Designing a loyalty reward experience
Designed the end-to-end UX/UI for Forum Mall's loyalty rewards experience, from user research and concept development to deployment. By making rewads easier to discover and redeem, the experience encouraged repeat visits, increased customer engagement, and helped strengthen long-term shopper loyalty.
Challenge
As a newly launched mall, Forum Mall needed a digital experience that would encourage repeat visits and increase customer engagement. One of the biggest challenges was creating a seamless rewards journey despite stores using different POS systems, making it difficult to generate a consistent, unique code on every bill for reward redemption. The solution also had to be intuitive for shoppers while remaining easy for retailers and mall administrators to adopt.
My Role
Led the end-to-end UX/UI design process, from user research and wireframing to high-fidelity designs, interactive prototypes, and developer handoff. Collaborated closely with developers and mall operations teams through regular meetings to translate business goals into an intuitive and scalable loyalty experience, while supporting the product through deployment.
Discovery & Insights
Understanding the Problem
Forum Mall was a newly launched shopping destination looking to build customer loyalty and encourage repeat visits. The goal was to create a rewards experience that felt effortless for shoppers while fitting into the existing workflows of hundreds of retail stores. Through regular meetings with the mall operations team and developers, we gained a clear understanding of both the customer journey and the operational challenges behind it.
Competitive analysis
Since there were no direct competitors, I studied loyalty apps from other shopping malls, including Lulu Mall and Nesto's Inaam. The focus was on understanding how each platform handled member onboarding, bill verification, reward collection, and redemption. These insights helped identify familiar user patterns, common pain points, and opportunities to create a simpler and more engaging loyalty experience for Forum Mall.
Key Design Challenges
After mapping the customer journey and understanding how stores operated, a few key challenges became clear:
Simple reward experience: The loyalty journey had to be easy to understand for first-time users.
Driving repeat visits: The program needed to give customers meaningful reasons to return to the mall.
Scalable across retailers: The solution had to work for every store without requiring changes to existing POS systems.
Different POS systems: Stores used different billing software, making a standardized bill verification method difficult.
Wireframing
Using the insights gathered during the discovery phase, I translated the requirements into low-fidelity wireframes to define the overall user flow and information architecture. The wireframes focused on simplifying the loyalty journey, from bill submission to reward redemption, while addressing the operational constraints identified earlier. After presenting the concepts to stakeholders, the designs went through two rounds of iterations based on business feedback before moving into high-fidelity UI design.
Visual Design
Building on the approved wireframes, I developed the high-fidelity interface with a strong focus on clarity, consistency, and ease of use. The color palette and typography were derived from Forum Mall's brand identity to create a familiar and cohesive experience across the app. Flat illustrations were incorporated throughout the interface to make the experience more approachable while reinforcing the visual identity. Once the screens were finalized, I created an interactive prototype to validate the complete user journey and demonstrate key flows to stakeholders before development.
Bill Verification
With every store using a different POS system, a common QR code or unique bill identifier wasn't practical. Instead, customers could upload their purchase receipts, which were automatically verified using a machine learning model before loyalty points were credited. This created a seamless experience without disrupting existing retailer workflows.
Rewards & Redemption
Once a bill was verified, loyalty points were automatically added to the customer's account. Users could then browse the rewards section and redeem their points for gift cards from participating brands. A tier-based rewards system was also explored during the design process, with plans to introduce membership tiers and a physical loyalty card in a future release.
Handoff
Once the designs were finalized, I prepared a comprehensive design system and developer handoff, including reusable components, design specifications, and interaction details to ensure consistency throughout the product. The Android application was built in Android Studio, and I worked closely with the developers throughout implementation to review screens, clarify design decisions, and verify that the final product matched the intended user experience before launch.
Outcome
The loyalty app was successfully launched on the Play Store, reaching nearly 5,000 downloads and encouraging more shoppers to participate in Forum Mall's loyalty program. The platform became a central touchpoint for customer engagement, making it easier to earn and redeem rewards while driving repeat visits. As the product evolved, additional features such as rooftop booking were introduced, further expanding the app beyond loyalty and creating a more connected mall experience.