Miles&Smiles World
Transforming a low-engagement loyalty program into an immersive, transparent, and rewarding digital experience.
📌 Project Overview
Miles & Smiles World is an exclusive co-branded collaboration between PASHA Bank and Turkish Airlines. Instead of traditional cashback, the debit card rewards users with flight miles for every purchase, which can be redeemed for award tickets.
I was tasked with completely overhauling the Miles ecosystem within our retail mobile banking application. The legacy interface suffered from critical data gaps, low user engagement, and a lack of transparency, forcing users to rely heavily on customer support to understand their rewards.
Role: Product Designer (End-to-end UX/UI, User Research, Interaction Design)
Context: Retail Banking App / Fintech
Goal: Increase feature engagement, reduce support ticket volume, and build an immersive, transparent loyalty experience.
🔍 The Challenge & Problem Statement
While the value proposition of earning flight miles instead of cash is highly attractive, the product was underperforming due to a disconnected user experience. The existing interface was static, uninspiring, and obscured crucial financial tracking data.
Core User & Business Pain Points
Information Black Box: Users had no visibility into complex milestones like "Welcome Miles," leading to high cognitive load and frustration.
High Support Overhead: Customer service teams were overwhelmed with repetitive queries regarding turnover goals and partner rewards.
Lack of Emotional Connection: Earning miles is inherently tied to the excitement of travel, but the legacy UI was sterile, plain, and strictly transactional.
Discovery & User Research
To validate our hypotheses and uncover the root causes of low engagement, I adopted a dual-research methodology:
Support Team Deep-Dives: I interviewed the customer support team to catalog the most frequent complaints and inquiries related to the Miles card.
User Interviews: Conducted qualitative interviews with active Miles & Smiles cardholders to understand how they track, perceive, and value their earned miles.
Solution - Transformed Miles Experience
I restructured the Information Architecture (IA) and introduced key features designed to drive transparency, gamification, and emotional delight.
The Welcome Miles Tracker (Transparency & Progress)
The Feature: Welcome miles are a major acquisition driver, rewarding users with a massive miles boost if they hit a specific spending turnover within their first month and exactly one year later. Previously, this tracker didn't exist in-app; users had to guess their progress or call support.
The Design: I designed a dedicated dynamic progress card on the main screen. It clearly displays the turnover target, a live progress bar, and the exact amount remaining to unlock the reward.
Delight Factor: To celebrate the milestone, achieving the goal triggers a micro-interaction—a satisfying confetti animation that reinforces the reward mechanism.
Partner Miles Clarity (Value Demonstration)
The Feature: Spending at partner merchants yields accelerated miles, but this unique benefit was completely invisible in the transaction history.
The Design: I introduced distinct partner merchant iconography within the main transaction ledger. Clicking into a transaction now reveals an explicit receipt breakdown, isolating Base Miles from Bonus Partner Miles, immediately proving the card's everyday value.
Overnight Miles & Savings Calculator (New Value Stream)
The Feature: We launched a new feature called "Overnight Miles," allowing users to earn passive miles simply by maintaining a balance on their card.
The Design: To drive adoption, I designed an intuitive, interactive in-app forecasting calculator. Users can slide through balance tiers to instantly visualize potential monthly and annual mile accumulation, lowering the barrier to feature comprehension.
Immersive Art Direction (Emotional Design)
The Feature: The original design felt like standard corporate banking. It lacked the aspirational energy of travel.
The Design: I introduced a refreshed visual identity featuring smooth transitions, micro-animations of skies, and a soaring airplane. This aesthetic shifts the user mindset from mundane daily spending to an adventurous narrative of working toward their next destination.
The Future Roadmap (Next Release)
To further elevate retention and turn everyday spending into a goal-oriented habit, we are designing a Destination Milestones feature for the upcoming release.
Goal Tracking: Users can select dream travel destinations (e.g., Rome, New York) right inside the app.
Visual Milestones: The UI will dynamically calculate and show exactly how many miles are required to book an award ticket to those specific locations.
Smart Notifications: Automated push and in-app alerts will celebrate when a user successfully reaches the miles threshold for their chosen trip.
Impact & Key Takeaways
By transitioning the interface from a static ledger to an interactive, goal-oriented dashboard, we successfully realigned the product with user desires and business needs.
Empowered Users: Providing real-time progress tracking eliminated the black box, turning a confusing financial milestone into an accessible, rewarding game.
Reduced Operational Strain: Drastically minimized user reliance on customer service lines for balance and milestone checks.
Design for Emotion: Proved that incorporating thoughtful motion design and immersive themes directly influences how users perceive the value of a digital banking product.
