Optimizing the Verizon Up reward claiming experience

The discovery phase began with a deep dive into the existing Super Tickets experience. We reviewed user flows, past research, Voice of the Customer insights, and customer care transcripts to clarify and validate our understanding of the current claim process.

We focused on four key areas:

• Understanding the design rationale behind Super Tickets, distinct from standard rewards.
• Evaluating how participation and eligibility rules were (or weren't) presented across the journey.
• Diagnosing mismatches between documented and actual user flows.
• Surfacing customer and business needs based on behavioral patterns and known pain points.

Alongside the artifacts, we reviewed direct feedback from customers and care specialists to help validate experience gaps and shape our audit priorities:

• "I'm unclear whether my monthly credit is used when I don't win." — 8-year customer
• "They're gone by the time I can scroll back up to claim them." — 3-year customer
• "Why do I need to enter my details when Verizon already has my address?" — 4-year customer
• "Some customers don't understand why their Super Tickets claim was unsuccessful." — Customer Care Specialist

These quotes revealed confusion around eligibility, fulfillment, and claim timing — and helped ground our assessment in real user experience.

My primary focus was auditing the user flows to identify discrepancies, outdated logic, and experience gaps.

After aligning with the team, I revised and restructured the documented flows to establish a more accurate baseline — which became foundational for UX writing and broader experience refinement.

To wrap up our audit, we translated our insights into a clear, validated view of customer and business needs. I partnered with the product manager to structure and prioritize these findings into an actionable foundation for upcoming UX, content, and system changes.

What we learned from the competition:
To inform our approach, we analyzed how competitors handled time-based ticket availability across live and non-live events — including concerts, sweepstakes, lotteries, and digital promotions.

We identified three key patterns:
1. Time-based event mechanics

• Live events prioritized immediacy, with availability windows lasting hours or even minutes.
• Non-live formats centered on submission deadlines, with outcomes shared later.
• In both cases, clear timing helped set user expectations and drive urgency.

2. Engagement without strain

• Competitors like Hamilton Lottery, Disney Movie Rewards, and the London Symphony Orchestra used dynamic messaging and staggered release tactics to keep users engaged — while minimizing backend load.
• These strategies balanced customer excitement with operational resilience.

3. Rule transparency

• Clear eligibility and participation rules were consistently surfaced upfront, often through progressive disclosure or inline guidance.
• This reduced confusion and support dependency — a key learning for us.

The analysis was done in collaboration with the UX writer to understand not just what was communicated, but how — informing our content strategy and structural hierarchy.

To build a more competitive experience, we conducted a feature analysis comparing Verizon's Super Tickets with similar offerings from entertainment and digital rewards programs — including the London Symphony Orchestra, Hamilton Lottery, and Disney Movie Rewards.

We organized features into a clear matrix to validate existing functionality and identify enhancement opportunities. This helped pinpoint experience gaps and inspired four new features to elevate the Super Tickets experience.

Four feature opportunities were identified:

1. The waiting room: Places participants in a virtual holding area before the event opens, helping manage demand and traffic surges.
2. Participant count display: Builds real-time anticipation and a sense of scale by showing how many others are in line.
3. Ticket inventory display: Displays how many tickets remain to encourage urgency and informed decision-making.
4. Event reminder notification: Drives attendance and engagement by prompting customers before the event begins.

These features laid the groundwork for experience differentiation and informed our upcoming UX strategy.

Before advancing new features, we partnered with product and tech leads to validate feasibility and define next steps for testing and implementation.

Our design proposal:

• Integrate up to two new features.
• Support integration with updated flows and prototypes.
• Validate technical feasibility before user testing.

Feasibility outcomes:

• Waiting room: Excluded due to engineering complexity.
• Participant count & ticket inventory: Blocked by internal policy restricting display of volume-based data.
• Event reminder notification: Required a shift in timeline, but was ultimately approved.

Outcome:

I collaborated with product and engineering to negotiate a path forward for the event reminder notification. We secured alignment to validate interest through user testing and move toward implementation in an upcoming sprint.

To define what needed redesign, we cross-referenced prior research artifacts, competitive insights, and feature analysis. This helped us pinpoint experience gaps and confirm which parts of the Super Tickets journey most needed attention.

We prioritized clarity around participation rules and identified three key areas to focus our redesign efforts:

• Super Ticket Section: Where users first encounter the event and its structure.
• Super Ticket Reward Card: Communicates what customers can win and how.
• Super Ticket Claim Flow: Guides users through reward redemption.

We explored variations in content and experience design across the three key areas, focusing on clarity, motivation, and perceived fairness. To avoid overwhelming users during testing, we limited experiments to 2-3 variations per area, transforming them into quick-turn prototypes for feedback.

Content experiments focused on:

• Claiming time mechanics.
• Time-based vs. first-come, first-served rules.
• Perceived winning probability.
• Eligibility frequency.
• Credit usage clarity.

Experience improvements targeted:

• Communicating future eligibility.
• Optimizing the form countdown timer.

To streamline early feedback, we used paper prototypes. These allowed us to test messaging and experience updates rapidly without investing in highfidelity design too early.

Want to see an example?

We collaborated with the research team to develop the research brief and stimuli, then the team conducted moderated usability testing over five days. Each session included five participants (25 total), observed live by the full cross-functional team to identify friction points, content gaps, and unmet user expectations.

The team synthesized findings daily and iterated in real time — improving clarity, interaction patterns, and content hierarchy across the Super Ticket claim flow.

The "Choose" tab hosts the upcoming Super Tickets, where users can attempt to claim rewards. While this section displayed one participation rule, users struggled to understand key details like eligibility, timing, and credit usage.

During the countdown phase, the title lacked specificity and consistency with other sections. Participation rules were sparse, leading to confusion about when tickets could be claimed, whether winning was guaranteed, and how credits were used.

• Clearly state when tickets can be claimed.
• Emphasize that claiming does not guarantee a win.
• Highlight the time-sensitive and unrestricted nature of the reward.
• Explain credit usage and eligibility frequency.
• Align section title with reward type and page conventions.

Low-fidelity paper prototypes revised the title, added key participation details, and clarified availability windows.

We tested how well users:

• Understood the claim rules.
• Interpreted credit usage outcomes.
• Perceived their chances of success.

The "Super Tickets" section hosted upcoming Super Tickets rewards until the countdown concluded. When a Super Ticket reward became claimable, the card moved to the "New Rewards" section, disrupting the user flow and creating inconsistencies compared to other sections.

At the countdown's conclusion, users were forced to scroll to the top of the page to find the newly available reward.

This relocation:

• Slowed claiming speed, reduced users' winning chances.
• Introduced inconsistency across sections.
• Triggered additional API calls, impacting platform performance.

Users were confused by the abrupt move and some misinterpreted the call-to-action label, believing that claiming guaranteed a win.

• Maintain available Super Tickets in their original section upon availability to preserve consistency and minimize disruption.
• Reduce technical strain by avoiding unnecessary API calls.
• Clarify the experience to set accurate expectations around claiming and winning.

We proposed displaying available Super Tickets within the same section where users anticipated them.

• Created a revised user flow and prototype illustrating the improved reward availability logic.
• Collaborated with Tech and Product teams to validate feasibility and performance impact before user testing.

• Tech confirmed that relocating rewards triggered unnecessary API calls.
• Product and Tech teams validated the proposed solution to maintain rewards within the Super Ticket section, setting the stage for user testing.

Low-fidelity prototypes kept available Super Tickets within their section and refined messaging.

We tested how well users:

• Navigated the claiming process without searching or scrolling.
• Understood the distinction between "claiming" and "winning."
• Perceived consistency across the Super Ticket experience.

To claim a Super Ticket, members must meet three conditions:

• At least six months must have passed since their last claim.
• They must have one available credit.
• They must complete a delivery form within four minutes of claiming.

Once users confirmed credit usage, they were directed to complete a delivery form within a strict four-minute window. This final step introduced significant time pressure, resulting in usability friction and risking forfeiture of the reward.

The four-minute countdown to complete the form led to stress, especially for users who were:

• Typing slowly or using mobile devices.
• Inputting a delivery address different from the one on file.

This approach:

• Created a high-pressure environment.
• Provoked mixed emotional responses due to the blank form state.
• Increased the likelihood of user drop-off, particularly among less confident participants.

• Reduce manual input to accelerate form completion.
• Maintain a sense of urgency without causing panic.
• Ensure successful reward claim without increasing cognitive load.

Design solution

As the design lead, I proposed two key enhancements:

1. Optimize delivery input by allowing users to select a saved billing address via dropdown or confirm using a checkbox.
2. Extend the submission timer from 4 to 8 minutes to reduce pressure while maintaining urgency.

Feasibility validation & outcome

Tech confirmed both enhancements—billing address selection and timer extension—required additional lead time for development.

To deliver value quickly, in partnership with Product, Tech, we prioritized a phased approach:

• Implement an interim version with form pre-population using billing data on file.
• Plan to roll out the full solution (dropdown + timer extension) in the next quarterly release.

Solution adaptation

In collaboration with Tech and Product, we released a refined interim design:

• Pre-populated the delivery form using billing information on file.
• Reduced user input to accelerate submission without overwhelming the experience.

Prototype focus

Low-fidelity prototypes showcased the pre-populated form and were used to test:

• User response to reduced manual input.
• Whether urgency was preserved without inducing panic.
• User trust and confidence in the pre-filled data.

To support implementation and ensure long-term scalability, I delivered a complete design package—finalizing key artifacts and collaborating closely with Product, Engineering, and QA for a smooth and confident handoff.

Spearheaded and finalized the end-to-end user flow production to reflect the redesigned experience and account for critical fulfillment edge cases.

This included new interaction moments:

• The delivery form timer extension (to reduce timeout friction).
• The abandonment logic (to address drop-off during claim).

Developed the program's first comprehensive sitemap to organize the full user journey across all reward types, encompassing the following sections:

• Learning about the program.
• Enrollment.
• Support & learning.
• First time use & returning use.

This helped the team see how different paths—such as enrollment, support, and return visits—connected to reward experiences such as Partner, Verizon, Bonus, Super Tickets, and Local Offers.

Delivered a detailed handoff package to ensure clarity across teams and minimize guesswork during implementation. It included:

• Annotated user flows & prototype screens.
• Asset documentation and fulfillment logic.
• Coverage of edge cases.