Chase Rewards Redemption
Product: New Feature
Duration: 1 month
Purpose: Determine how to improve the rewards point process for Chase users and encourage them to use their points more often.
Key Focus Areas:
User Research
UX Design
The full prototype can be found here.
Background
Chase Bank offers a wide variety of credit cards that offer different benefits. For example, some cards will offer cashback on purchases, credit cards affiliated with other partners such as an Amazon credit card or Marriott credit card, or travel credit cards that offer points for redemption on flights and hotels. Chase currently has about 93 million credit cards in circulation available for card holders to leverage the benefits programs Chase offers.
Problem:
Currently there are multiple ways for a user to redeem their credit card points for depending on what they are looking to redeem. For example:
For Travel, the card holder will have to use the travel booking portal to redeem their points
For Gift Cards, the card holder will have to select from the partners vendors to purchase a gift cards through Chase using their points
For Dining, the card holder can review their previous transactions and apply this points through a separate portal on the rewards page
The examples list are just a few of the methods Chase has to allows users to redeem points.
Goal: The multiple methods have left users frustrated with the multiple forums to redeem their points and create a barrier for redeeming rewards. I’m looking to determine how point redemption can be made easier.
Research
To conduct my research, I conducted primary and secondary research to understand my potential users.
Primary Research: 3 Interviews (In-person and virtual)
Secondary Research: Competitive Analysis (4 vendors)
Primary Research Takeaways
100%
Interviewees stated their card had multiple methods for redeem points
100%
Interviewees stated the point redemption process was dated and lengthy
66%
Interviewees mentioned they used their points for cash back or gift cards when the aren’t looking to travel
Secondary Research Key Takeaways
Secondary research enable me to better understand what other banks have done for their point redemption process. Some key features that I believed resonated with the results from my primary research was:
Single Portal for Point Redemption: Regardless of what the user wanted to redeem they were able to use the same site
Direct Cash Redemption: User were given the option to directly apply their rewards, despite the type of credit card they had, to reduce their balance
Defining the Scope
After conducting my research I was able to identify what parts of Chase redemption functionality I wanted to focus on. I started this phase by creating a persona and created an affinity map to understand the key user I wanted to target.
Key Takeaways
After conducting my research I was able to identify what parts of Chase redemption functionality I wanted to focus on. I started this phase by creating a persona and created an affinity map to understand the key user I wanted to target.
Point Redemption:
Redeeming points for travel is the most common form of point redemption
Redemption Process:
Point redemption takes place in several different pages
One person mentioned they would like to be apply points directly to transactions
Requested Updates:
The process to redeeming points for travel is long and tedious
Chase and AmEx have separate websites for users to redeem
Point Redemption takes place in several different pages
Chase members don’t believe they are receiving the best value for their points when using their Chase Portal to book flights
Users want the value of their points to be transparent
After conducting user research, synthesizing the research, and creating a persona, I determined that two new features could be added to improve the user experience of the Chase Sapphire Rewards website.
Directly Paying for Purchase with Points: Card holders didn’t like how there were multiple methods of redemption, so card holders would like a method to directly apply points to qualified purchases
Goal Setting: Card holders like to save their points for big purchase, so it would be useful for them to be able to track their points for their upcoming redemption goals
Design
After defining scope of the project and leveraging the feedback from the user interviews, I conducted several rounds of low to fidelity designs before applying Chase’s branding to the high-fidelity designs
Low Fidelity
My design phase started with some sketched of what the feature could potentially look like.
High Fidelity
Later I created a UI Kit to make the high-fidelity wireframes and added in the details for how a user could redeem their points to reduce their credit card balance.
Chase Rewards Home Page
Requesting Point Redemption
Selecting Transactions for Point Redemption
Point Redemption Confirmation
New Credit Card Balance
Mid Fidelity
I later began to develop mid fidelity wireframes based on my sketches and leverage some components of the existing design system from Chase.
Chase Rewards Home Page
Requesting Point Redemption
Selecting Transactions for Point Redemption
Point Redemption Confirmation
New Credit Card Balance
Testing
After completing my high-fidelity designs, I was able to develop a prototype to test certain user flows that I believed were key to users. This enable to received feedback to make small changes and improve the usability.
Key Takeaway #1:
Users like having access to some old methods of rewards redemption.
Key Takeaway #2:
Users needs a different visual cue to note when a transaction has been redeemed.
Key Takeaway #3:
Users wanted to set redemption goals, but didn’t need more than two.
Final Product
The new features are supposed to make using points easier for the consumer, while the first portion to apply points to purchase is features above, and the ability to create a point goal is features below. The full prototype can be found here.
Case Study Reflection
The final updates to the Chase Rewards portal are intended to make point redemption easier to use. I was able to learn a lot about nuisances of reward redemptions.
Key Takeaways
Feature Benefit to Card Holders
Goal Tracker: Card holders are encouraged to accumulate more points when they see how they are tracking toward a goal
Direct Pay with Points: Card holder like making point redemption as easy as possible, by being able to see their point value it encourages them to use their points
Feature Benefit to Chase Rewards
Goal Tracker: By being encourage to accumulate more points, Chase will benefits from additional card usage and credit card fees from spending
Direct Pay with Points: While have a feature encouraging people to save while simultaneous making it easier to use their points, card holder will be encourage to spend more to be able to work toward their goal but can have alternative options to use smaller point values on other purchases
Lessons Learned
Difficulties of restructuring an existing flow: Since Chase has an established and larger user flow, I had to take the time to understand the user flow and the impact my feature would make to the user flow. I had to be thoughtful as to which point of the user flow I inserted my new feature.
Don’t over engineer: For this project, I felt that I need to redo the whole process. As I began to dive into developing the features I realized little changes can make a big difference for the users and enhance the experience.
Next Steps
Interview UX designer at Chase to better understand why the rewards systems is laid out the way it is.
Continue to research how other companies shape the rewards redemption portal.