Product Journey Mapping
UI / UX Design
Figma Prototyping
1 X PM
1 x Designer + QA (me)
3 x Software Engineers
Aug 2024 - Nov 2024
401(Play) is a travel and savings employer benefit that helps employees take time off and save for trips. Employees can allocate funds from their paycheck to go to a 401(Play) debit card, save and plan for trips, and access exclusive flight, hotel, and activity deals all via the 401(Play) app.
Low user engagement, with less than 5% of employees enrolling into the 401(Play) benefit. This was hindering adoption and revenue growth. We were tasked with increasing employee enrollment and app adoption.
We reduced user friction in enrollment and redesigned employee app into a mobile iOS / Android app. On initial launch we saw an avg. employee enrollment rate increase by 4.4x from 5% to 22% (with ~89% of enrolled users also signing up for the travel debit card).
The mobile app features an AI travel planner, access to local deals, the ability to create and save trip plans, and a vacation fund for travel savings.
First objective, streamline the enrollment process by reducing the overall task completion time and increasing employee enrollment rates. Second, improve the employee facing application to increase adoption and engagement.
In our analysis of successful travel planning apps like Expedia, TripAdvisor, and TripIt, we identified a clear trend: a mobile-first experience.
A mobile app offers convenience and accessibility, aligning with employees' travel and savings needs. By integrating 401(Play) into their phones, we reduced friction and enhanced regular interaction, making it a more intuitive tool for users.
The new simplified employee enrollment web app led to a 4.4x increase in conversion rates.
Our analysis revealed that the enrollment flow had some friction points, leading to user drop-off and low employee enrollment. We rebuilt the enrollment as a stand-alone responsive web app and reduced the user flow to its minimum number of steps. This improved accessibility and lowered user's task completion time rusting in a 4.4x increase in enrollemnt conversion rates.
A trade-off risk was by delaying the debit card application process until the user's first mobile app login, it could potentially increase the percentage of user who were enrolled but not signed up for a card.
Simplified the app around a "Savings Goal" and integrated AI-assisted goal estimates to make creating the intial goal easier.
The original app included a range of unproven vacation planning, budgeting, and saving features, that added a lot of complexity to the UX. Without time for extensive user studies, we conducted quick, informal research, revealing that users were more motivated by a single, clear "savings goal" than by complex budgeting tools.
This insight led us to simplify the app’s core function, pivoting from category-based budgeting to goal-focused savings, encouraging users to pull money directly from their paychecks into dedicated trip funds. This approach helped to reduce development scope for V1 and better aligned the product more closely with observed real-world behaviors.
The admin web application gave clients ability to oversee benefit enrollment and monitor their employees throughout the enrollment process.
These are just a few highlights. If you're interested in a deeper dive, I'm happy to chat. Feel free to reach out and we can find a time to connect.
