UCount Rewards
Project Scope:
Client: UCount Rewards Program
Role: UX Designer (part of a team of two UX Designers)
Team: Design Lead, two UX Designers (including myself), Senior UI Designer, Development Team, SME/Project Manager
Deliverables: Personas, User Flows, Wireframes, High-Fidelity Mockups, Usability Test Reports
Platform: Web & Mobile (responsive design)
Key Goals:
Improve ease of use and navigation.
Align with the parent company’s branding (Standard Bank).
Clarify the rewards structure and benefits for users.
Increase member engagement.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
The UCount rewards platform presented several challenges:
User Confusion: Many users did not understand how the rewards program worked, nor did they fully grasp the benefits available to them.
Content Overload: The platform suffered from a lack of structure, with too much information presented in an overwhelming and unorganized way.
Brand Alignment: The redesign needed to align with Standard Bank's branding, incorporating subtle variations while preserving UCount’s distinct identity.
RESEARCH PHASE
Stakeholder Interviews
We conducted interviews with key business stakeholders to understand their objectives and ensure alignment. The goal was to see if the business stakeholders were on the same page regarding the issues they faced and their vision for the redesign.
Through stakeholder interviews we are able to:
●Understand the mental and conceptual model of business stakeholders to understand their motivations and business context.
●Identify themes and patterns from stakeholders to find standardised solutions for similar problems.
The insights gained helped us to ensure that the final product met both user and business needs.
UX Audit/Expert Review
We conducted a thorough UX audit/expert review of the existing platform to evaluate its usability from a design perspective. This included identifying heuristic issues related to usability principles such as consistency, feedback, and clarity.
Findings from UX Audit:
The reward navigation was inconsistent and did not guide users smoothly through the rewards process.
Content was overwhelming and outdated, with no clear information hierarchy.
The visual design felt outdated, which weakened the trust in the brand and the platform.
Competitor Analysis
We performed a competitor analysis from a UX perspective to identify best practices and design patterns in other rewards programs. This helped us benchmark against similar platforms and identify areas where UCount could differentiate itself, especially in terms of ease of use, clarity, and user engagement.
Site and Content Audit
The UX content audit aims to give a better understanding of the quantity of content provided as well as the site structure.
This also assists in making sure we don’t take away vital content from the users when going into the detailed designs phase.
DESIGN & VALIDATION APPROACH
Personas & Customer Journeys
The purpose of assumptive personas is to understand our users before we can design for users.
The purpose of scenarios and customer journeys are to visually illustrate highlights and pain points users experience while performing their tasks.
Customer journeys allow us to get a sense of customers’ motivations, goals and needs and from that we can understand and explore opportunities for improvement
Card Sorting and usability testing 1
The purpose of card sorting and usability testing is to see how users understand the information architecture (IA), naming convention used in the IA and what they would expect to find when navigating through the IA.
Through card sorting and user testing we were able to understand how users understand the naming conventions used and journeys they expected to take to complete given tasks.
Sketches & Page Templates
We drew up some sketches for the structural design/page templates. Once the team was happy with this, we were able to build medium-fidelity wireframes, as we had some pre-existing components from the parent company.
We also had to build/create new components, in conjunction with the development team, in order to cater to the built out user experience
Detailed Designs & Usability testing 2
The purpose of this usability testing was to see how users understand the journey they needed to follow on the designed page templates, navigation container and 3 visually treated home pages.
It was also an opportunity for the users to rate the page templates to understand if they are able to find the information they need to complete a given task.
With detailed design we took into account feedback from users as well as stakeholder feedback from all sessions to complete the detailed design for both the personal and business journeys.
The final design incorporated :
a clean, modern aesthetic with an improved navigation system that made it easier for users to find rewards and understand the program.
Reward filters which allowed users to quickly sort and discover relevant options.
Progressive disclosure elements were added to simplify the presentation of complex information without overwhelming users.
This testing on page templates and visually treated screens had an overall success rate of 95% of tasks performed by users.
REFLECTION & LESSONS LEARNED
What Worked:
The UX audit, competitor analysis, and first usability test helped uncover critical pain points early, allowing for targeted design improvements.
Usability testing validated our design decisions and helped us iterate based on real user feedback.
Collaborating closely with the internal development team and marketing ensured a smoother, more efficient build process.
Successfully aligned the UI with Standard Bank’s brand while giving UCount its own distinct identity.
Challenges faced:
Ensuring that users clearly understood the rewards program required multiple iterations on the content structure.
Balancing business needs with user-centric design remained a constant challenge throughout the process.