2020 — UX/UI Design

Creating a loyalty program from scratch

Mockup of various mobile screens depicting the new buser layout.

The challenge

Improve user loyalty and increase new customers numbers through the implementation of a bonus program.

Background

Buser is a platform that intermediates travel between travelers and bus charter companies offering a cheaper, better and safer alternative.

In December 2020 I participated in a short course where a stakeholder from Buser presented us with a challenge they were facing: improve customer loyalty while growing their user base.

From interviews and feedback collected in surveys, recurrent users demonstrated interest in some kind of reward or bonus for always traveling with Buser. This insight hinted at a promising business opportunity.

First step

For this course, we followed the Double Diamond model. As the first step in the Discovery phase, we created a matrix of certainties, assumptions and doubts about the matter. This list served as a means to help shape the user interview's questions and to highlight important aspects we wanted to find more about. As the project took shape, especially after talking with customers, this list was later revised.

A table with three columns, each containing three rows. The first column is for "certainties" and lists "Main users: Women, 20 to 35 yo, financially independent", "Buser is the only company in Brazil offering woman-exclusive seats" and "Buser prices are very competitive when compared to competitors". The second column is for "Suppositions" and lists "Clients who love a brand recommend it to their friends", "Regularly rewarding users may increase fidelity" and "People take into consideration the company's "A table with three columns, each containing three rows. The first column is for "certainties" and lists "Main users: Women, 20 to 35 yo, financially independent", "Buser is the only company in Brazil offering woman-exclusive seats" and "Buser prices are very competitive when compared to competitors". The second column is for "Suppositions" and lists "Clients who love a brand recommend it to their friends", "Regularly rewarding users may increase fidelity" and "People take into consideration the company's reputation on the internet when trying out a new service". Finally we have the "Doubts" column with "How important is it to receive gifts for being a loyal customer?", "Which kinds of prizes are interesting to clients?" and "What makes someone refer a service/product?"
Matrix with certainties, suppositions and doubts

User interview

By talking with users, we came to realize that a loyalty program wouldn't be decisive for someone to travel or not with Buser, but it could be a motivating factor and possibly improve their experience and their loyalty to the brand.

We also got interesting insights such as:

  • When there are app-exclusive deals, customers don't mind, and may even prefer using apps instead of web-based services

  • They're more inclined to use such service when discounts and gifts are given periodically

  • Feel cherished when given physical gifts and personalized discounts for being loyal to a service

  • Feel happy and accomplished when they recommend something to a friend and they like/use it

We could validate some of our previous assumptions and even correct some, for example, people seem to take into consideration their friends' opinions more than reviews on the internet.

Persona

After compiling the interview data, we fleshed out a proto-persona to help us shape the new feature and better visualize the necessities, pains and expectations, thus making the process to find a solution more accurate.

A persona created for this project. It has a picture of a woman around 30 years old and also contains descriptions of her behavior
Proto-persona and its objectives, frustrations and expectations

Ideation

Moving forward, it was time to come up with solutions. We used a prioritization diagram to help us decide which idea could offer the most impact and less effort to develop:

Every trip you buy and every friend you refer, gives out points that place you in different levels, allowing you to enjoy permanent perks, such as preferential treatment, and to claim physical gifts.
A matrix with Impact on Y axis and Effort on the X axis. The text is in portuguese.
Prioritization diagram with votes for the best ideas

Early exploration

Based on initial paper sketches, we created this quick lo-fi wireframe to collaborate digitally as soon as we could.

The idea behind this exploration was to condense everything into some sort of reward central, since the customers talked about some services they use that have a feature like this and from our benchmarking, this is a common aspect seen across many apps.

Two wireframes of the mobile application with notes for different components and how they should behave.
Different explorations and comments about the design

User flow

After refining the idea a bit, we then created a user flow, which helped us evaluate the efficiency and simplicity of our design.

A flow depicting how the user can go from the home screen to the various screens of the application and back.
User flow for the new feature

Final design

After conducting a usability test with some users, we polished and iterated over the wireframe and created a hi-fidelity prototype.

A tiled view of 8 mobile screens, each depicting a different page in the app
An animation of the onboarding prototype, where the user is in the home screen of the app and clicks to go to the reward central and is then greeted with an "Onboarding" screen.

Onboarding

A screen capture of the reward central, where the user can find the reward level he is in as well as the gifts he can receive.

Rewards central

The animation shows a user claiming a gift in the application.

Claiming a prize

Depiction of how a user could refer a friend from the application and how it leverages the operating system default share modal.

Referring a friend

If I had more time...

  • Expand the color palette to be more ample and adaptable

  • Develop the unhappy path

  • Create a custom set of illustrations/iconography for the brand

  • Improve the 'Refer a Friend' section

Takeaways

When working on this project, I was faced with some challenges. For example, the lack of a design system meant that I had to come up with solutions by myself and tackle the inconsistency issues across the app. Also, having to come up with content and prizes by myself was difficult - which in real life would probably involve many other teammates and different company departments.

As I had no relationship with Buser after the course ended, I couldn't really validate the research and prototype with users nor share my process with colleagues, which would have been incredibly helpful.

Besides that, designing the information architecture was something new for me, but it was a nice challenge to plan things ahead and in a logical way.

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