League of Big Basket Daily | UX Case Study on Loyalty Programs
Brought to you by the DREAM TEAM
In this gamified article I shall be recapping how my comrades and I built an engaging experience for Big Basket Daily in a 48 hour long competitive war zone🤖
WELCOME ABOARD
Greetings dear players.
As you retrace the journey embarked by the DREAM TEAM, keep these instructions in mind:
- This was a multi-player game.
- While there are references to real life, the steps taken must not be considered as textbook rules.
- Follow me on instagram and LinkedIn for more creative content
- Good Luck!
CHOOSE YOUR AVATAR
Teams were formed consisting of fighters with various powers and the following is the DREAM TEAM:
INITIATION
The Dream Team was formed with six strangers meeting at 11pm on a Friday evening. Despite the nerves, our little army was ready to cross every hurdle and emerge as champions in the span of 48 hours.
THE MISSION
Acquiring our desired mission was no easy feat in itself. Multiple troops had to battle it out LIVE on YouTube where the wise sorcerer UX Anudeep would umpire the combats.
After a heated debate, here was our mission for the weekend:
Find opportunity as a UX Designer to introduce a loyalty program into Big Basket Daily thereby impacting Average Order Value primarily and also impacting retention.
THE TRAILER
Let me cut to the chase for you impatient players out there. Here’s the final solution with the reasons for implementation. Do not worry, there is a detailed explanation up ahead as well.
THE PROCESS
Now that the final solution is out of the way, let’s dive into this supernatural realm and understand the steps taken by the dream team at each of the multiple levels.
LEVEL — 1 : PLAN OF ACTION
⏳ Time left: 45 hours
We made sure that throughout the fight all the soldiers were involved but we distributed our time and responsibilities to ensure we completed our operation within the deadline:)
It is important to note that there were delays in our plan towards the 2nd half of the journey since we spent time to understand the exact ways of implementation of the solution ideas we had (explained later).
We immediately started jotting down our lines of attack; which would be to first understand our problem statement and plan what we were attempting to uncover at the next stages.
- Understand what are loyalty programs and how they work
- Understand existing models and types
- How does Loyalty programs impact AOV
- Explore competitors (broad and specific to grocery)
- Understand user behaviour
LEVEL — 2 : INVESTIGATION🔎
⏳ Time left: 44 hours
We dove deep into the ocean of information: Google. Each of us divided and collected basic data until we felt a certain level of understanding.
💡Just knowing how these concepts worked in theory wasn’t enough, we needed practical exposure. But we weren’t ready to experiment yet. So, we decided to spy on our competitors to see what was and wasn’t working for them.
To have a better understanding we chose to go through both direct (online grocery apps) and indirect competitors (from Slice to even Nykaa).
💡How is Slice even connected to Big Basket Daily?😂
It isn’t necessary that the solution (loyalty or reward system) we are trying to build exists in an app from the same domain. Therefore we explored multiple apps and in total we went through around 10 apps.
In the end we decided to focus on 3 finally: Flipkart Groceries, Swiggy Instamart and Dunzo Daily.
LEVEL — 3 : INTERROGATION
⏳ Time left: 36 hours
Fellow player, you may think at this point: Don’t you have enough information to go and start designing? Why waste time when you’re constrained by it anyway?
- Validate assumptions made before research
- Understand triggers/motivators of users
- Understand user behaviour — wrt subscription model, rewards and grocery delivery apps
Okay, we need to talk to users. But you can’t just ‘phone a friend’ 😂 We defined our users. Why?
💡 To make sure we were creating solutions for real time grocery app users without any bias involved in the interview. Also, it would help us gain multiple perspectives.
We framed a base line of areas that we wanted to focus on while talking to the users. This questionnaire went through multiple iterations. These questions weren’t directly followed during the interviews, the situation was analyzed and improvisation took place.
To talk to users within a short notice, we reached out to people we didn’t know that well and made another team member interview them. We made used to ask about their past experiences to get more realistic replies and kept recordings of the conversations (with their permission of course).
- Elizabeth interviewed Debby’s sister
- Ajitesh texted a community and ended up interviewing a neighbour he had never spoken to.
- Elizabeth was able to recruit 3 users each interviewed by Debby, Ajitesh and Me.
We realized there are multiple types of users:
- planned — they decided what they wanted to order in advance
- on demand — they order based on current needs
- subscribed — they want certain products to be delivered at specific intervals
➡ While 4 of us were involved in the interrogation, the 2 UI Masters of the crew made sure to rest and start prepping for the design. They found the design system of Big Basket Daily and began making a few of the basic components.
LEVEL — 4 : UNSCRAMBLE
⏳ Time left: 28 hours
At this point the warriors had collected heaps of data but were unsure of how they fit into the project.
So, we tried grouping our data to understand the types of insights we received (keeping in mind the intention to build a reward system):
- the benefits of a grocery delivery app
- the pain points
- the subscription aspect
LEVEL — 5 : THE CRITIQUE
⏳ Time left: 26 hours
We were not at all ready as the mid-review rolled in. We had insights but just too much information to make sense of. We were going towards the right direction but we just didn’t know where.
Half an hour before the presentation it was decided that I would be giving the presentation live on YouTube🙈
I wasn’t really nervous since I knew I just had to narrate the status of our project (so I didn’t prepare anything🙃). But since we didn’t have much clarity of our further steps; it was reflected in the presentation.
The presentation went well (considering the zero preparation) and we did get feedback that got us back to reality (constraints — cannot solve for all users) and helped us focus on what was important and what was achievable.
LEVEL — 6 : REGROUP
⏳ Time left: 24 hours
Half way through the design hackathon we could feel our safe zone shrinking and we weren’t sure of our goal. We decided to take the feedback received to heart and had multiple discussions to help us focus onto what mattered.
💎Achievement unlocked: CLARITY
We decided to focus on Tier 1 users having a disposable income and gamify the app only to the extent where it helps the users with ordering groceries and in turn help us increase the average order value.
LEVEL — 7 : WELL…HOW?
⏳ Time left: 22 hours
We have an idea of where we are headed but to move towards ideating how our loyalty program would be implemented, we asked questions to pin point the areas we want to tackle (problems) and came up with ideas for each one of them.
How did we come up with ideas?
- A lot of inspiration (from competitor research) — since we didn’t want the idea to be foreign — Jakob’s law
- A lot of scoping down to understand the core of our problem statement — to increase AOV — not just simply gamify
- We focused on whom we were building this feature for — regular users of BB Daily from Tier 1 cities
Out of all the various ideas and methods of implementation we decided on what flows to focus on:
- cart flow
- subscription flow
To demonstrate:
- a tracker with the coins
- The BB coin program page
- the process of subscription and its impact on the loyalty program
LEVEL — 8 : THE CONFLICT
⏳ Time left: 20 hours
We had intended to start making rough sketches (wireframes) but ended up having lots of discussions (and fights🤭) to understand the exact ways to implement the ideas formed at the previous level.
While working with an army of talented and opinionated individuals, disputes were bound to occur. We were confused whether to keep a paid option on the app.
💎Achievement unlocked: CONFUSION UNBLOCKED
LEVEL — 9 : SCHEMING
⏳ Time left: 18 hours
After agreeing to disagree and attaining coherence; we concluded to implement 4 main solutions (which were mentioned above with clear reasonings from our research):
- Coin based system — BB coins
- Task based system — earn to burn by completing tasks
- Subscription model — earn by subscribing
- Tier based system — Gold and Platinum
Now we needed to understand how these ideas would look on screens. So, we went ahead with roughly sketching them out.
Next, we took the layouts to a digital medium. While our intention is to create a new feature we didn’t hesitate to take inspiration. We used elements of the existing BB Daily app and competitor apps.
LEVEL — 10 : GEAR UP🏹
⏳ Time left: 15 hours
Now it was time to dress up the mannequins we created and load the weapons for the UI Masters to take the lead. The BB Daily design system was used for the basic layout and many components were designed from scratch.
During the challenge, 2 of our warriors designed most of it. The remaining of us made sure to get a deep understanding and recreate the elements to leave no stone unturned. I was a part of the card making process in the course of the hackathon and I learnt a lot within that small task.
We created a cart flow depicting how a tracker can motivate the user to add more to their cart increasing their total (Average Order Value) and help them earn BB coins.
Since many users described using subscription for groceries we found it essential to gamify the subscription flow that would benefit the users and the business (retention).
LEVEL — 11 : THE TRIAL
⏳ Time left: 3 hours
It was time to get our pilot version tested. As attached we were to our solutions, we kept an open mind to welcome iterations.
Ajitesh and Elizabeth did a quick usability testing just before our submission. They narrated what happened and I made a quick note of the important points. They displayed the prototype via zoom and allowed the user to Think Out Loud over each screen and ask them what they would click for a particular task.
1st task — Add an item to cart & make a purchase
2nd task — check out where the coins are — loyalty prog page
3rd task — subscription flow
What we wanted to understand:
- Are they able to understand the concept of BB coins?
- Are they users still able to use BB Daily like they usually would?
- Are they hesitant or confused before clicking something?
Therefore we decided to make changes to the design based on the feedback. These changes may seem small but they were needed to avoid confusion among users.
LEVEL — 12 : THE FINAL BATTLE
⏳ Time left: 1 hour
The finish line was just around the corner; all that was left was a video explaining our solution that we had to present in the final review.
With the little time that was left; 3 of us immediately screen-recorded our explanation and then Sushank edited the video to make the submission just in time for the review. But it definitely was a close call😅
All our doubts wore away when we left our Dumbledore UX Anudeep speechless. All the judges were impressed with what we were able to achieve in the less amount of time we had.
✅ KEY LEARNINGS
Despite getting barely 5 hours of sleep, this had to be one of the best weekends of my life. Learnt a lot of skills in such less time with strangers:
- We learnt that we cannot solve for everyone
- We learnt the importance of scoping down in the limited time we had
- We learnt that discussions and healthy conflicts can lead to clarity
- We learnt that not everything will go as per plan and therefore we need to adjust to the constraints
There were times in between when few of our comrades had to drop down, but we never gave up. What seemed impossible in the beginning ended up being just the tip of our potential😎
We did come across a few challenges in our current design:
What we wanted to also do but were unable to:
- create a wallet page
- conversion implementation
- Multiple ways to buy a product — we only made the cart page
Other ideas:
- reward on 30 days subscription
- streak system, on opening the app continuously
- scratch system
- add 5 items worth any amount
UX Case Study by Sanjana Somanath Sannamari
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