PREFERRED REWARDS

Preferred Rewards

In 2016, just after the mobile app redesign, Bank of America was looking to engage customers in mobile on its way to reach the goal of #1 banking app in US. The primary target was the preferred customers; who have a current balance of 30K and above.

PROBLEM

Stagnated account balances

The less number of active customers indicated that "customers have no idea about their benefits they enjoy based on their account balance and how improving it could lead to more benefits"

GOAL

50% Mobile Engagement

The primary goal was to engage customers by bringing at least half the 3 million customers to mobile. So they can have easy access to check their balance than they do in desktop.

ROLE

Leading design and creating visuals

I was happy to lead such a profound team; interaction designer, usability engineer, and a content creator as they needed little to no direction.

Since I was also responsible to deliver visuals, it helped me to visualize the solution as we ideate and iterate through.

CHALLENGE

Designing for 3 platforms

The solution has to scale across different platforms; IOS, Android, Windows and Web. I collaborated with the technology leads of 3 platforms and committed to deliver detailed design documentation for each to make sure the implementation is not comprised with the intended experience.

ANALYSIS

Understanding the pain points of desktop experience

We analyzed the existing desktop experience. And, learned that customers lack motivation in increasing their current balance to reach the next tier of rewards.

APPROACH

Involving users from the beginning

We were lucky enough to have some of our business partners who are also preferred rewards customers. The insights gained from a user's perspective were significant right from the beginning of the design thinking process.

DESIGN THINKING

Brainstorming to grasp user's mental model

I divided the 8 member core team into two groups with the equal number of stakeholders in each (designer, business partner, developer, user) to brainstorm and sketch a solution with the goal "How might we motivate customers to level-up their rewards?". We voted the ideas worth exploring and combined them into a single solution to prototype.

TESTING

Validating with customers

Usability engineer Ann, conducted a 2-day testing session with a sample size of 8 users. She recruited a variety of 4 customer segments around the primary persona.

I observed customers were struggling to compare the benefits of 3 reward levels to grasp the value at a glance. That led us to an intuitive comparison table at the end.

USER FLOW

Wireframing based on test findings

Saravana — Our Interaction designer, had documented the common user flow with detailed interactions. The platform specific interaction notes in the documentation were handy for the developers.

VISUAL DESIGN

Creating a visual language for the 3 reward tiers

I used the branded stripes conveying the visual identity of the tiers at a glance. I used complementing brand icons improving the readability with white space.

Gold strip to indicate current level and relevant iconography for benefits.

Status bar to quickly visualize the current status and progress

Lean tabular format to easily compare
the benefits in mobile

IMPACT

62% customer engagement 👌

We were thrilled to see that the active mobile user rate plummeted to 1M in the first 3 months after launch, that is 62% of the preferred rewards customer segment.

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