Redesigning super app for 7-Eleven in Taiwan
✦ AI summary
Adam designed a series of user experience optimizations for 7-Eleven’s super app, OPENPOINT, which suffered from a cluttered and confusing interface.
Working in a two-person consulting team over three months in 2021, he utilized a thorough design thinking process—including user interviews and usability testing with over 25 participants—to identify core usability challenges and map out four distinct user personas.
To address navigation difficulties without restructuring the entire sitemap, Adam introduced a cleaner homepage layout that separated promotional advertisements from core features and added a customizable “Favorites” section. He also enhanced the voucher purchasing experience by enlarging the search bar and designing rich product cards, and established a clear, three-layered category system for points redemption.
Ultimately, over 50% of these design recommendations were implemented, helping shape a two-year product roadmap that contributed to a 2.5x increase in monthly active users by 2023.
I collaborated with 7-Eleven Taiwan to optimise their super app, OPENPOINT, which had 12 million users and 2 million monthly active users in 2021.
Operating in a two-person consulting team, we conducted in-depth interviews and usability testing with 25+ participants. Our 15+ design solutions directly shaped the two-year product roadmap for 7-Eleven’s super app.
*This is a personally updated version of the case study, now in English.
Our design solutions helped drive a 2.5x increase in monthly active users by 2023.
As a design consultancy, we didn’t have control over the implementation details. However, over 50% of our design suggestions were implemented in proposed ways in the following two years.
Three key design solutions for the Homepage, Vouchers, and Points experience are presented.
Problem 1: Users get lost easily on the home screen
The way-finding experience was problematic. The home screen was seen as messy and distracting with advertisements scattered around everywhere. Users struggled to find specific features.
Solution 1: Re-organised layout with customization options
By splitting the home screen into conceptual areas: features and advertisement, users can easily locate things by topics. A “Favorite” section was also added to allow customization based on users’ different feature needs.
Problem 2: Specific voucher products are hard to find
When browsing vouchers to buy, many users didn’t notice the search and category feature at a glance. It’s also hard to identify new products from the single column listing. Users took time to find specific vouchers they want to purchase.
Solution 2: Enhanced search bar, category tabs and rich product cards
I made the search bar bigger and placed it on top so it’s always accessible. The category tabs design was more evident and identifiable with icons and logos. Horizontal layout and rich product cards were created to have a balanced visual and information display, making new products easier to discover.
Problem 3: Redemption products are not easy to explore
When exploring redemption products, many users felt that there wasn’t too much to explore. The ill-planned categories made the listing a mix of products from multiple brands. Users found the product listing random and confusing to navigate.
Solution 3: Three-layered category for a clear hierarchy
I created a three-layered category system to give a better hierarchy of redemption products by separating brands, product types and redemption methods. This made the products easier to explore with a better navigation.
Despite rapid growth, the product team lacked deep user insights.
The super app—OPENPOINT offers a variety of services, including mobile payment, a loyalty program, and O2O (online to offline) shopping. With the rapid growth in users, its UX has been criticized by the public.
As the marketing campaign continued to draw more users in, 7-Eleven wanted to improve their retention by increasing their monthly active users. However, they had very little knowledge of their users. They were budgeted for an enhancement project but didn’t know where to start.
“Our team’s goal was to help 7-Eleven understand their users, identify user problems, and suggest design solutions to improve UX and ultimately increase user satisfaction and monthly active users.”
Design within limited scope and undefined problems.
The client didn’t have a prioritized problem to solve. Hence, we were given flexibility to decide what to work on. Our first step had to be investigating the overall app experience broadly instead of diving deep into a specific journey.
Since a majority of their users are middle-aged and less tech-savvy, the learning curve for them to embrace changes is higher. As a result, we were asked to keep the app sitemap intact and only focus on five parts of the super app—Homepage, Buying, Points, Payment, and Member Center.
We had to modularize enhancements for incremental changes.
Driving design decisions through rigorous user research.
Through a rigorous research-led process, we aimed to help the client understand who their users are, identify friction points, and increase active user retention through an elevated UX.
We recruited 12 users with diverse backgrounds for 2-hour semi-structured interviews and usability tests. After analyzing the data and ideating solutions, we developed a high-fidelity prototype and validated it with 8 additional users before finalizing our design recommendations.
We found four major personas and two unanimous user needs.
Four personas defined by discount sensitivity vs. purchasing power
We discovered that user’s sensitivity to discounts and their purchased amounts of online vouchers (e.g. coffee vouchers) construct the x-axis and y-axis that split our users into four personas.
The two axes represented users’ different needs and usage patterns, including their usage frequency and the features they use the most. This gave us great insights for the ideation phase. It also helped to communicate with our clients on design rationales.
Common needs — Users expect a simpler layout and less repetitive steps
We found that across all types of users, they referred to the app as messy, and complicated with too many features. They often get lost because the screen feels too busy and the steps feel repetitive.
“How might we deliver a better experience by adjusting layouts and reducing redundant steps.”
Common needs — Users only expect things they care about to stand out
We also concluded that customization was important because users’ needs are so different that they only expect things they care about to stand out. Irrelevant information was seen as unnecessary, which made them feel the app was complicated.
For instance, users who don’t seek any advertisement expect quick access to certain features they use in the app whereas users who actively search for all clues of promotions on the app are willing to spend time exploring and reading all the details.
“How might we deliver a better experience by providing customization in the app.”
Overall, we provided 15+ design suggestions. Many of them are related to users’ way-finding, navigation, and browsing experiences.
Interested in working together? Reach out at y3vu060312@gmail.com or connect on LinkedIn.