Understanding SPC's competitors
I used a competitive analysis to evaluate SPC’s features against their free direct and indirect competitors to see what was missing. All apps offer coupons of some sort, but StudentBeans and UNiDays target university students, and Rakuten has an older demographic of adults.
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Rakuten is proof that SPC cannot compete with stronger couponing apps dedicated to “Savers” because of coupon stacking and cash-back. Rather, SPC makes most income from a yearly subscription fee, making membership renewal the greatest goal of the app. To do this, I identified 2 areas of improvement that I sought to address:
How might we enable users to find and use high value deals more easily?
How might we personalize the SPC experience to be more accessible?
SPC's user base wasn't just unsatisfied with app value: 80% of interviewees said they were unable to make informed decisions without engaging image visualization. Furthermore, users also said the homepage seemed irrelevant and randomly generated, decreasing trust. While focusing on "go with the flow users," I asked interviewees why SPC wasn’t satisfying them, and what it could do to retain them:
As I was only considering features with a fairly equal engineering cost, I wanted to optimize value for a user. Thus, I reorganized my affinity map into a Red Route analysis to decide what should be prioritized:
develop: Ideating, prototyping, and testing the solution
I hypothesized that SPC app usage and multi-year retention could be improved through features based around personalization for hesitant users that don’t actively seek deals. Users responded sometimes or rarely when asked how often they would explore new deals, frequently using the homepage and to a lesser extent, search. The satisficing habit of humans leads to a preference for optimally placed computer generated recommendations over one’s own research. An example where this is successful is Netflix, where the “because you watched” algorithm gives users recommendations based on similar users, and movie content. SPC can implement this on a simpler level, giving users relevant deals with minimal effort on their part.
For the issue of value and engagement, I did secondary research to find a company that heavily used coupons: McDonalds. They were able to bolster app use through extrinsic motivation, and offered free fries with a purchase for 24 hours (if the Raptors scored 12 three-point shots). SPC could similarly use an inconsistent schedule to incentivize users to login more frequently and turn on notifications. Their 24 hour deal would involve partnering with different companies to provide an SPC-only deal. While the concept somewhat varies from McDonalds, the feature’s underlying value is in creating FOMO and adding a memorable signature feature.
A variable reward like this can work with SPC’s user flow to form an ideal medium for the HOOK model; potentially offering users a reason to remember the app and use it consistently. The more trust that SPC cultivates with their products, the more time and energy users will invest— eventually forming a habit:
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With SPC’s current coupon presentation, one day deals wouldn’t be possible (see initial card 0). Because a discount like this greatly lowers company profit margin and requires planning, their losses need to be subsidized by impressions and gains in brand awareness. When I observed users on the app, I found the current SPC featured slot had a low ROI on conversions for companies (sorry Samsung). As a result, I would assume that many companies would be hesitant to invest in a featured slot. Keeping a company’s advertising goals in mind, I redesigned the initial card to emphasize the quality of the product.
May the most user-friendly card win, and may the odds ever be in your favour
To summarize my testing insights, I found the human interface card was best because users rated the aesthetics of the product highest, and strategic text placement meant users actually read the deal instead of scrolling past it (employing the natural F-shaped reading pattern).
“Wait, I didn’t know that existed?”
“Deals near you” is a great feature that saves searching time and solves the pain point of accessibility. However, it has a very small hitbox and is placed inconveniently, creating access issues (the recommended minimum hitbox on IOS is 44px). Because many interviewees were unaware or confused by the feature, I designed a component that would prompt users for location permissions on the homepage. Once accepted, the user would then be redirected to nearby deals. The next time they visit the app, a new local deals preview would be enabled. Alas, no matter the popup’s design, users stated that they would ignore it because it looks like an ad. A bit of trickery was employed in the final design, allowing users to enable the feature by clicking on a preview that appeared broken.
When I initially used ethnography, I noticed the problem of aimless scrolling. Most SPC content on the homepage share the same undifferentiated design. As the deal preview is also cut off, People tended to look at the logo of the brand, and kept scrolling if it didn’t interest them. I wanted to raise engagement and found that the existing circular shopping categories strongly mimicked Instagram stories. Because identical sections with the same redirect targets are present in the app’s search (not to mention in a more appealing way), I moved the original down to maintain a secondary entry point, and added the story feature. When users focused on a single deal at a time with a clear CTA, they would be more likely to click in a deal; raising conversions. I found that all tested users were immediately aware of the gestures for this feature, showing how powerful pre-existing patterns are (Jakob’s Law of Internet UX).
before: Evaluating the old "membership" design
To improve the personalization and quality aspect of SPC, I revisited the existing “Membership” page and noted a few things that stood out to me:
after: the new "card" design
Based on my critique, I made some UX changes to the screens themselves, like clarifying instructions to save reading time, adding a secondary color to make links more clickable, segmented navigation that prefaced the next screen, and an upload button for those with a pre-existing photo of their ID.
To reduce friction, I renamed the page “SPC Card” and incorporated personalization to appeal to Gen Z. I decided on using the vertical card iteration because the credit card below would cause confusion amidst the prominence of online pay. When I interviewed several students and asked them how they felt about the card, they mentioned it felt “exclusive” like a “concert ticket;” achieving my goal to elevate the experience quality.
Putting it all together: the final homepage designs
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SPC has improved considerably from when I last used it, however, I can’t justify the quality of its app considering it has over 1 million users. With this being a personal design sprint, I didn’t significantly consider any technical or implementation constraints. In real life, I recognize things are much more complex. SPC might not have a full time design or dev team, however, I really really hope they at least fix their search engine so I can find St. Louis Bar and Grill by typing “st louis.”
Takeaways
painkillers over vitamins
When looking at time and engineering constraints through something like a Kano Matrix, impact and effort are super important. I tried to apply this mindset to new features by prioritizing critical solutions over nice-to-have features like embedded menus. This being said, I didn't have the time to prototype edge cases like no more stories or no results for search.
Consider the bigger picture
How does a feature apply the design system and build off build off of existing features or data? How does a feature function in the context of the app? I always try to situate my work in the context of a business and my brief, in this case, being realistic about an established app was necessary. I tried to find a balance between leveraging existing work and not letting it constrain the overall design.
Design sprints are hard
Being the designer, facilitator, and tester, I admit I was frustrated and disheartened at times. I’m someone who always makes at least 4 different iterations of each feature, and doesn’t move on until my UI is exactly how I envision it. Making paper prototypes, imperfect crazy 8s, and rough storyboards was odd, but wholly necessary. I initially hated myself for setting a 3 day deadline, but reflect back on it as a worthwhile challenge that I will continue in the future.
