Overview:
While loyalty programs are growing in Myanmar, few digital platforms exist. Pocket MM offers points, rewards, gifts, and special deals—connecting buyers and merchants for a seamless shopping journey.
Why Redesign:
The app was launched with a focus on functionality, but active users declined. As loyalty programs gain popularity, stakeholders aim to make it more appealing and accessible. This led to a redesign focused on reducing redundancy and improving visuals and performance.
Target Audience:
Pocket MM serves three key groups:
Fashion & Beauty Enthusiasts (18–40, mostly female): Trend-focused mall shoppers who value brand-specific rewards, personalized offers, social gifting, and early access to sales.
Professionals (25–50): Busy, high-income earners who use multiple loyalty programs but want centralized point management, seamless redemption, and premium experiences.
Students (18–25): Budget-conscious, social-media natives who enjoy micro-rewards, gamified campaigns, and social features like gifting points.
Design Approach:
For the design thinking process, I am responsible for both strategizing and visual design. I follow the traditional design thinking method which contains:
01. Discover
Analyzing old design
In evaluating the previous design, my focus was on assessing UI functionality and identifying root causes of issues. By combining data analysis with customer feedback, our team gained valuable insights, which are very helpful
An old version of Pocket app has many concerns, including a lack of clear hierarchy, consistency, accessibility and major usability issues. I will list the problem hypothesis that I found during testing myself.
Lack of clear visual hierarchy and poor navigation in the app confuse users, failing to attract users attention.
Features cannot be easily accessible and users are left to navigate with poor onboarding, adding more confusion and low engagement.
Slow loading times and poor performance reduce user trust, making users skeptical on credibility of the app.
From analytics, we discover that users complain about glitching interfaces and app bugging through customer support.Unclear reward redemption steps and poor functional interfaces cause users to forfeit points, reducing transaction and retention.
Preparation for interview
Following the review, I conducted user interviews to better understand audience needs and pain points. The insights guided and validated our solutions, ensuring alignment with user expectations and improving the overall experience.
I interviewed 12 people from different age ranges between 20 to 60 and interest in order to understand their pain points and needs. Questionnaires include:
Key Insights
Most users are motivated by discounts and free rewards.
Users prefer clean, modern app designs that are easy to navigate.
Visual appeal impacts trust and perceived reliability of the app.
Personalized rewards based on user preferences (e.g., fashion, groceries) are highly desired.
Users rely on ratings and reviews to make purchasing decisions, but fake reviews are a concern.
Complicated redemption processes discourage users from engaging with the app.
Most user prefers a centralized place to track points across multiple brands.
Most users prefer simplified redemption process.
Empathy Mapping
After collecting insights, I make empathy mapping to gain a deeper understanding of their users' emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. It lead to more empathetic and effective design solutions.
User Personas
After empathy mapping, we created user personas from interview insights to clarify key issues and prioritize solutions.
02. Define
In the Define phase, we transform research insights into problem statements and user stories, aligning the team around user needs. This ensures solutions stay user-centered and grounded in real behaviors.
Defining the Problems
Based on the insights from the research, these are the problem statements that I defined:
Users like Hannah manually track points across 5+ apps , leading to annual losses from expired points, because the app doesn’t consolidate balances in one view.
User like Kevin do not trust redemption offers because point-to-cash conversions are nontransparent (e.g., ‘100 points = ?’), causing them to abandon before claiming rewards.
While user appreciate the app vision and objective, the cluttered layout distracts users from seamless experience. Pocket MM should strike a balance between visually appealing interfaces and simplicity to ensure that user can navigate the app efficiently without losing halfway.
Users like Hannah dismiss half of reward reviews as fake or outdated, making them hesitate to redeem, because the app doesn’t verify purchases or highlight recent feedback.
Fashion-focused users like Hannah ignore 68% of app recommendation and notifications because rewards don’t match their preferences (e.g., tech deals for beauty shoppers).
Users like Kevin can't easily track their progress toward the next tier, causing frustration and leading to low motivation to upgrade.
User Story
Based on the problem statements we have created, we move on to define user stories to ensure the design team addressed user needs with clarity and empathy.
Sitemap
Before moving into wireframes, I developed a sitemap to visualize how different sections of the product connect. It helps visualize how users move through different sections and ensures all pages are logically organized.
Userflow
After sitemapping, I created the user flow to visualize how users would navigate through the product to achieve their goals. This step allowed me to analyze user behavior, and remove any unnecessary steps that could become painpoints.
04. Prototype
Low Fidelity Wireframe
Logo & Branding
Visual Design
There are some of the screens I would like to share
Gift
Users can gift coins or rewards to friends and family by selecting the item, entering a PIN, and generating a QR code for the recipient to scan. If no rewards are available, users can purchase them directly to send.
Collect & Pay
Users can redeem coins or rewards at merchants by selecting an option, entering a PIN, and generating a QR code for the merchant to scan.
Coin Landing
This section centralizes all coin-related features, allowing users to view balances, collect coins, redeem rewards, purchase products, gift rewards, and access tutorials for a seamless experience.
Brand Detail
In “Brand Detail,” users can view brand information, mark favorites, and explore about Brand, Reviews & Ratings, Rewards, Campaigns, Membership, and Branches.
Additional Screens
What Next?
We plan to introduce new features and improve existing ones, addressing UX flaws caused by technological limitations. By enhancing usability, we aims to exceed user expectations, create a seamless experience, and foster loyalty—keeping a user-centered approach at the core of our design.
