Share or Donate

Share with friends or donate to a charity – new ways to use Starbucks Stars before they expire.

3 mobile screens showing feature add to Starbucks app

Context

Starbucks is a popular coffeehouse giant world-wide. However, many customer still struggle to accumulate enough Stars and become frustrated when their Stars suddenly disappear due to expiration dates. I was tasked to address these pain point by adding new features onto the existing Starbucks app.

Timeframe

6 weeks (100 hours)

Role

Solo student project

Mentor: Pelumi A.

Project type

Feature add to an existing mobile app, concept

Tools

Figma, Google forms, Whimsical, Zoom

Problem to solve

How might we improve the Starbucks rewards program to reduce wasted Stars due to expiration dates?

Solution preview

Create a transparent notification system for expiring Stars and offer new ways to utilize Stars – share with friends & family or donate to a charity.

Jump to final design ↓View Figma prototype

Problem discovery

People perceive something they lose as a bigger deal than something equivalent they gain.¹

Despite the easy-to-use Starbucks app that seamlessly integrates their widely successful rewards program², many customers still struggle to earn enough points, or 'Stars'.

And these partially earned Stars often remain unused until they expire. As a result, customers are disappointed by hard-to-reach Star tiers and loss of Stars due to expiration dates.

1. Source: Fortune personal finance - Starbucks
2. Source: Starbucks.com. To the right, a concise visual explains the Star tiers. Below, a brief timeline captures the history of the Starbucks rewards program.

Competitive research

None of the stores notified their users when their reward points were about to expire.

To familiarize myself with the market, I analyzed how major competitors, such as McDonald’s, Chipotle, Dunkin, and Caribou operate their rewards programs.

User research

Starbucks app users were frustrated by hard-to-reach Star tiers and loss of Stars due to expiration dates.

User Interviews

I interviewed 10 Starbucks app users, focusing on 3 main questions:

What motivated you to download the Starbucks app?
How familiar are you with the Starbucks reward system?
What is the extent of your engagement with the Stars?

Survey

Curious to learn from a wider audience, conducted a survey using Google forms.

Collected a total of 46 responses.

Findings from the survey:

50% of Starbucks app users were not very familiar with the reward options.
37% of users were not aware that their Stars expired.
80.4% of users downloaded app mainly to earn Stars.

View the complete survey on Google forms ↗

Combining user interviews and survey results, 2 major pain points were observed:

Expiring Stars is wasteful. 

Expiration dates frustrated all users, notably more for occasional and sometimes customers.   Their partially earned Stars tend to just sit until expiration.

Accumulating enough Stars is hard. 

Majority expressed that Star tiers are hard to reach. Moreover, many were not familiar with rewards options despite being enrolled in the rewards program.

USer persona

The target user is motivated to save money, wanting to get the best out of reward programs.

Defining the problem

Problem

Starbucks app users frustrated by hard-to-reach Star tiers and loss of Stars due to expiration dates.

"I feel like I never have enough Stars."

"My Stars suddenly disappeared when I opened the app."

Solution

Introduced 3 new features to the existing app to resolve user pain points:

Notification system for expiring Stars.
Options to share Stars with friends & family, or to donate to a charity.
Friends feature that allows users to see each other’s star balance, encouraging a more meaningful transaction of Stars.

"It would nice to gift my Stars to someone who would actually use them."

"Donating residual Stars that will otherwise left forgotten or eventually expire is a great option!"

Ideation

Sketched various designs to integrate the notification, share & donate, and friends features into the existing Starbucks app.

The challenge was working under the design system of Starbucks app and integrating the features without obstructing the existing structure.

Information architecture

Focused on creating multiple access points for the user to initiate the share & donate action.

Different access points initiate slightly different paths. Generated user flows from different starting points (Homepage & Starspage) to reflect this nuance.

Mid-fidelity wireframes

Conducted A/B testing using mid-fi wireframes to determine the optimal layout & organization.

Homepage

Option A clearly communicates ‘Share’ as one of the 2 main CTAs.
Option B overwhelms users with 3 choices and crowds the screen space.

Starspage

Option A fails to clearly distinguish share vs. donate.
Option B successfully distinguishes share vs. donate in separate tabs.

Also developed mid-fi wireframes to illustrate how users can check notification, initiate share/donate action from multiple access points, and view friends' stars balance.

From Homepage: Checking notification & Initiating share/donate

From Starspage: Sharing Stars with friends

From Starspage: Donating Stars to charity

From Accounts page: Accessing friends page & viewing friends' Star balance

Usability testing

Improving the notification feature for transparent communication and clarifying the language for consistency.

Conducted 10 moderated usability testings. All users were able to successfully check the notification message, share & donate Stars, and access friends page to view others' Star balance.

However, significant improvements were made to improve the notification system and to clarify the language.

Jump to final designs ↓View Figma prototype

Issue: Once pop-up is dismissed, notification hides inside the inbox, which is easily missed.

Solution: Notification stays fixed until Stars are used or reach expiration date.

Issue: Notification hides inside megaphone icon, which is easily missed & require extra interaction.

Solution: Icon is removed, and notification stays fixed.

Informative chart on Stars was added at the bottom for quick access.

3. Donate flow: Using concise language as a guide

Issue: No conversion information available. Unclear if other charity options are available.

Solution: Added conversion factor in concise wording and also nested it inside the dropdown menu. Added 'read more' text link to indicate that other charity options are also available.

4. Friends page: Clarifying the language for consistency

Issue: 'Add friends’ under 'FInd your friends' heading is misleading. Also, ability to sync contacts from the phone is missing.

Solution: Removed the heading and replaced 'Add friends' with a search field. Added floating button for easier access, and included sync option.

Final designs

Share Stars with friends & family or donate to a charity – new ways to use your Stars before they expire.

View Figma prototype

Notification for Stars expiring soon.

No more wasted Stars! A notification message will appear a month prior to expiration date.

Share Stars with friends & family.

Know of a friend or family member who is close to hitting that mark for a free drink? You can now share Stars with friends & family!

Donate to a charity of your choice.

Want to make a meaningful contribution with your Stars? For every 50 Stars, $1 is donated to your choice of community.

Find your friends & send Stars directly from their profile page.

View your friend's Star balance and send them unique number of Stars, helping them get that free drink!

Further thoughts

Integrating 3 new features into the existing application while maintaining the integrity of the original design structure was challenging.
If this were a real-life project, I want to collaborate with product strategy & engineering team in the ideation phase to assess the feasibility of the design at both business & development levels.

Because Starbucks already has a large, loyal customer base, friends feature has a great potential to expand: sending not only Stars but gift cards directly through in-app transaction, eliminating the use of 3rd party help.
Introducing games that can be played among friends to earn Stars will not only bring more fun but also incentivise users to continue earning Stars. This continued engagement will likely translate to increased purchases at the store.
Additionally, introducing a motherboard that displays Star balance among friends will keep the users motivated & engaged.

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