Barilla experience strategy and conceptual design
enhancing customer experience and loyalty through design
for barilla, Italy & us
Project
Customer experience strategy for Barilla’s US restaurant chain, with an emphasis on digital loyalty.
Opportunity and Problem
Barilla wanted to incorporate their Mediterranean heritage into the restaurant and the loyalty experience. The underutilized loyalty program was a traditional punch-card system that was disconnected from the Italian family-owned brand. We had a huge opportunity to explore and ideate across the whole customer journey.
My role and responsibilities
I co-led this ~8 week program with another creative lead. I owned the user research out of NY, focusing on participatory design exercises and interviews with staff and customers. We ran client workshops to share insights and co-create concepts. I also prototyped the final mobile app concept in collaboration with a visual designer and interaction designer.
user research
customer experience strategy
journey mapping
conceptual designs
Prototyping & wireframing
Barilla app prototype. Health micro-challenge flow to boost loyalty.
Process highlight
The hardest challenge was convincing Barilla to shift from their initial “nutritional tracking” concept, and explore new ideas that were rooted in user insights. I designed questions and exercises to gain the necessary insights to validate the idea. It quickly became obvious that even the most loyal customers or fitness enthusiasts did not see a restaurant chain relevant to tracking their whole nutrition. We immersed the client in findings and used workshops to include them in concept phase heavily. We created an idea book with several concepts expanding different touch points.
From findings, we created user archetypes; and used journey mapping to create several concepts expanding all touch points.
For a final concept, we reimagined the Barilla app. Seeing clients’ passionate about Mediterranean diet and users’ appetite for a digital loyalty program, I proposed using micro health challenges to gamify the loyalty mechanics. Users were given nutrition related challenges such as trying new flavors, or consuming a different food group from the Mediterranean diet. These micro challenges boosted users’ loyalty alongside traditional loyalty mechanics. This idea got buy-in from the client.