Sustainable Loyalty System

I. Introduction

Project Title: Niyo OneApp Loyalty Program

My Role: Senior UX Designer, managing 1 UX Designer.

Timeline: October 2022 - Present

Tools Used: Figma, FigJam, Jira

Project Summary: This case study details my design contributions to the Niyo OneApp Loyalty Program, a new initiative aimed at increasing user retention and engagement. The program rewards users with “Niyo Coins” for completing various actions within the app, such as making international transactions or maintaining a certain account balance. My role involved designing a seamless and rewarding user experience, from the initial onboarding and education about the program to the processes of earning, tracking, and redeeming coins.

II. Defining the Problem Space

1. Scope, Objectives & Goals

Business Goals:
- Increase User Stickiness: Niyo aimed to design a loyalty program that would incentivize users to engage with the app more frequently and consistently, ultimately reducing churn and enhancing the app’s value proposition.
- Drive Specific Actions: The program needed to encourage users to perform actions aligned with Niyo’s business objectives. This included promoting the use of international money transfer features, encouraging account balance growth, and driving adoption of specific financial products within the app.
- Enhance Product Differentiation: The loyalty program was envisioned as a key differentiator for Niyo within the competitive fintech market, attracting new users and building stronger brand loyalty among existing ones.
User Goals:
- Gain Tangible Rewards: Users desired a clear understanding of how they could earn rewards and how those rewards would provide real value, such as discounts on transactions or access to exclusive perks.
- Feel a Sense of Exclusivity: There was a desire for the loyalty program to make users feel part of a special group, rewarding their engagement with a sense of recognition and appreciation.
- Transparency and Ease of Use: Users expected a program that was easy to understand, with clear communication about earning and redemption processes and minimal friction in navigating the program features.

2. Learnings from industry giants

3. User Research & Insights

To validate our assumptions and gain deeper insights into user expectations, we conducted a community meetup with 6 participants from our target user base. The focus of the meetup was to understand user needs and expectations surrounding loyalty programs.

Key Questions:
- What motivates you to participate in any kind of reward programs?
- What kind of rewards are most appealing to you?
- What are your pain points with existing reward programs?
Key Findings:
- Instant Gratification is Crucial: Users strongly preferred programs with readily available and easy-to-understand rewards.
- Relevance Matters: Rewards tied to users’ spending habits and financial goals were perceived as more valuable.
- Simplicity is Key: Overly complex programs with multiple tiers and convoluted earning structures were a major deterrent.

4. Challenges

Even with the insights gained from our research, we encountered some challenges during the project:

Aligning Business and User Needs
- Balancing the business goal of promoting specific actions with providing users with flexible and rewarding redemption options required careful consideration.
Technical Feasibility & Integration
- Seamlessly integrating the loyalty program’s backend with Niyo’s existing financial systems while ensuring scalability and performance posed a technical challenge.
Designing for Clarity and Simplicity
- Clearly conveying the program’s value proposition, earning mechanisms, and redemption options in a concise and engaging way within the app’s UI required careful content strategy and information design.

5. Design Sprint

To kick off the design process and rapidly explore potential solutions, we conducted a 7-day design sprint with a cross-functional team including designers, product managers, strategists, marketing team, and engineers.

Sprint Goal: Define the core value proposition and user experience of the Niyo loyalty program.
Key Activities:
- Day 1: Understand & Define
- Day 2: Defining the Scope
- Day 3: Actors and Journey Mapping
- Day 4: Understanding what our stakeholders like about our competitors

Outcomes & Key Decisions:
- Users responded positively to the concept of earning coins for domestic transactions and redeeming them for cashback or travel-related rewards.
- We decided to prioritize a single, easy-to-understand coin type over a more complex multi-currency points system.

III. Design & Solution

1. Our Approach

To address the challenges and meet the outlined goals, we centered our design process around user needs, iterative prototyping, and close collaboration with the development team.

User Stories: We prioritized user stories that directly addressed the pain points uncovered in our research:
- As a user, I want to easily understand how to earn coins, so I’m motivated to participate in the program. (Addresses transparency and ease of use)
- As a user, I want to redeem my coins for rewards that are valuable to me, so I feel like my engagement is worthwhile. (Focuses on relevant rewards)
- As a user, I want to track my coin balance and redemption history, so I can stay informed about my progress. (Promotes a sense of control and transparency)
User Flows: We mapped out key user flows to visualize the end-to-end experience and identify potential friction points:
- Enrollment Flow:
- First time User:
- Returning User with zero Coins:
- Returning User with 1000 Coins - Zero Redeemable:
- Returning User with 80,000 Coins - 1000 Redeemable:
- Referral - First Time User / Zero referred:
- Referral - Referred a friendr: