United Airlines MilePlay
Mile Play, originally launched in 2019 as a gamification program to entice customers to participate and engage more with the United brand. Since it’s launch, it’s brought in $6 million per year via it’s 3 challenges someone can participate in. The 3 different challenges a customer can participate in is based on targeted marketing campaigns. In these challenges, a customer can earn different rewards such as bonus miles, seat upgrades and free food/drinks. The challenge types are also tailored to a customer type and preference - AKA if you fly with United pretty often you get the better of the games and rewards. United’s marketing team wanted to rebrand the MilePlay feature to the new rebrand look within the app experience as well as brush on some new UX too. Hey now you’re an All Star, get your game on, go play 💫
Role: Senior UX Designer on mobile
Duration Length: 5 months (Feb 2024 - May 2024)
Responsibilities: Partnered with off-shore developers to understand feasibility and lend a guiding hand to new design direction, buddied up with a mid-level designer on web design efforts ( I handled the mobile front), lead a virtual workshop with UX research, marketing team and design management, Helped ID UX functionality issues for a potential 2nd release (pending funding), exchanged friendship bracelets with a principal designer to understand timeline/roadmap for feature.
P.S to all you creeps, you can Venmo $25 to @jennifercingatura for Figma file access 🫡
Previous Design
As the self-proclaimed ‘rebrand queen’ wrestling to establish dominance with the rebrand efforts for mobile (see my case study for that one) proved to be a challenge in its self. I was one of the first designers to go ham with altering an already existing feature in the United app with the new rebrand. I mean no pressure, right?
The previous design was incredibly wordy, nothing sparked interest in playing the game and looked…well dull. We needed to spice up this UI a bit and also make some suggestion on fixing the UX a tad bit with the allocation I was given from the marketing/product teams.
What’s the problem?
How can we update the Mile Play offer type to reflect new branding standards while also creating a more intuitive and accessible experience?
Usability goals: Ensure that users can easily understand and track their progress within the Mile Play challenges, clearly comprehend what actions were required to complete activities, and navigate the interface effortlessly to find necessary information.
Business goals: Increase user engagement with the game by updating the experience with new branding, thereby driving more user participation, generating additional revenue through increased flight bookings, and encouraging users to redeem their reward codes more effectively.
Predicted outcome: 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.
Cooking up the UX and UI
First on the to-do list was to host a virtual workshop to narrow down was was needed for current and future needs. In this workshop there was a discovery of adding new game types, new customer types to target and new game rewards to the MilePlay program. However it wouldn’t be feasible for a version 1 release. Getting a one-time free access pass to a Polaris lounge seemed a bit far fetched for business needs at the moment. 🤷🏻♀️
Next was to reinvent the way users tapped into playing a challenge. This came in the form of re-designing the entry points found on the app home page as well as the offers page. These new cards would host brief details such as day left to play, progress tracking and reward type.
From there, I worked out a way to suggest new minor UX updates on how to play the game. I took things into consideration such as how a user would like to participate completing different tasks within the challenge, what is easy vs complicated, and how does progress tracking even work on the minimum scale for task completion.
Game Challenge Cards
In the initial phase, the focus was on rebranding the Mile Play app in alignment with United’s updated branding. I had a little help from my partner in design crime too because I fried my brain overanalyzing the progress trackers. The color schemes of each of the challenge types would decide the palettes for the other screens throughout the experience of that challenge. Leveraging target animations and the color schemes to draw user’s eye to the offer and bring in more participants.
Stay the Course : Complete the same activity multiple times to earn the big reward. Due to the repetitive nature of Stay the Course challenges, we opted for a numerical approach, allowing customers to easily track how many times they need to complete the activity.
Level Up : Complete activities to win rewards along the way, with a bonus for completing all activities. In the Level Up challenge, users earn miles for each game they complete. To help them visually track their progress, we created a segmented progress line with numerical annotations showing how many miles they've earned so far.
Do It All : Complete all activities to win reward. In the Do It All challenge, users have unique activities but only earn a reward at the end. To represent the activities that are in progress or yet to be completed, we used icons from the design system.
Challenge Pages
After registering for the challenge, customers can complete activities through the offer detail page. Here, they can tap actions that directly guide them to the correct path for each activity. While the offer detail pages share the same template, they vary slightly depending on the challenge type.
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.
Level Up : Divides activities into different block links, allowing users to see how much they can earn for each type.
Do It All : Similar to Level Up, but without numerical annotations, as users don’t earn rewards along the way. Instead, we provided a checklist to help users track their progress to ensure they complete the challenge.
User Testing
After finalizing the mobile designs, came time to partner with the research team to create a testing guide for moderated user sessions. We conducted testing with 9 participants, 3 per game type, using Figma prototypes on their smartphones. After the sessions, we grouped the feedback into themes, identifying 4 key insights.
Got it, chief 🫡: 7/9 participants knew where to go next after initiating registration. They found the progress bars easy to understand, and the actions needed to complete the challenges were clear.
Let’s get physical: The games were perceived more as fitness challenges, similar to Fitbit, rather than traditional games.
FAQs on FAQS: Participants found the FAQ section overly legalistic and challenging to navigate, particularly when trying to find specific answers.
Trippin’ on trips: Participants (heck even me) struggled with understanding what constituted a “trip” within the context of 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 of those actions?
Testing Updates
Updating challenge copy
Updating language to clarify that the offer was more of a longer term challenge than a quick game. For games where a trip was an activity type, we added additional clarity up front so that users understood what constitutes a trip.
Updating FAQ copy
The FAQ section was too focused on legal jargon and lacked the information customers needed most. I mean c’mon who reads those super verbal “I accept the terms and conditions” crap every time you sign up for something? Rather than having information all displayed at once, we broke it up into accordions so that customers can choose what information to reveal. We collaborated with to copy to reframe the FAQ into a conversational tone, making it easier for users to find the information they need, in a way they understand.
Final Design
End results of updating copy to the mobile app experience and with a quick switch of some animation work that applied to all 3 challenge types.
Below is an example of the Level Up flow in the all new MilePlay experience.
Predicted metrics & future opportunities
While I didn’t have a hand in producing the web version (all credit goes to my partner in design crime, TY), I did work to understand some metrics that went into formulating the succession of the new launch of MilePlay.
The Mile Play rebrand released in September 2024, with the following metrics:
Who are you people?!: With a more approachable design, we aim to attract new users to Mile Play.
Flying high with increased bookings: We anticipate a rise in flight bookings that contribute to user challenges. New challenge - fly the Mile High Club for 2,000 points might really entice some folks.
Decode this: Enhanced clarity around reward codes should lead to increased usage, encouraging users to participate in more Mile Play challenges.
Future Opportunities
Ok, so we couldn’t ‘Do It All’ in one go for this version 1 effort. But the future holds possibilities for making things better. That’s what product design is, right?
We’re getting personal: Currently, Mile Play activities are marked as completed once a customer finishes a challenge. While this interaction is functional, providing customers with additional details, such as trip data for completed or pending flight activities, could enhance clarity and reduce confusion about qualifying trips. I mean I was confused too the entire time on that latter part…
Mile Pool Integration: Integrating Mile Pool with Mile Play challenges could allow users to compete or collaborate with friends, potentially attracting new audiences who have been hesitant to participate in the past.
Big W’s for you, Big L’s for everyone else : Introducing a leaderboard could foster a competitive environment, similar to Duolingo, motivating users to engage more frequently. Everyone loves to brag in these ‘instant gratification’ days.