FOR CONTEXT
I was tasked with migrating the entirety of Loyalty from the Aries platform to the new improved Phoenix platform. I took into account every single facet of the membership experience including integrating mobile app in my decision making for consistency and seamless experience across both platforms. Backed by over 15 rounds of UX research, I was able to successfully redefine nomenclature, content hierarchy, and overall usability across all loyalty specific experiences. These ranged from the my account section which is specific to loyalty only to whole standalone experiences sprinkled across the entire Marriott experience.
The primary requirement was to enhance the hierarchy and visual design based on user research, while keeping the data points unchanged and not introducing any new functionality within the project scope.
To approach this, I started by closely examining the user research findings to understand where users are struggling with the current design. Identify the key pain points related to hierarchy and visual design. Then, I prioritized content to determine the most important elements that need to stand out based on the user research. Afterwards, I aimed to improve visual consistency across the entire interface, ensuring a clear visual hierarchy. Them I tested extensively on usertesting.com with different iterations to find the one that most resonated with our users.
ROLE
UX Designer
KEYWORDS
Responsive Web/Redesign
CATEGORY
Hospitality
DESIGN TOOLS
Figma, Sketch, Adobe CC
YEAR
2023
Current State and the Opportunities for Improvement
The entirety of the loyalty experiences required a comprehensive revamp but I was limited by the MVP scope so part of the work involved improvements that would be pushed forward post MVP as “MVP Plus”.
Speaking Holistically
To narrow the focus of this case study, I'll concentrate on the tabbed My Account section, which is exclusive to signed-in users. This is the most critical aspect of the loyalty program, as it drives ongoing user engagement.
Activity and Earned Rewards
In this section, my priority was organizing information and establishing a clearer hierarchy. The goal was to make the content easy to understand while ensuring that the grouping of actions was intuitive and beneficial to the user. The aim wasn’t to alter their understanding of the page but to enhance their experience by optimizing the information hierarchy.
WHAT OUR RESEARCH SHOWED
My Trips
This section contains the user's Upcoming and Cancelled trips. Research revealed significant opportunities for visual and hierarchical improvements, as users found the property card unappealing and lacking key information. Additionally, our business partners emphasized the importance of promoting secondary partners and activities to enhance the user experience at the properties upon arrival. This wouldn't involve adding new functionality, as it already exists on the card but was hidden in the code for unclear reasons.
Favorites
The Favorites section, despite being the least interacted with among the My Account tabs according to metrics, received the most feedback during user research. It became evident that the lack of a visually engaging design and limited functionality led users to overlook this section. Users found the full-width cards overwhelming and felt that the cards could offer more features. Based on this feedback, we redesigned the section by switching from full-width cards to a three-card layout on desktop and incorporated a carousel scroll for property images. This allows users to explore properties directly on the page without needing to navigate to the property’s individual page.
