Kumi Rewards

Background

For the capstone project of my Digital Product Design Graduate Certificate @ Sheridan College, our team was given the opportunity to work with Yelp as an industry partner. We were tasked with developing a digital solution in response to their design challenge over the course of our final semester. Our team was expected to create a high-fidelity prototype while applying Yelp’s guidance and feedback over several months and multiple check-ins. As one of four designers on a small team, I was able to contribute in all aspects of the product but focused mainly on managing the project, research, user testing, and supporting with design.

The Problem

Small businesses make up the backbone of our communities and provide a more personalized, local experience. They often rely on the support of their local community but provide various forms of value in return. For example, in 2020, approximately 68% of the private labour force in Canada was employed by small businesses. Additionally, money spent at a local business is more likely to stay in the community than money spent at a chain store. However, engagement with small businesses is quickly decreasing while competition from corporate chain retailers is increasing and hurting small businesses.

The Solution

Kumi Rewards is a loyalty platform that incentivizes engagement through memberships, rewards and challenges. The app uses both monetary and non-monetary methods of earning points such as making purchases, checking in and attending events. Local businesses can use the app to host their loyalty system without developing their own app while users can keep track of all their memberships in one place.

Process

Understanding the User

Our team decided to focus on post-secondary students in the GTA based on guidance from Yelp and put together a research plan with the goals of understanding what community means to our participants, what enables or prevents engagement, and how digital solutions impact community interactions. We conducted twelve 30 minute interviews asking roughly 18 questions, to help us better understand our user needs and identify a direction for our digital solution.

The interviews provided us with nearly 400 quotes that we sorted and clustered to identify recurring themes such as personal connections, inclusivity, online vs. in-person and emotional incentive. These themed clusters were then used to draw insights and user needs.
In the end, we identified two core insights that would inform the development of our final product:

People want non-monetary ways to support small businesses

The majority of the participants we spoke to expressed wanting to support local businesses but not always being able to. Limitations such as finances restricted users as they felt like spending money was the only way you could show your support which isn’t always feasible.

People need to be provoked to engage

Our research also uncovered that people tend to take on passive roles within their communities unless they are provoked or given a reason to do otherwise. Disagreements, interests or passions can push people out of their comfort zones to engage or participate.

User Personas

Our team developed two user personas to represent the different pain points and goals that we found when interviewing users in the post-secondary demographic.

Ideation

In the context of our core insights and personas, our team brainstormed many ideas and concepts that could provide a solution to Yelp’s central design challenge while tackling our user needs. Ideas such as pre-planned itineraries, contests, giveaways, subscription services and community titles were explored. However, using a crazy 8’s sketching exercise, we found that a loyalty platform provided the perfect balance of online and offline engagement, while providing incentives for users to strengthen their relationships in their communities.

User Flow & Wireframes

Once the concept of our solution was decided on, our group was able to map out the flows & features of our platform to enable the most fluid experience possible for our users. This user flow provided the foundation for the preliminary wireframes of our app.

User Testing

User testing was done in two rounds with distinct purposes for each iteration. Our first round was to validate that the systems in our platform were easy to use and flowed in a logical way. After revisions, our second round of testing was used to confirm that our changes addressed the feedback correctly and tested other features that were left out in the first round.

First Round

Second Round

Final Prototype