreports.) Bank wall: "Haven't signed up yet. Not comfortable giving banking info to an app." (O19, 19pine.ai.) |
| 5 | Retreat / incompletion | "I'll deal with it later." "I don't know these people yet." (closes) | Negative fading to the numb relief of escape, 3, SIGNAL (personas P3 "closed it"; O25/BP4 no return) | No external hook pulls her back; the all-or-nothing avoidance actually raises her baseline anxiety over time | "An all-or-nothing approach of checking an account ... after weeks or months of not looking can actually make your anxiety skyrocket." (LITE search: financial-avoidance psychology articles.) |

**Reading the shape:** the emotional low today is Phase 4 (friction: cryptic codes plus the bank wall plus overwhelm), reached only if she gets past the trigger without retreating first. Most sessions end at Phase 5 with the job incomplete and the dread intact. The [?] relief endpoint (H0) is never reliably reached today.

**Honesty notes (LITE):**
- Phase 2 has no verbatim first-person trigger quote in LITE sources; marked [?] for a targeted check in Step 6.
- The "if I look and it's bad, it means I'm bad" and "report card on your worth" framing came from the LITE search summary across several financial-avoidance blogs (maggiebakerphd.com, mindmoneybalance.com, jessicatolar.com), not from a single opened and verified page; treated as signal that cross-confirms the P1 self-image mechanism, not as a single hard source.
- Intensities (1-5) are LITE estimates, not measured; they will be shown with signal/pattern weighting in the Step 5 curve so single-source points read weaker than patterns.

**New LITE sources this step:**
- Financial avoidance psychology (self-image "report card" mechanism, all-or-nothing avoidance worsens anxiety): vice.com/en/article/financial-money-anxiety-too-scared-to-check-bank-account, maggiebakerphd.com, mindmoneybalance.com, jessicatolar.com
- 44% avoid their financial accounts due to anxiety: studyfinds.org/atm-anxiety-people-fear-checking-bank-money-balance (cross-confirms personas.md 1E)
- The manual "find all subscriptions" path is multi-surface and tedious; app-store charges are obscured: engadget.com/apps/how-to-find-and-cancel-your-unused-subscriptions, consumerreports.org/consumer-awareness/how-to-find-and-cancel-unwanted-online-subscriptions

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## Emotional curve and growth zones (Step 5)

### Emotional curve (As-Is)

The whole curve sits below neutral: there is no positive point in Emma's current path. Intensity is the magnitude of negative feeling (1 mild to 5 severe). Each point rests on a Step 4 emotion with a source. The [?] endpoint is not interpolated; it is drawn as undefined (dashed). Single-source (signal) points are weaker than pattern-confirmed points and should render thinner or smaller in the html so the two are visibly distinct.

| Phase | Point | Strength (render weight) | Note |
|-------|-------|--------------------------|------|
| 1 Baseline avoidance | -3 | pattern (strong) | steady low-grade dread |
| 2 Trigger | -4 | pattern (strong) | acute anxiety spike at the surprise |
| 3 Attempt to look | -3 | signal (weaker) | braced reluctance, a slight sense of agency |
| 4 Hits friction | **-5 (BOTTOM)** | pattern (strong) | cryptic codes plus bank wall plus overwhelm; the deepest point today |
| 5 Retreat | -3 | signal (weaker) | numb relief of escape, but baseline dread persists; a false, counterproductive local uptick because it rewards avoidance |
| (endpoint) Relief | **[?] undefined** | dashed, not a real point | H0: reached today only by motivated users of other apps, not by confirmed avoiders; not reliably reached in As-Is |

**Where the riskiest assumption (H0) is sharpest: the P4 to P5 transition.** Today, hitting the friction pit (P4) confirms the avoider's prior belief that "looking makes it worse," so she retreats (P5) and the dread persists. Every As-Is session that ends at P5 is evidence for the avoidance loop, not against it. The entire To-Be job is to stop P4 from being a pit and to actually carry her to the relief endpoint; how it does that is designed in To-Be, not prescribed here. That is the H0 battleground. (strategy.md section 5; jtbd.md 6A.)

### Growth zones (candidates To-Be must close; solutions deferred to Step 7)

Prioritized by pattern strength. Zones 1 to 4 cluster at the Phase 4 pit, which is coherent: the deepest point is where the biggest opportunities concentrate.

1. **The bank-connection wall at first contact (P3 barrier, Phase 4).** Every bank-connected competitor asks for bank access in step 1 to 2, before earning any trust. PATTERN. Gap: this is named the single biggest UX gap in the category. (O21; competitive-analysis.md P1; jtbd.md J1.) No competitor shows value before the bank ask.
2. **Cryptic charges she cannot decode (P2 barrier, Phase 4).** The moment of looking is futile today because half the charges are unreadable bank codes, and app-store charges hide behind Apple/Google. PATTERN. Gap: real merchant names and logos are table stakes no subscription tracker has made a differentiator. (O23; jtbd.md J3; master-research.md M3; LITE search on obscured app-store charges.)
3. **No calm, judgment-free space to just see subscriptions (P4 barrier, Phase 4).** Every app felt overwhelming: too many numbers and graphs, and an implicit "here is what you are doing wrong." PATTERN. Gap: calm is unclaimed as a position by any competitor, including ReSubs. (BP1; competitive-analysis.md P2 and gap G1; CLAUDE.md design principle 1.)
4. **The reveal is all-or-nothing shock, which confirms avoidance (Phase 4 to 5, the H0 crux).** All-or-nothing looking spikes anxiety; there is no gentle on-ramp today. PATTERN. Gap: no competitor designs the first view as a calm emotional experience. This is the riskiest-assumption battleground and the highest-value zone; the design response belongs in To-Be (Step 7). (LITE psych search; jtbd.md 6A DANGER 1; strategy.md section 5.)
5. **No return hook; the job never completes and never repeats (Phase 5 barrier).** Without an external hook, avoiders do not come back, so even a partial win decays. SIGNAL to PATTERN, but this is retention-adjacent and secondary to the reveal for this focus. Gap: no subscription tracker has made the return notification a trust-building experience. (O25/BP4; jtbd.md J4.)

**Note:** growth zones name where it hurts and why we can win. The solution for each is written in To-Be (Step 7), traced back to the zone here.

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## Critique and re-research (Step 6)

**Audit outcome:** every emotion and barrier is now sourced or explicitly marked. The Phase 4 pit (the highest-value claim, since the growth zones cluster there) rests on a pattern of converging sources, so the map's load-bearing point is safe. The weakest points are the Phase 3 and Phase 5 emotional intensities (single-signal or inferred); they are tagged signal and are not the basis of any MVP feature, so they are carried as-is, not over-weighted.

**Closed in Step 6 (targeted LITE re-research, recorded in master-research.md "Re-research for CJM"):**
- Phase 2 trigger emotion: was a drawn [?], now a sourced signal (nbcnews surprise-charges; Adobe example; quora first-person framing).
- Phase 1 self-image quote: was an unverified LITE-summary paraphrase ("report card"), now replaced with verified verbatim from a named page (maggiebakerphd.com), which sharpens the P1 mechanism already backed by PMC/NCBI.

**Carried [?] (not closeable by desk research):**
- The relief endpoint (H0): whether a self-reported avoider completes a calm reveal and reports relief rather than retreating. Needs the clickable-prototype test with 5-8 screened avoiders (strategy.md section 5). This is the single most consequential open item and it gates the whole To-Be premise.

**Systemic defects checked:**
- Orphan phases: none. All five phases link to a job (P1 to E1 and the anti-goal of J-MAIN, P2 to J4, P3 to J-MAIN, P4 to J3, P5 to the failure of J-MAIN and E1). P1 and P5 anchor to anti-goals, which is legitimate for an avoider As-Is where the job is mostly not happening.
- Treatment-in-As-Is: found and fixed. The Step 5 curve note and growth zone 4 had named the solution direction (gradual reveal, D1); rephrased to state the gap only and defer the design response to To-Be.