Designing for Growth

Miles is a travel mileage platform awarding miles for all modes of transportation.

As a Product UX Lead, I took the responsibility of managing and leading a 7-member design team and played a critical role in molding the product's trajectory, propelling it from zero to 6 million+ downloads in both the United States and Japan.

Overview

In August 2019, I joined the founding team at Miles, playing a key role in enhancing the user experience, enabling scalability, and implementing numerous features that fueled significant app growth.

Role

Lead Product Designer

Domain

Travel Rewards

Team

Leading a 7 member team of 4 UX Designers and 3 Visual Designers

Duration

Aug'19 - Present (4+ years)

Impact

  • I drove significant revenue growth, pushing the company to a major ARR milestone in five years.

  • The app grew from under 20,000 to over 6 million downloads, with 1 million monthly users.

  • I shipped new features that led to a 57% increase in total sessions in 2 months.

  • I introduced A/B testing that boosted app store ratings from 2.5 to 4.7.

  • My strategic involvement monetized the app through advertising, adding a 30% revenue stream to ARR.

Vision

“A rewards program for every person, for everyday life”

Mission

“To be the world’s most rewarding program by celebrating every action, big and small.”

The Product

Miles is a distinctive rewards app that grants users miles for every journey, regardless of transportation mode—drive, walk, cycle, or public transit. Unlike traditional programs, Miles offers a unique approach, providing rewards for every mile traveled, with extra incentives for eco-friendly or health-conscious travel choices.

Overview of the Miles App

How did we increase Ad Revenue by 30%?

Miles Trivia

Our main goal is to introduce a fresh approach to engage users, allowing them to actively accumulate miles through interaction with the app, rather than solely through passive means like taking trips. This approach also opens up the potential for monetization through advertising.

Sneak Peak

To diversify revenue, we shifted to Trivia quizzes alongside surveys, offering users a swift alternative to earn miles amid survey complexity sought by market researchers.

Goals

  • Increase engagement in the app by increasing active sessions.

  • Improve miles earned within an app session.

KPIs

  • Number of Engaged Users in day / Daily Active Users (DAU)

  • Number of Questions Answered / DAU

  • Number of miles earned Increase in Revenue from Ads

Design Process for this feature- Epic

User Study - Focus Groups

The main objectives of the focus group are to know about the following

  • How to improve app session time?

  • How to improve app opens?

  • What kind of questions to ask?

  • What levels of questions to offer?

  • How many miles to offer for each question?

  • How many Ads and what kind of Ads are not that intrusive?

  • When to show Ads?

During our discussion, one of the central concepts that emerged was the notion of providing users with a limited set of questions each day to boost feature retention, encouraging users to return daily for their Trivia.

Another pivotal concept that surfaced was the inclusion of Interstitial Ads between different Trivia levels, akin to the format often seen in mobile app games. This approach ensures that the ads are not overly intrusive and do not disrupt the flow of Trivia gameplay.

Competitor Analysis

After consulting with the product team and leadership on the viability of the model, the key benefits that were drafted for the MVP include

  • Three levels of difficulty and higher earnings based on difficulty

  • 1 Question per difficulty level

  • Finding relevant Question Banks

  • Time limit for answering each Question

A few important competitors include Duolingo, Zap Surveys, Drop, Trivia Crack, Eureka, and Miles for Opinions by American Airlines.

Miles Trivia in low fidelity

Final Shipped Version

Trivia Onboarding and Dashboard

Trivia Questions Flow

Edge Case and Error States Handling

Phase 2: Trivia Reminder

Phase 3: Trivia Streaks

Phase 4: Ad Monetisation

Design Dilemma #1

Design Dilemma #2

Chosen Approach and the Rationale

We chose to show Interstitial Ads before the next question, inspired by the Games and Music industry's practice of displaying ads between levels or songs, not during gameplay or playback.

User Personas for the Miles App

The Miles App is tailored to three primary user profiles: frequent commuters for work or leisure, individuals seeking deals, and users of public transportation. It is meticulously crafted to cater to their specific needs and preferences. While the application is universally applicable for anyone traveling from point A to point B, user personas provide a more nuanced and symbolic representation of specific user segments.

Impact and Measurement

Following the feature's introduction, it gained immense popularity, as users had previously been accumulating miles solely through passive trip participation. However, with the feature's launch, users could now actively accrue miles by interacting with the app, fulfilling the core goal of the feature. In terms of statistics, we observed a significant impact.

Every day, a staggering 350,000 trivia questions were being answered in both the United States and Japan. This has emerged as one of the primary means of user engagement with the app, ranking second only to the app's core function of rewarding miles for completed trips.

Chart Depicting Number of Questions Answered in a day