Chase Ultimate Rewards
Core Experience 2022 -2025
Mobile / Web experience design for
Project Overview
Key Outcome
The Chase Ultimate Rewards experience is set for a long-term, continuous exploration and design uplift spanning 2022-2025. This initiative encompasses several major releases and feature enhancements, all aimed at aligning with the firm's business goals and enhanced vision. The design strategy focuses on elevating user engagement and improving the clarity of points activity reviewing and the points redemption experience.
The strategic design efforts have successfully led to an improvement in the Net Promoter Score (NPS), meeting the company's product goals and enhancing customer satisfaction. This outcome underscores the effectiveness of the design enhancements in delivering a superior user experience that resonates with our customers.
Team
Chase CCB Connected Commerce
Rewards LOB Product:
Lyle Kau, Alex Goldstick, Luke Jang
Designer: Franky Wang, Eric Lee
Researcher: Ester Trujillo
Content editor: Camille Kail
Design Practices
Requirement gathering, problem defining
IA set up, user journey drafting, concept development
User research, testing and analysis
Comprehensive design and asset handoff
Developer collaboration, accessibility signoff
Post-launch analysis, performance metric review
Iterative version updates with feature enhancement
Project Timeline
Design iteration and delivery
Project 1.0
11/2022 - 6/2023
Phase 1 launched 4/2023
Phase 2 launched 6/2023
Project 2.0
Started 8/2024, Design WIP
This portfolio has been prepared under the Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) policies of my current firm. Proprietary data, project details, and participant information have been excluded or anonymized to protect confidentiality. All content is presented solely to illustrate my design strategy and role in product development, without revealing any sensitive or protected information.
PROJECT BACKGROUND
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The Chase Ultimate Rewards platform serves as a critical touchpoint for over 45 million customers, playing a pivotal role in enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. It also significantly impacts Chase's JD Power evaluations, a benchmark for customer experience excellence in the financial industry. However, prior to 2022, the platform was developed and maintained by a third-party vendor, resulting in a lack of consistency with other Chase digital products and an outdated look and feel that no longer met modern user expectations.
Customers frequently reported challenges in understanding their points activity and navigating the redemption process, leading to increased dissatisfaction and high customer support call volumes. Recognizing the need for a seamless, cohesive experience across its digital ecosystem, Chase formed a dedicated in-house team in 2022 to lead and support the transformation of the Ultimate Rewards platform. As part of this team, my role has been to drive the redesign efforts, focusing on reducing friction in the user journey, ensuring consistency with Chase's broader digital product suite, and modernizing the platform's design to enhance usability and engagement.
This initiative is part of a long-term strategy, spanning 2022–2025, to deliver continuous exploration and design improvements. By aligning the platform with the firm’s business goals and customer-centric vision, we aim to reduce customer dissatisfaction, lower call center inquiries, and deliver a streamlined, intuitive experience that meets the evolving expectations of Chase’s large and diverse customer base.
Users of the Chase Ultimate Rewards platform face challenges with understanding and managing their points activity, as well as navigating the redemption process, which can feel complex and unclear. These pain points reduce user engagement and hinder their ability to utilize the platform’s benefits fully. To address this, we needed to redesign the experience to provide greater transparency, simplicity, and intuitive access to features while aligning with the firm’s long-term business goals and vision for enhanced customer satisfaction.
HOW MIGHT WE...
create a consistent and seamless experience by aligning the Ultimate Rewards platform with other Chase digital products?
modernize the design to make the platform more intuitive and user-friendly for
45 million existing and other potential customers?
simplify points tracking and redemption to reduce frustration and improve satisfaction?
lower customer support call volumes by addressing key pain points and enhancing clarity?
KEY RESULTS
OBJECTIVES
These goals and objectives collectively focus on delivering an exceptional customer experience while meeting Chase’s strategic business targets.
STRATEGIC PRIORITIZATION
1
We analyzed live accounts to see how customers actually used the Rewards platform. We listened to the voice of the customer (VOC), built experience maps, and also compared major banks, airlines, and hotel loyalty programs to see what they did best.
This combined approach gave us a really clear picture of where users were getting stuck, what they wanted more of, and how we could create a better overall experience.
UR as of 2023 (Legacy Version)
VOC Documentation
Competitive analysis
2
These four quotes represent common feedback we saw again and again. Some people felt the interface was too clunky or hard to navigate, some found points redemption confusing or irrelevant, and many described the experience as visually overwhelming.
So I deep-dived into areas like general access, clarity, inspiration, and discovery, which led us understand where the current shortages are.
3
Once we put all our findings together, we identified four core pain points: inconsistent navigation paths, less relevant marketing content, a busy landing page that made it tough to engage, and a visual complexity that just make people feel exhausted.
I documented each issue in detail so we could align the entire team—product, content, dev—around what needed fixing.
Documentation Process
4
Based on that, we defined an MVP that included refining the information architecture, simplifying content, modernizing the UI, and balancing marketing needs with UX clarity. Attached is a snapshot of our design rationale and IA analysis in the process.
Although we had a lot of ideas for bigger improvements, focusing on these MVP areas first allowed us to deliver value quickly and measure results along the way.
Design rationale and IA analysis
CRAFTING EXPERIENCE
The goal becomes more clear at this point. We also brought these across the quad that is building an experience that’s seamless, intuitive, and scalable, while also addressing our core user and business priorities. My personal guiding principles were to make information easy to find, ensure the flow goes seamless and remained adaptable for different user paths, and keep it all open to future enhancements.
“Making information easy to find and act on.”
“Ensuring the experiences go seamless and remain adaptable.”
To tackle the experience head-on, I worked on site mapping, experience flow refinement, and card-sorting exercises. We ran offline co-creation sessions with both internal stakeholders and external participants to understand different mental models. This gave us a clear direction on how to structure content so that redemption felt easy, relevant, and—most importantly—rewarding.
Site mapping
Experience flow refinement
Card sorting
Co-creation user session
UX VALIDATION 1 - NAVIGATION
One of the most featured areas we focused on was navigation, the backbone of the UR experience. With multiple redemption options—such as Travel, Cash Back, Gift Cards, and Transfer to Partners—users need a consistent, intuitive way to explore them.
Why Navigation Matters
In the old design, scattered entry points and overlapping menu structures led to confusion, causing potential redemptions to stall.
By prioritizing navigation, we aimed to reduce friction and ensure that users could seamlessly discover and engage with the UR features most relevant to their goals.
Legacy Hompage top navigation
Legacy Hompage side panel navigation
Hypothesis vs. Reality
Because navigation serves as the backbone of the Ultimate Rewards platform, we were initially cautious about making significant structural changes. We worried that a disruptive shift in how users accessed rewards—especially those who already felt comfortable with the existing menu—could lead to confusion, drop in satisfaction, or frustration. However, once we conducted extensive user testing with both existing and prospective cardholders, a different picture emerged.
Prototype Variations
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We built and tested “single-nav” vs. “multi-nav” prototypes. The single-nav design routed all redemption tasks through a dedicated main menu, while the multi-nav approach offered contextual prompts in addition to the main navigation.
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Participants who prioritized efficiency favored the single-nav approach, while more exploration-oriented users appreciated the multi-nav design.
Clickstream Analysis
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We tracked participant actions to see how they navigated between categories. While some latched onto a single redemption pathway, others felt more comfortable exploring multiple routes.
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This analysis reinforced the idea that users are adaptive—they appreciate several ways to discover rewards, provided the structure remains coherent.
To validate our evolving understanding, I worked with the UX research team on A/B and moderated usability tests:
Research and testing sample
Participants consistently indicated that they were more adaptive to changes than we assumed, especially when presented with clear, categorized navigation elements. Instead of clinging to familiar pathways, most users actually appreciated our efforts to reorganize the interface. They reported feeling more confident in discovering the various redemption options—such as travel, cash back, or partner rewards—when they were laid out strategically in distinct categories.
This user feedback reassured us that a well-planned, user-centric reconfiguration of the navigation could ultimately boost clarity and satisfaction, rather than detract from it.
Homepage IA refinement and categorization
Outcome: A More Flexible Yet Clear Navigation Model
Based on these findings, we developed a consolidated top navigation on desktop to provide a quick, panoramic overview of available redemption categories. However, we also preserved contextual links within each category to accommodate various browsing styles. On mobile, we experimented with a bottom-sheet quick-access panel, letting users jump straight to relevant redemption flows without cluttering the main screen flow.
This blended approach reduced decision fatigue by avoiding a “one-size-fits-all” solution. It also boosted discoverability of less prominent categories like gift cards or co-branded travel partnerships. Post-launch feedback described the experience as “intuitive yet flexible,” highlighting that the navigation felt both structured and open-ended enough for different types of users.
New UR desktop navigation
New UR mobile navigation for Chase app
UX VALIDATION 2 - WAYS TO USE
Another critical area we focused on was the 'Ways to Use' page—essentially a guidebook for points redemption.
A “Guidebook” for Rewards
While refining navigation helped users explore redemption options, we realized the “Ways to Use” page was where many decided whether or not to follow through. If the page felt overwhelming or tedious, users backed out and returned later—or never returned at all.
Legacy Ways to Use Page
Navigation path from homepage
Identifying the Gaps
Initially, this page was a long scroll of dense text sections describing each redemption method (e.g., Travel, Cash Back, Gift Cards).
Despite high traffic, data showed that users weren’t completing their redemption journey as often as expected. Key pain points included:
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Walls of text that discouraged deeper reading.
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Vague marketing fluff overshadowing the concrete value proposition.
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The legacy UI pattern and component design failed to align with the new Chase digital design system.
I began with a rapid UI enhancement that aligned the page with the Chase design system, ensuring consistent typography, color usage, and overall visual style. However, I quickly realized that purely cosmetic upgrades weren’t enough to address the deeper content and structural issues. Despite the new styling, users still felt overwhelmed by the dense text blocks and struggled to compare offers effectively.
Rapid design solution (UI enhancement only)
A more holistic content strategy was therefore essential. By streamlining the layout and weaving promotional prompts more organically into each redemption category, we aimed to shift “Ways to Use” from an info dump into a true decision-making guide—one that made it simpler for users to discover, compare, and ultimately act on their preferred reward options.
Strategic Content & Layout
Armed with these insights, I collaborated with a content strategist and the UR marketing team to reduce clutter and frame each redemption option more strategically. We used a two-step approach to confirm our direction:
We created two primary layouts: a 2-column tile layout with short descriptions for each box, and a single-column list that offered stacked view with less density.
The single-column design outperformed the multi-column grid in user tests, largely due to its simpler reading flow—especially on mobile devices where screen space is at a premium.
Layout testing
Component testing
Mobile responsiveness validation
Instead of listing all promotions in a single banner, we integrated small promotional tags throughout the redemption options.
This shift helped users see “relevant offers at the right moment,” rather than skimming over a large block of deals at the top or bottom of the page.
Visual cue representation
Outcome and results
Post-launch analytics and user interviews validated our holistic approach to the “Ways to Use” page. By carefully balancing educational content with usability best practices and integrating strategic visual cues for promotions, we were able to guide both new and returning customers through a more seamless redemption journey.
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13% Increase in Page Visits: Users were more inclined to explore redemption opportunities, likely due to clearer navigation labels and a more inviting page layout.
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18% Reduction in Page Stay Time: Counterintuitively, this was a positive outcome. With content streamlined for quick recognition, users found and acted on relevant options faster, minimizing idle time.
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Boost in Conversion Rate: By aligning promotional elements with the right context and reducing friction points, the simpler design led to more completed redemptions.
Customers consistently praised the at-a-glance clarity of the revised layout. Rather than feeling overwhelmed, they reported feeling “well-guided” and confident in discovering new reward opportunities. This efficiency gain translated directly into stronger satisfaction scores, affirming that a more concise, strategic approach could deliver both educational value and ease of use in a single, cohesive experience.
OVERCOMING CONSTRAINTS
Like any large-scale initiative, we faced challenges that required strategic thinking. From a business perspective, we had to balance promotional content with the need for a seamless redemption experience. To achieve this, we introduced a personalized recommendation engine that surfaced relevant offers based on user behavior—ensuring that promotions felt helpful rather than intrusive.
Business expectation
Customer experience
Over 60 marketing content inventory for targeted customers
On the technical side, we were working within a legacy backend system that limited how dynamically we could present reward options. Rather than completely overhauling the system—which wasn’t feasible in the short term—I collaborated with engineers to implement a progressive enhancement approach. We introduced modular components that allowed for incremental improvements, ensuring that each release delivered real user value.
Earning summary and Recent activity
Incremental uplift for Rewards activity page
Incremental uplift for Rewards activity page
FINAL DELIVERY
UR Core experience - homepage
Previous Experience
Phase 1
Phase 2
Guideline and design specs
Mobile hybrid version
UR Core experience - Rewards Activity
Previous Experience
Phase 1
Phase 2
Mobile hybrid version
Guideline and design specs
UR Core experience - Ways to Use
Previous Experience
New Experience
UR Core experience - Ways to Earn
Previous Experience
New Experience
The screens presented here reflect the publicly released, customer-facing designs published on ultimaterewardspoints.chase.com.
These designs are considered non-confidential and are shown in both mobile and desktop formats. Any ongoing design iterations or explorations remain in progress and cannot be displayed in this portfolio due to confidentiality constraints.
MEASURABLE IMPACT & NEXT STEP
Phase 1 - 2023 metric
1-month metric
6-month metric
Rewards Homepage has 18% increase on time spent on page
Rewards Activity visits from the homepage increased 48% from homepage.
Ways to Use visits from the homepage increased 20% from homepage.
11% increase in redemption completion rates.
18% reduction in customer service calls related to rewards confusion.
NPS scores improved to 70+, confirming a more positive user perception.
Phase 2 - 2024 ongoing
Looking ahead, as the lead designer for upcoming initiatives, I’m focused on pushing the Ultimate Rewards experience even further—leveraging personalization, optimizing accessibility, and ensuring that Chase remains the leader in customer rewards experiences.
Takeaways
The process of this project strikes a balance between business goals and customer needs. I as the lead designer relied heavily on cross-functional collaboration, data insights, and a willingness to adapt to constraints. In short, this project proved that understanding your users, designing for clarity, and continuously iterating can create a better experience for everyone involved. And even though Ultimate Rewards is a complex system, we consistently aimed to make it feel intuitive and stress-free for the end user.
Long-term aspiration for UR
At its core, this project was about making information easy to find and act on while ensuring that experiences remain seamless and adaptable. It’s an ongoing evolution, but we’re making meaningful progress in improving how Chase customers engage with their rewards.
