The Points Guy - Travel Rewards App
How might we enable users to earn more rewards points on their purchases and redeem their points for reaching travel goals.
Project Goal
The Points Guy has always been a resource for users to learn the ins and outs of credit card rewards, and how to use earned points and redeem them for the best trade in value.
As the Director of UX, I facilitated several cross-functional Design Sprints across Product/Tech/Design across over the span of a few months. Those design sprints enabled us to first think about the overall concept of bringing this strategy into tool form, then subsequent sprints to think through the interaction of each key section.
Complexity
There were several factors that added to the complexity of creating a solution for this workflow.
Security
Creating a solution that allowed users to connect their banking and credit cards, through an easy and secure method was incredibly important to our team. We looked in to a number of options for secure authentication methods and landed on a solution utilizing Plaid for banking and credit connections, and TransUnion reporting data for account balances and credit score data.
Categorizing spending data
Recommending the best card to use for purchases can be tricky. Card benefits change frequently for each card, and depend on the exact date of the card being opened. Tracking this information accurately and consistently over time is very challenging. Similarly, credit card issuers provide differing levels of categorization of spend, and with differing levels of accuracy. We needed to find a way to help users keep track of which card to use when, and to track progress towards welcome offers, while acknowledging certain limitations in the data available to us.
Redeeming points
One of the top pain points communicated to us during our user research, from points and miles newbies to TPG experts, was wanting to know if what they were redeeming their points for was actually a good deal. In fact, 75% of airline miles go unused each year, largely due to users being afraid to cash them in for a "bad deal." The points needed to travel vary greatly depending on airline, location, and dates, so we needed to find a way to accurately set target goals for users to earn towards future trips and a create a sense of confidence that when a user is ready to cash in, that they understand whether it's worth it or not.
We leveraged Design Sprint methodology to work through the complexity of The Points Guy app experience.
We held a series of sprints over a couple of months to allow the team to focus in on specific problems each time.
Earning and Burning
Our app solution was anchored in the two key pieces of the Points puzzle: "earning" – accumulating valuable rewards program points, and "burning" – cashing in those points for airline tickets or hotel stays.
The "earning" features include a digital wallet that could connect your personal credit cards, recommend the best card to use in real time, and remind you when points are going to expire or an annual fee is coming up. It also includes the ability to set specific travel goals and track point accumulation progress towards that goal.
The "burning" features included the ability to easily find the points totals needed to travel to specific locations, based on airline and cabin selection, as well as the ability to browse possible locations based on points needed to get there for travelers that have yet to set a destination.
One brand tenant that we held sacred during our solutioning is the aspirational nature of The Points Guy brand. The brand has always been about making travel dreams a reality – for some users, that may mean using point to fly first class to Tahiti, for others that may mean finally feeling confident enough to redeem points to a trip to visit family across the country. We wanted to make sure the app encouraged users to dream big, become more educated about points & miles, and unlock their travel goals.
Launchable Product
The Points Guy app launched in 2021 (after I had left the organization) due to a fantastic team that continued to push through organizational challenges to get the app live. I am so excited to see the features we spent so much time working on come to fruition, and wish the team continued success.
Learn more about the TPG app.
