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Navigating the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal is difficult and can be confusing to figure out how to redeem your points. Users would like to use their points before they expire, but find themselves feeling overwhelmed by all the features and options.
Redesign the rewards portal to minimize confusion and create more seamless navigation between pages.
Users find themselves avoiding Chase's Ultimate Rewards portal because the interface is overwhelming. This leads to points expiring and users opting to use other banking platforms.
Traveling navigation bar allows users simple access to every page on the rewards portal at any given amount of time.
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Redesign portal to make it easier for users to navigate and redeem points.
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Competitors provide various rewards like travel and cash back. Chase's website can be overwhelming, but others vary in simplicity. Online banking platforms show points or cash back clearly, yet the mobile app directs users to a website due to information density. Despite a straightforward initial rewards portal, additional menus offer different paths to explore.
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Interviews were conducted simultaneously with the usability of the original Chase Ultimate Rewards. I had recreated the original Chase pages and had instructed participants to navigate the screens to book a flight with their rewards.
This approach allows me to gain insights on the original design, as well as empathize with users throughout the process.
The interview responses gave me lots of helpful ideas and guiding questions. These insights lead me in thinking about ways to improve and innovate based on what users shared about their experiences.
Different user personas for various Chase credit card holders. Demographics represent where they are in life and behaviors show what these users typically spend on and what's prioritized when they do. By creating these identities, I was able to outline different types of wants and frustrations based on different type of credit card users who hope to have a better experience redeeming their accrued points for rewards.
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For the redesigned sitemap, I wanted it to be less overwhelming, since users mentioned the mass amount of options being a source of confusion. I condensed the information architecture by half due to a lot of the information being repetitive. These options were grouped under relevant tabs.
When viewing rewards history, users are ideally able to quickly find their current activity as well as view their past history with point transactions.
For booking a flight, the pages and actions are condensed to be less overwhelming. Required fields are grouped into relevant areas, rather than a new page for each section.
‍These task flows also represent easier navigation between different parts of the site. Users are able to access any part of the rewards portal from a singular menu.
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The original Chase Rewards site was tough to navigate, with confusing hierarchy and unfriendly buttons that left users feeling overwhelmed and frustrated.
For the redesign, I enhanced the visual appeal by adding clickable icons and creating a more minimal, but warm aesthetic. Additionally, I implemented a travelling navigation bar that stays accessible across all pages, allowing users to easily navigate to any section from anywhere on the site.
Users completed a usability test in-person with a prototype of the redesign. The audience tested were Chase cardholders, each instructed to complete 4 tasks. These users then answered follow up questions to describe their user experience.
I then organized the responses into categories: identifying aspects that worked well, pinpointing areas that require modification, addressing questions, and exploring new ideas. Doing so, made it more clear which areas needed to improve and be revised.
After the feedback received from the usability test, I decided to iterate my wireframes to produce a better prototype.
The main area of confusion is the required fields under the traveler info section. Users would attempt to move onto the next step before filling out their information, hence I created an error that immediately scrolls to unfilled required fields. This ensures the user is aware of what is missing before moving on to complete purchase. In addition, I updated the prototype to ensure the side navigation bar and all it’s buttons are accessible throughout the portal.
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Redesigning the Chase rewards portal was a new project that I enjoyed putting my time into. Personally, I have a hard time navigating the portal and throughout my research and usability tests, I saw other people run into the same or similar pain points.
For this project I focused solely on reward activity and travel, as those are the most popular features of the portal. I was skeptical changing some of the visual aspects because I didn’t want to stray too far from Chase’s image. Overall, comparing the original design to my redesign, the average task completion time was faster by ~ 1 minute. This is a major difference and shows that my redesign improved the user’s experience with the rewards portal.
If I had more time, I would’ve loved to explore other parts of the site and redesign other features, such as combining points or their FAQ.
