Loylogic Rewards Suite

Designed and built Loylogic Reward Experience (REx), a suite of points redemption products, while working as Product Manager at Loylogic. With over 25 different ways to redeem points on offer, REx is one of the most innovative products in the loyalty e-commerce industry worldwide.

To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted confidential information. The information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of Loylogic.

My Role

As of 2016 Loylogic had around 110 employees spread across Zurich, Pune, London, Dubai, Atlanta and Riga offices. I was the sole Product Manager at Loylogic and owned the key modules of this project. I worked with the Head of Solutions, Art Director and Business Analysts to define the product specs, design & user experience, and with the Developers, Designers and Test Engineers to get them implemented.

My contribution was defining the features, implementation and user experience in exacting details, covering hundreds of use cases and thousands of scenarios across all redemption types, as well as the product wide design for Navigation, IA, Search, Filters & Sorting, Payment & Checkout flow, Wish-list, Shopping Cart, My transaction, UI elements and dynamic landing pages.

The Challenge

BUILDING REx 2.0 PRODUCT SUITE

Loylogic was already a leader in the international Loyalty industry with an enviable client list in 2015 when this project was conceptualised. However there was increasing competition, with new players and exciting new products entering the market. Loylogic’s solution was beginning to age, as the core platform and services had remained the same since 2010. The offering included a reward store bundled with raffles, auctions, points transfer and flight excess baggage. The shop sported a dated look, as there were not many layout options supported. Many features like personalisation, wish-list, filter driven search, seamless mobile support, etc were lacking and the core product logic wasn’t easily extensible. While it served the current shops well, a lot of the codebase was a mess. There was a need to offer many more redemption options to make the program points more valuable to the customer. Loylogic’s PointsPay checkout, Virtual and Plastic card products worked as a separate entity, and it made a lot of business sense to also include them into the Reward store suite.

The challenge was then to design and build a completely new Reward Experience (called REx 2.0), which would support over 25 redemption options, and build it in a way that the product suite is highly modular and extensible. A client could sign up for any basket combination of the redemption products, customize them differently for different markets without impacting the shop or the backend.

THE APPROACH

THE IDEATION TO LAUNCH JOURNEY

There was a lot of brainstorming and market research done with the senior management, to arrive at the high level plan including the redemption products and e-Commerce store features, their relative priorities and distribution over a 1 year build plan, involving monthly Agile sprints. The team interacted over lengthy Skype calls across geographies, on each module and feature. The first iteration of design began towards mid 2015, and many more discussions and comments from various stakeholders were recorded.

Once the high level plan was finalised, we created JIRA Epics for each module and brainstormed the stories needed. The low level business analysis work commenced around Nov 2015, and the team started creating JIRA stories with detailed user stories and product specs for each feature in the priority agreed upon. The daily brainstorming and story review continued, and we kicked off development in Feb 2016, with the first bunch of stories ready for development. Meanwhile the new technical architecture and database changes had been finalised in parallel meetings with the tech team. By Feb 2016 the work on current products was put into maintenance mode, and bulk of the Tech/QA/Design resources were employed on this new product REx 2.0.

Our Approach was to first release the product internally and call it “Choice”. All employees were given $100 worth points to begin with, and could earn many more choice points through multiple incentives and employee engagement activities. They could redeem these points on the Choice shop. This ensured that the product got thoroughly tested before heading for client launches.

THE DISCOVERY

DECIDING WHAT TO BUILD

We conducted interviews with the executives from the existing clients including Etihad group, United, AMEX, Etisalat, etc. to uncover their pain points and wish lists for the new product. End user interviews were also conducted. We gathered continuous insights and inputs from the user facing teams including Customer support, Merchant support, Sales, Merchandising and E-Commerce on all relevant modules of the product. Market research and competitive landscape analysis was done for the new offerings. We had a lot of past data on the live shops, and we analysed the data for useful insights into the what, why, how and when we should be building. On both technology and design fronts, we ensured that we are at the cutting edge of the latest tools, trends and best practices.

Since we were revamping the existing product, there were tons of feature requests that had come in from multiple sources (Merchants, Program partners, End customers, Internal teams) via multiple channels, sitting in the product backlog. This was the time we went through all of them and brainstormed what could make its way into the new product.

THE VISION

YOUR POINTS LOVED MORE

“Loylogic is the partner that the world’s leading loyalty programs trust with making their points and miles loved more. Why? Because we passionately believe the key driver for loyalty success is Choice. Reward Choice boosts points value which drives member engagement and ultimately company sales.”

THE PRODUCT

INTRODUCING LOYLOGIC REx 2.0

REx 2.0 offers over 25 different ways to redeem loyalty points

Travel

Members can use points or points+cash to book Flight tickets, Hotels, Holidays and Cars.

SHOPPING

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REWARD CARD AND POINTSPAY CHECKOUT

The shop online at partner stores section of the site lists the participating e-Commerce stores where member can shop and pay using points either through PointsPay checkout payment option on checkout page or by loading their Loylogic issued Reward Card, they can convert their points into cash on the fly using the Load card widget on REx 2.0 or the browser add-on. Given a very impressive list of partner stores on offer, this feature opens the door to a sea of redemption options with plenty of products to choose from.

LIFESTYLE

Members can book Event tickets, Experiences, Subscriptions, Exclusive Memberships and Concierge services using their points on the REx 2.0 platform.

More

That’s not all, there are a host of other redemption options on offer. Member can participate in an exciting Raffle or Auction on the shop. Donate some of their points to charity. Transfer points to another connected program account or to their friend’s account. Buy Gift cards and Gift vouchers of multiple stores and varying denominations. Buy some bitcoins with their points. Or pay for their Card fees and use their points towards Statement Credit. Buy excess baggage for their next trip on a partner Airline. The member is spoilt for choice when it comes to redemption options on REx 2.0.

DETAILED DESIGNS

CREATING A DELIGHTFUL REWARD EXPERIENCE

Here’s a walkthrough of some of the key design problems and solutions core to the Rewards Suite.

BACKEND DESIGN

We created a dynamic modular template system to create shop pages on the fly, offering a host of layout choices and flexibility to our client programs. This was a huge step up from the earlier static template based design. Multiple shop components were designed – Key Visual Gallery, Reward selection and listing widgets, Merchant selection and listing widgets, Category channels, Recommendation widgets, Travel widgets, HTML widgets and more, to achieve this goal. Here is a snapshot of the screen wireframe for the OnCommerce backend.

E-COMMERCE SHOP DESIGN

A major design problem was to design the white label e-Commerce shop product which could be extensible and customizable to the core to meet multiple client requirements and use cases. A lot of though went into the product spec and design for the Shop landing pages, Listing pages, Product detail pages, User pages, Navigation, Search, Cart flow, Favourites and other Interface elements.

Designing the Cart, Wishlist, Navigation and other core components.

SEARCH, IA AND LISTING PAGES

A customizable basket of redemption products and a points plus cash shop came with challenges in terms of Navigation and Search. Customer could search for rewards by keywords and or points, filters and sort options were designed to ease product discovery. Category tree had a very flexible and modular design driven through customizable shop properties.

Designing the Information Architecture and Listing Pages

PRODUCT PAGES

We had over 25 redemption options, including merchandise, event and travel bookings, raffles, auctions, concierge, donations, excess baggage, etc. with differences extending from product attributes to redemption type algorithms. This necessitated a deep look into the designs for each redemption option, while ensuring a consistent design language.

POINTSPAY CHECKOUT EXPERIENCE

PointsPay is one of the USPs of the Rewards Suite. User can shop at one of the many PointsPay merchants online and checkout using their Program points. Here is a video walkthrough of the PointsPay checkout experience.

REWARD CHOICES

With over two dozen redemption options, task was to design a seamless and consistent User experience across the board.

THE EXECUTION

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

We started development in Feb 2016 in monthly Agile sprints. I already owned the e-Commerce platform ON Commerce that powers all the shops, as the Product Manager. Now I had my focus on managing the key modules of REx 2.0 including Search, Information Architecture, Technical Design, Dynamic and Modular landing pages, Wish list and end to end flow of many Reward types including Raffles, Virtual and Plastic Card, Shop Online using Loylogic Card/PointsPay integration, Travel, Excess Baggage, Concierge, Events, Experiences, Concierge and Gift Cards.

Requirements were meticulously put together as Stories under relevant Epics in Jira. While writing a story, we started with brainstorming the use cases, selecting what use cases to support and how. The stories covered the specs of the features in detail, the business requirements and business logic, interface wireframes and html prototype, the technical implementation and database design, the dependencies and test case scenarios. The stories were explained to the Dev and QA teams at sprint kick off and one week into the sprint, the requirements were frozen. Two weeks into the sprint, the QAs were expected to close all test case writing and begin the system testing. Stories moved to UAT by the fourth week. With the release, we sent out the Release document to all internal stakeholders and also conducted training sessions. In the Agile retrospective, we discussed the achievements, shortcomings and learnings from the release.

We were able to launch the first version of Choice in May 2016. Employee accounts were created and choice points were distributed. What followed was three months of thorough testing and refinement, while also the supplementary features were added in the next three monthly releases as per the high level plan. By the end of Aug 2016, thousands of scenarios had been tested on Choice and the product was almost bug free. We were now ready for Client launches.

Between Sept 2016 to Dec 2016 we launched REx 2.0 for Etihad Guest, Jet Privilege and AMEX Membership Rewards programmes. Each client launch came with a standard set of configurations and migrations and also additional customisations as per their branding as well as business requirements. Since the product design was very well thought through, we didn’t face any major technical problems with the client launches. Each client internal launch went through a few rounds of structured feedback and refinement iterations between the client and product/tech teams, before replacing the old Reward Store on production and releasing it to their customers.

THE LAUNCH

THE NEW REWARD EXPERIENCE GOES LIVE

We rolled out the points suite for clients Etihad, Jet and American Express in 2016, and will be launched for other Loylogic clients 2017 onwards. Loylogic’s clients include Nestle, Swisscard, United, Hilton, Etihad, Jet, Alitalia, Air Berlin, Etisalat, Ooredoo, Uralsib, QNB, PINS (Air Baltic), Gulf Air, Eurowings.

JET AIRWAYS
https://rewardstore.jetprivilege.com/

ETIHAD GUEST
https://www.rewards.etihadguest.com/

SWISSCARD
https://rewardshop.americanexpress.ch/

Design Explorations

A ONE STOP MOBILE APP FOR REWARDS POINT MANAGEMENT

Below are some design explorations for a Mobile Loyalty App designed by me during my time at Loylogic. This is an unreleased product, further product and process details have therefore been omitted. The work presented in this Case study from ideation to design and prototyping has been done by me. The primary design tools used in this project are Sketch, UX Pin and Photoshop.

The Challenge was to design a one stop shop for reward points. It is envisioned as an App where user can manage all her reward points across loyalty programs. Thereby the points are more valuable for the customer, and programs get a higher ROI from their loyalty campaigns. The structure is modular from program perspective with a multi level opt in structure.

The vision was to be the only App one needs to manage her virtual loyalty currency, with a basket of options making loyalty points as valuable as real currency for the customer.

Pen and paper sketches, Card sorting, User research, Consumer journey maps, Personas, Scenarios, Market research, Competitive audit, Brainstorming, Mood-board, StoryBoard and Heuristic Analysis were part of the exploratory design process leading to the final solution.

Design SOLUTIONS

FEATURE PACKED WITHIN A MINIMALIST EXTERIOR

The App features are accessible from the bottom tab bar, side nav menu and the contextual menu. Information is organised based on the learnings from the design exploration phase.

WALLET SCREEN

User can manage his reward points wallets here, including both Rewards Bank wallet as well as third party points plus cash wallets. Key functionality is to pay using points and receive points into the wallet. Transaction history and stats are shown on this screen. Points can be added via transfer/purchase using the floating action button. Additional features like adding new wallet and editing wallet info and settings are hidden in the contextual menu.

CARDS SCREENS

From the Cards tab, user can manage all his loyalty cards in one place, eliminating the need for carrying multiple plastic cards in his pocket.Cards can quickly be added and scanned for adding or redeeming points at merchant stores. With location enabled, user can find nearby participating stores and offers in a snap.

SEND AND EXCHANGE SCREENS

Send screen enables points transfer to another member account within a program, by selecting the payee manually or by scanning the payee barcode. Exchange points enables loyalty currency exchange between the eligible programs for a given selection, even allowing exchange to or from cash for a few programs at the displayed exchange rate.

GIFT SCREENS

Member can choose from a wide assortment of gift cards and purchase them in a denomination of choice. During checkout, the option is presented to purchase for self or gift to someone by entering a personalized message and recipient details.