Case study
Enabling users to redeem offers from brick-&-mortar brands
To widen our rewards offering, I designed a phygital redemption experience for Singtel's digital rewards platform.
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The ask
I was tasked to design a phygital rewards redemption flow for Singtel StepUp.
The redemption flow had to...
1. Improve customer engagement, as measured by:
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Increased rewards redemptions
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New sign-ups
2. Be easy to use, as measured by:
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Completion rate of the redemption process
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Dispute rate regarding the redemption process
I was the sole designer on this project.
My responsibilities included:
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Collaborating and grooming requirements with stakeholders
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Planning and driving research and testing
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Designing, testing and refining the experience
Gathering requirements
I spoke with business and tech stakeholders to understand the goals and limitations of the StepUp platform.
Business context
StepUp was introduced to the My Singtel App as a platform to increase customer engagement. When this project was incepted, StepUp users could only redeem offers via promo code. This prevented brick-and-mortar partners from onboarding to the platform.
Limitations
Due to timeline constraints, the redemption process could not be integrated with the merchants’ Point-of-Sale (POS) system, which could lead to disputes and confusion between customers and merchants. We focused on trying to make the redemption process as fool-proof as possible, not just for customers, but merchants as well.
Merchant interviews
We conducted interviews and roleplay studies with service staff to understand their pain points when serving customers.
We found that staff wanted to validate a customer's redemption as quickly as possible, and avoid touching their devices for hygiene reasons. It was essential to have clear instructions for users and visual cues for staff to quickly validate that an offer was successfully redeemed.
Service blueprint
I drafted a service blueprint to map out the different touch points between the customer, merchants and StepUp.
This provided me with an overview of the entire experience while I approached the design.
Designing and testing
I worked through a few design iterations and tested each one through formal usability testing.
Each test was conducted with 5 externally-sourced participants. Based on the derived insights, the following changes were made:
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Providing a clear label, such as ‘use in store’ or ‘for dine-in/takeaway-only’ to manage users’ expectations about how the reward can be used
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Using a slider to confirm the redemption, to prevent users from going on ‘auto-pilot’ and accidentally using a reward they didn’t intend
Delivering the designs
Along with UI specs, I mapped out the entire user journey and also sought feedback from the development team.
Using Overflow, I could then conduct design walkthroughs with the development team to ensure everyone was aligned on the experience.
Closing thoughts
Digital will never fully replace brick-and-mortar. Design and testing methodologies must be adapted for phygital experiences.
It was difficult to test the designs in a moderated setting - it was unnatural for users and relied too heavily on recall. Given better circumstances, I would have loved to shadow customers as they attempted to redeem a reward at an actual store.