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"Before we could ever solve for our users' frustrations, we must first - really and wholeheartedly - understand our users' frustrations."

Exploring 84.51˚

The mysterious 84.51˚: the cryptic name behind The Kroger Company of stores' data-science behemoth, which unlocks CPG's (Consumer Package Goods) customer behavior insights, retail media/ad purchasing, loyalty rewards, and a host of innovative data-driven experiments.

It might go without saying that designing for data tables, report generation, or spending boat-loads of money to reach potential shoppers isn't as "sexy" as designing for the latest in UI trends, addictive doom-scrolling, or the dopamine rush of having a post go viral.

Yet, UX design is more than pretty pictures, clever interactions, or gamified achievements. It's about gathering the knowledge needed to advocate for the user, incorporate best business practices, and implement real solutions that makes lives easier.

What did I do at 84.51˚?

Actually, the question should be: What did we do at 84.51˚? As I could get nothing accomplished (or at least of any value) without the people around me. Whether collaborating with other designers and managers, engaging our engineers for their insight, or leaning on our user base for feedback. From discovery to delivery, the evolution of our products required an entire crew to make it happen.

Yet, here are a few areas I was able to stretch myself:

Fig1. - An overall depiction of the workload of my time at 84.51˚.
Fig1. - An overall depiction of the workload of my time at 84.51˚.

Roles and Responsibilities

Product Design | User Research | Service Design | Product Growth

Lead UX Designer (XD)
Jul 2021 - March 2025
  • Create and maintain comprehensive user journeys that are easy to understand
  • Long-range planning and implementation of next-generation design solutions
  • Synthesize user interviews to aid in understanding current problem areas
  • Ensure ways of working between business stakeholders and product teams remain seamless
  • Conduct extensive user research to derive key product insights
  • Lo and Hi-fi prototyping and usability testing to validate design decisions
Favorite Tools
  • Mural
  • Confluence
  • UserTesting/UserZoom
  • Figma
  • Meridian Design System
  • Engineer Feedback

From clipping to clicking: a case study

For the majority of my time at 84.51˚, I worked on an application (84.51˚ Prism) which enabled CPGs to reach and reward shoppers with coupons and other incentives for their loyalty to a particular brand.

Using the technology behind 84.51˚ Prism, these incentives were distributed to the right households at the right time; ensuring relevant offers for relevant recipients.

Yet, buying and delivering paper coupons is (or was) kind of an old game. How does a data-giant like 84.51˚ bring something so analog into the digital realm?

Fig2. - Verbatims of user-feedback on the current state UI.
Fig2. - Verbatims of user-feedback on the current state UI.

Enter user-interviews, stage right

Leading a team of design, product, and stakeholders, we sought to understand what users were feeling and thinking while planning and activating loyalty rewards for their customers.

For years, our users were expected to use our excel-esque system of planning and delivery for paper coupons.

It didn't take more than a few interviews to catch a few running themes.

Current state feedback
We needed to know what frustrated or confused our users
  • Data entry is a drag
  • It's difficult to make the numbers line up
  • This takes way too long to do
  • This data entry is largely symbolic of the real world
  • There's no indication of what we should invest
How might we...?
What are some things we could do to make this easier?
  • See insights based on historical performance
  • We have the data, why not use the science to fill this in?
  • Ensure these numbers are relevant to our shoppers
  • Provide events that are best for our brand
  • Use AI to help us speed this along
Fig3. - How we ranked the findings from our study
Fig3. - How we ranked the findings from our study

Top Hits and What Matters Most

We used UserZoom to create a study in which participants ranked, using a Likert scale, from 'very valuable' to 'not valuable at all' features and capabilities we heard from our previous user feedback sessions.

What we learned was actually surprising to us. We went in with some assumptions, and the results blew those assumptions out of the water.

AI capabilities to do their job for them, smarter sciences, and "data-driven insights" were there, but actually ranked pretty low.

Our users, almost unanimously, desired a few simple changes: to quickly create things, a more conventional IA, and a workflow that just makes sense. Our experience wasn't even bad currently; it just wasn't intuitive.

Fig4. - The mapped out current-state user flow. Details are obscured, but the disorder is evident.
Fig4. - The mapped out current-state user flow. Details are obscured, but the disorder is evident.

Remapping the Flow

I took on the task of auditing our capabilities and the information architecture that our users had to go through to accomplish their tasks. Realizing quickly that our part of the app was pieced together over the years, and that there wasn't a cohesive method to the madness.

What made matters worse, is that our internal colleagues who use the app had a very different set of support around them than our external users, who, when stuck on something, had to figure it out on their own.

We wondered, "why couldn't our app simply guide our users through the process? All the previous research we had done led us to remapping the entire experience from the ground up - implementing a streamlined hub-and-spoke model.

Thus, the Incentives Hub was born.

Fig5. - Re-mapped hub-and-spoke user flow of the incentives hub
Fig5. - Re-mapped hub-and-spoke user flow of the incentives hub

A hopeful addition to the team ♥

One of the most joyful aspects of what I do is having the opportunity to lead and mentor younger talent in their journey. During this project, one of our co-ops spent a few weeks with me and our team for this endeavor. Of course, I used this as an opportunity to give her the space to own much of it for her capstone project.

Collaborating together, we were able to gather the user research, stakeholder validation, engineering feasibility suggestions, and the business objectives and transform a once very manual process, into a largely automated, user-friendly design.

Fig6. - Initital Hi-fidelity design concepts showcasing the Incentives Hub and its capabilities
Fig6. - Initital Hi-fidelity design concepts showcasing the Incentives Hub and some of its capabilities
Fig7. - A mini plan-of-action to see this hard-work come to life
Fig7. - A mini plan-of-action to see this hard-work come to life

Bringing it to life

After presenting our research and designs to leadership and getting the thumbs up, it was time to get the ball rolling.

Working with the product and engineering team, we organized our plan-of-action in Jira and ProductBoard. Seeing it visibly in a timeline format made it almost feel real.

We used group voting to determine the most necessary features and were able to begin writing user stories around what we knew our merchants needed.

Problems Faced - Problems Solved

User feedback, business leadership, and a solid team would ensure our metrics reflected not only an increase in productivity, but less frustration along the way.

Problems
Users...
  • ...have too much data they need to enter quickly.
  • ...need to find relevant households to offer incentives to.
  • ...want the important metrics up front, not buried in reports.
  • ...want to see how their ROI is helping them.
  • ...don't want to be bogged down with offline back-and-forth
Solutions
Incentives Hub
  • ...guides users along the way, rather than making them find something.
  • ...surfaces the best recipients for the right incentives.
  • ...compares current and historic metrics, giving users an advantage.
  • ...shifts the conversation from "spending" to "earning".
  • ...houses all the necessary communications right within the app.

Measured Victories

OKRs are a way to establish success goals and determine relative success metrics against them.

Some of these OKRs achieved were:

  • Decrease time to task completion
  • Increase number of on-time activations, reducing reminder notifications
  • Increase number of relevant households receiving incentives
  • Increase user satisfaction within the product

"I'm seriously surprised you all were able to transform something so boring into something surprisingly enjoyable... even for work."

--Actual Customer