What I did

Google Play planned to launch a loyalty program for billions of users, and they asked me to be the content designer who would decide how we talk about it.

I created a system of simple concepts to organize the visual design around and worked directly with the UX designer and PM to put them through a grueling series of user research tests.

Explaining complexity

It turned out that one of the hardest concepts to get users to understand is how some points and level benefits roll over to the next year and some don’t. To complicate things, Play planned to offer different boosts and multipliers for earning points, not all of which worked the same.

After testing various options, I standardized on the format “Earning x points per $1” and propagated it through all the designs and support materials. I’d love to say that I found an equally robust answer for explaining point and level rollover, but this is an example of how there’s always room for improvement. Over the course of the three years I worked on the project, we tried a variety of approaches that incrementally improved user understanding.

Making it local

Loyalty programs take a variety of approaches depending on which country they’re targeting, and Play Points needed to be able to adjust to local expectations. From a content perspective, this meant making things modular and easily editable by locale, but it also meant that for each country launch I and the designer were iterating on design and research approaches to make sure we got it right.

US launch: 3.4 million users joined and 151 million points earned in the first two weeks; added a donation feature to let users convert points into a monetary donation to multiple charitable organizations

Japan launch: 1 million users joined and 65 million points earned in the first week; 3,000+ mentions on social media from early users

South Korea launch: 775,000 users joined and 79 million points earned in the first week; 56% of new users opted in to receiving marketing comms, which is a 3x higher rate than normal

Silver level benefits for Google Play Points

Press coverage

Google is bringing its free Google Play rewards program to the US
The Verge - Nov 4, 2019

Google Play’s US Store adds a rewards program with points for purchases, downloads & more
TechCrunch - Nov 4, 2019

Google Play Points launches in the U.S.
VentureBeat - Nov 4, 2019

Google’s Play Points program launches in the US to reward purchases
CNET - Nov 13, 2019