MilePlay

As the self-proclaimed ‘rebrand queen’ wrestling to establish dominance with the rebrand efforts for mobile proved to be a challenge in its self. I was one of the first designers to go home with altering an already existing feature in the United app with the new rebrand. I mean no pressure, right?

Design was riddled with lengthy corporate jargon language, which caused confusion by 52% of customers.

33% of customers said they would give up the challenge based on forgetting they started them or the challenges were too hard to complete.

Customers loved incentives that would drive them to keep going with the challenges. They liked challenges that offered flight discounts or similar discounts on other flight reward platforms (Ex: Chase Travel)

How can the MilePlay feature reflect new branding standard while also creating a more intuitive brand loyalty and accessible experience?

Ensure that users can easily understand and track their progress within the MilePlay challenges, clearly comprehend what actions were required to complete activities and navigation the interface effortlessly to find necessary information.

Increase user engagement with the game by updating the experience with new branding, encourage users to redeem their reward codes more effectively and introduce new challenge types for customers to complete. If you ask me the Wade Bogg’s challenge a la It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia would’ve been a hit.

By applying the rebrand, more customers would be enticed to interact with the United brand. With upgrades to both the UI and UX, the game challenges customers would have a better chance at completing the challenges, thus racking up moment and start to play for bigger rewards.

Before diving into the design process, the team began with a virtual Figjam workshop to assess current and future needs for MilePlay. Here’s some of those ideas ID’d in the workshop. This was where I also brought in some examples of apps/companies that had successful reward programs for their users.

New game types based on user preferences to reach newer audiences.

New rewards types like free Polaris lounge access, were considered cool but deemed out of scope for the initial release.

Stylize the progress bars to match the game types.

Target new users to the United brand by offering low stakes challenges.

The process kicked off with a virtual FigJam workshop to assess current and future needs for MilePlay, surfacing ideas like new game types based on user preferences, stylized progress bars matched to each game type, and new reward types like Polaris lounge access — all cool, some out of scope.

From there, the team compiled a UX flowchart mapping how MilePlay works and how users earn rewards, then shifted focus to redesigning challenge entry points across the app home and offers page, surfacing key info like time remaining, progress, and rewards through updated cards. UX improvements were also proposed to simplify gameplay and make task participation and progress tracking more intuitive.

UX Flow Chart

Before starting design work, I mapped out how each game flows to certain pages within the app experience on the mobile website of United.

Challenge — Stay the Course

Features a single activity card, designed to make it clear to users that they only need to complete one type of activity

Challenge — Level Up

Divides activities into different block links, allowing users to see how much they can earn for each type.

Challenge — Do It All

Similar to Level Up, but without the numerical annotations since rewards aren’t issued mid-challenge. Instead, we implemented a clean checklist to help users track their journey and ensure they cross the finish line

User testing was done using a moderated session on usertesting.com with 9 participants

7/9 participants found the progress bars easy to understand and the actions needed to complete the challenges were clear.

The games were perceived more as fitness challenges, similar to Fitbit, rather than traditional gamification.

Participants still found the FAQ section overly legalistic and challenging to navigate, particularly when trying to find specific answers.

Participants struggled with understanding what constituted a ‘trip’ within the challenges. do I book the trip and get my points or do I book and take the trip then get my points after I do both actions?

MilePlay released in September 2024 on the United Airlines app and website. Below are the outcomes that were predicted.

With a more approachable design, the design aimed to attract new users to the challenges and brand loyalty.

Anticipated a rise in flight bookings that contributed to user challenges especially with Stay the Course as the most common/popular revenue generation challenge.

Enhanced clarity around reward codes leading to increased usage, encouraging users to participate in more MilePlay challenges.

Thoughts from the workshop brought up a few future feature enhancements. Allowing users to combine miles earned through MilePlay to transfer to other MileagePlus members. Introducing a leaderboard to motivate users to engage more frequently with the challenges were another idea brought up.

Making flights tolerable from crying kids, Karen’s and turbulence by completing onboard drinking challenges was my idea but I got told my idea was too damn good to use.