A unified rewards program based on Kohl's Cash

My role

From pitch to core mobile flow

I helped shape the initial design pitch that got the new program funded by stakeholders, then built the first draft of the core mobile flow with 2 other experience designers, a visual designer, a design manager and a project planner.

Design workshop

Gather all the thoughts up front

Collaborating with so many partners on a big project is hard, so our research team ran a design workshop to align expectations early. With Business Credit, Product, Store Operations, Creative and Marketing, we analyzed the current program and agreed on what the future one should be:

💬

”Kohl’s Cash is more talked about than Y2Y. It has a larger impact on customers’ long-term behavior — 2× more likely to drive upward migration.”

Pitching to stakeholders

Share one vision through design

How do we introduce the new program? How do we fit updated rewards info into the current flow? How would it affect other ongoing projects? Building on the workshop, I created multiple concepts to give an initial look and feel for the core mobile experience.

To understand customers’ needs at a high level, I used a customer journey map with three tags for the program’s main parts — track, earn and redeem — so partners and stakeholders could spot key touchpoints early.

Define the scope

Where are the touchpoints?

The pitch went so well that more people wanted to know what came next. To align business expectations for every screen across 5 channels, I put together an information architecture map in Axure and reviewed it with product and design to decide when, where and how to integrate the new program.

Mobile first

What is the happy path?

Based on the touchpoints we identified, the other 2 designers and I worked through concepts to define the happy path for the core mobile experience.

Design iterations

Order confirmation flow

A key workshop insight was to bring celebration into the experience, so one order-confirmation design opened with a celebratory modal. It was well received internally — but in the lab, customers were more confused than delighted. That finding aligned the team, and I replaced the modal with a brief in-page animation. It’s one of many examples of refining concepts through customer feedback.

Design reflection

Design your process

Hi-fi or lo-fi?

At first I wasn’t sure what fidelity to bring to which meeting. My takeaways: hi-fi works best for pitching concepts to business stakeholders (with the branding team, if there is one), and for usability testing. For product and engineering, lo-fi wireframes with watermarks avoid confusion with final deliverables.

Document your process

With many designers on a long project, it’s easy to get lost across tools, meetings and notes. Documenting the process in one consistent place, and working closely with your planner, helps a lot.

Explore as a discussion point

With 2 design studios at Kohl’s, remote collaboration was a given — and it’s hard to pitch ideas without visualizing them. I also find it hard to reach good concepts without exploring “bad” ones. Working through those ideas with partners makes the final proposal more convincing.