Xbox Rewards:
Rewards Experience
Ecosystem
Xbox circa 2023 - Present
- Product Designer 3
- UI
- Visual Design
Rewards programs are essentially a marketing strategy used to encourage customer loyalty by offering incentives that boost customer retention and increased spending for repeated engagement.
Xbox Rewards, aka "Rewards with Xbox," is an extention of Microsoft Rewards that lets users earn points by completing quests via playing games, and shopping in the digital Xbox store. Points are used to redeem for gift cards, games, DLC, sweepstakes entries, and charitable donations.
The Plan So Far
As you know, change is always constant and distractions happen, but you do your best to course correct. Here's a rough roadmap of where Xbox Rewards is at directionally.
Note: These designs are a version of the base experience so not everything is accurate. The contents of the Catalog are 80% wishful thinking and exploration on my part (for speculators, please do not take this for fact or plan of record).
Rewards Hub
Coming soon
Growing Pains
Coming Soon
Redeemables Hub AKA Catalog
Coming soon
Growing Pains
Coming Soon
Earning Points
The overall existing flows were maintained, but the "claim reciept" was updated to align to the existing visual system.
Playing Games
Play any Xbox game to earn some points.
Shopping
All purchases earn 1pt per dollar spent.
Collecting Unclaimed Points
There may be cases where you've completed a few quests but have not collected your points. There are two paths to do this: 1) Rewards hub dashboard, and 2) inside individual quests. All the Claim Points buttons will collect any unclaimed points.
Claim Receipt
The original receipt was confusing because it was so visually different from the general experience. For uninitiated players choosing to interupt gameplay to react to the notification, it would be baffling. I've experienced this personally as an Xbox customer prior joining the team.
Note: There is a future plan to redesign.
Redeeming Points
Now that you have these points. What do you do with them?
One of the nice things about Microsoft Rewards points is that you can redeem them for digital and physical goods like gift cards, game add-ons, subscriptions, etc. Microsoft Rewards is generally lauded for this reason.
Rewards Catalog
It's easy to redeem your points. Xbox Gift Cards is the most popular option as it is a way to subsidize your gaming habit.
Leveling Up
Microsoft Rewards has a level system. Xbox Rewards did not expose this information even though the points and level system is technically shared.
The Xbox Rewards program consists of two main activities———play and shop———which fuels a level system that boosts a user's earning potential as well as open them up to new benefits the more they enage with the Xbox ecosystem.
History
Coming soon
Migrating experiences
Coming soon
Deprecating Microsoft Rewards app on Xbox
Coming soon
Desktop App
Coming soon
Two Mobile Apps
Coming soon
What's the Web Experience Like?
Xbox.com is owned by the marketing org, which is a no-no zone for some unknown corporate political reason 😐
Explorations
Coming soon
Iterations
Coming soon
Growing Pains
I need to talk about my experience on the Xbox Loyalty team. I came in at weird period of time where the team was starting to form. The Rewards program on Xbox was moving from two orgs Xbox and Microsoft Rewards. The most of the team that took on this responsibility... It's been a challenge.