Overview
This project is under NDA. What follows is a high-level overview. For more specific details, please contact me to set up an in-person meeting. Thanks!
The Opportunity
Our client, a local Fortune 100 technology leader, wanted to create a rewards platform experience that could bring together two different existing platforms into one experience to serve both audiences. The goal of bringing these two experiences together was revive the rewards program from feeling stale and out of touch with users needs as well as encourage users to cash in on their earned rewards more frequently, a need for the business.
The Hurdle
As part of this long-term goal, the client saw the need to combine their popular gaming rewards program into their browser rewards platform to create a unified audience.
But the existing design of the browser rewards platform felt transactional, confusing, and broken, especially within the mobile experience.
So then, how could they change the platform experience in a way that felt good to the newly acquired gaming platform members and didn’t just feel like a reskin of the broken browser rewards experience to the existing members?
The Solution
We redesigned the customers daily point earning interactions to be a mobile first experience that leverages intrinsic motivators like competition, engagement loops, and set completion.
This created a better and more accessible experience for browser rewards members and used game design behavior that resonated with the newly acquired gaming platform members.
Details
Business Impact: Increased revenue through advertising on Browser*
Project Length: 3.5 Months
Team: Creative Director Chris Hannon, UX Lead Clemente Miller, Strategy Lulu Xiao, UX Tester Amanda Parkhurst, Lead VX Designer Antonio Holguin
My Contributions: Concept development, Present work to client, User experience development, Wireframing & flows, Workshop development, Workshop facillitation
“How do we combine and redesign these two rewards programs as one, without causing a massive disruption to our current customers?”
Discovery
Site analysis
To understand how to best approach a UX redesign for Browser* rewards, we started by analyzing the site’s current experience and understanding what might motivate users through phases of earning, rewards browsing, and points redemption.
Tasks Performed
“How can we make it more clear to users that they are earning points and get them excited about earning daily?”
User Journeys
To better define the problem space, we conducted a journey mapping session with the product team to externalize their deep knowledge about the customers goals, needs, and behaviors. From this we learned a few key insights.
First, user of the Browser* Rewards program didn’t always have a clear understanding of how and when points were being accrued, even though they used the products regularly. We also learned that the Gaming* Live Rewards users, not surprisingly, had an affinity for gaming mechanics within rewards systems. Which left us asking, how can we make it clear that users are earning and get them excited about earning daily?
Behavioral Archetypes
*Data gathered in team workshop which I co-facilitated, artifact design by Clemente Miller
Design
The Daily Set, Competition, and Goal setting
To get both audiences on board with daily engagement, we needed an experience that gave users a reason to keep coming back consistently and make them excited about earning and redeeming.
This led to the creation of the now implemented core experience that uses set completion, competition, and goal setting to trigger intrinsic motivators that resonated with both audiences.
Set Completion: Engagement Loop
Previously, the landing page for the rewards experience gave you many ways to earn, like the daily quizzes and Bing searches. These were engaging, but didn’t do a good job at giving users a reason to come back every day. With the introduction of set completion, users could now earn extra points by maintaining “streaks” to gain extra points faster.
Design
Goal Setting: Progressive Disclosure
Setting a goal is a strong motivator for users. While not necessary to earn and redeem, we designed an experience that encouraged Microsoft to provide strong visual feedback as part of the progression towards goals, as well as fun and exciting feedback for streak completion.
Dashboard Point Breakdowns
Goal Module States
Design
Dev team collaboration
A key part of the process was refining all these ideas with the development team. Together, we reviewed the wireframes and incorporated feedback to make sure the concepts were meshing with the capabilities of the platform and the tribally agreed upon experience improvement ideas of the dev team.
Testing
Testing our ideas to see if the concept and execution was critical. We performed two rounds of UX testing with half a dozen participants and then adjusted our designs based on the findings.
Note: Lead by Amanda Parkhurst
Key Findings
While people were able to complete the onboarding experience easily, they were left with some questions about point value and redemption, and did not feel that the tasks completed in the onboarding experience represented reality closely enough.
Participants were able to complete the goal setting task easily, but were left with higher level questions about why they would want to set a goal.
All participants were able to complete the redemption task easily, and most continued the cycle by setting a new goal after they had redeemed.
Recommendations
Onboarding
• Include a more detailed intro into what the rewards program is, how points are earned and redeemed.
• Create more relevant tutorials that show how points are earned within the client’s browser products.
• Award points in the onboarding experience that are valued at a similar value as the Gaming platform’s reward activities.
Goal setting – Create better messaging that gives the user a reason to want to create a goal and how it will benefit them.
Redemption – This process worked well in the testing, so continue to polish this design, but do not change the flow or key messaging.
Value Mapping
A key activity is the Value Mapping exercise. Once design ideas are generated, we perform an evaluation with the key stakeholders and technical team to assess the level of effort vs perceived value towards the customer and the business.
Results
Since its launch, I have been following blogs and feeds of the platforms users. There is a wide array of feedback, but most of what I found was positive, with a consistent commentary that users were in fact working hard to maintain streaks. I found users that were nearly hitting triple digits of daily play.
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