user research

customer experience strategy

journey mapping

mobile app concept

wireframing

Project: Customer experience strategy for Barilla’s US restaurant chain, with an emphasis on digital loyalty.

Problem statement: Barilla’s loyalty program was a traditional punch-card system that was disconnected to the brand, and underutilized by the customers. Furthermore, Barilla’s heritage in Mediterranean diet was found nowhere on the restaurant and loyalty experience.

The hardest challenge was convincing Barilla to shift away from their initial idea to new concepts rooted in user insights.

Process: To understand the current customer experience, we started the 7 week program by conducting customer and staff interviews. Participatory design exercises with customers provided insights which we used for concept iterations. As the last phase, we focused on a final mobile app concept and loyalty mechanics.

My role and responsibilities: I co-led with an Associate Director. I planned and conducted research in NY; worked with Milan team to run client workshops. I created and prototyped the final concept in collaboration with a visual designer and another interaction designer.

Barilla was focused on their initial idea for a nutritional tracking app. When we ran it by users, it became obvious that users did not see a restaurant chain relevant to tracking their nutrition holistically. We designed research questions and exercises to produce insights on user habits and preferences. These helped us create user archetypes and meaningful concepts to bring along the client to new directions.

For the final concept, I designed micro challenges to gamify 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.