Accrue SavingsPartnership launch
Creating a first-of-its-kind saving for travel experience
- Role
- Lead Product Designer
- Tools
- Figma
- Type
- Product Design
- Duration
- 6 months
Overview
Accrue Savings is a first-of-its-kind savings platform that incentivizes you to Save now, Buy later. Justfly.com partnered with Accrue in Q1 2024 to offer consumers an easy way to save for travel and combat travel-related debt.
Problem
Younger generations are increasingly going into debt from travel impacting both their financial health and overall well-being. Research shows 81% of Gen Z Americans have incurred $500 in travel related debt.
Solution
Research shows that Americans are actively saving up for trips. A huge opportunity exists to provide a savings-based platform that prevents debt and rewards consumers.
Overview
A unique partnership that'll solve the problem of travel-based debt.
Accrue Savings partnered with Justfly.com, an online travel agency, to offer consumers a way to save for travel while earning rewards to combat travel-related debt.
I led the design of this pivotal partnership for this first-of-its-kind savings experience for travel.
Discover
Saving up for travel is not a new concept.
82%
of those who are currently planning a trip are actively saving up for it.
81%
of those going into debt from a vacation incurred over $500 worth of debt.
Source: Research conducted by Accrue Savings in partnership with Decode M.
Define
Partnership to meet 3 unique needs.
Users
Be able to save for travel easily, feel rewarded while doing so and feel a sense of accomplishment once done.
Accrue
To increase number of savers and funded accounts by making the experience easy and rewarding.
Justfly.com
Travelers be more loyal by saving for their trip and ultimately booking via their platform.
Approach
To narrow down the scope, I used a few methods to dig deeper into this.
1. Brainstorming
With my PM I led 3 brainstorming sessions with other teams to find out what this experience might look like which helped us narrow down the scope.
2. Competitive Analysis
Considering this was a first-of-its-kind saving experience, I looked at various saving and travel apps to see industry best practices and integration with wallets.
3. User research
I partnered with my PM to interview 7 people to learn what people expect when it comes to saving up for travel. We uncovered some interesting insights.
Ideate
An iterative design & product approach.
Taking into account the research I had done, I created some initial visual concepts to initiate discussions to shape the MVP and roadmap for this project.
Iteration 1: Personalized “saving goal amount and date”
User answers a series of questions to get a personalized saving goal and date.
Usability Testing
Uncovering user pain points that led to a different solution.
We showed early concepts to 8 users to shape design concepts. Key themes were:
Onboarding
Users felt decision fatigue because of being asked a lot of questions upfront before they could see their wallet
Funding
Leading with the date caused unrealistic saving expectations because deposit schedule amounts would seem high
Design Solution
A first-of-its-kind saving up for travel based on user expectations.
The feedback was really valuable because it led me to rethink the experience to better suit users. I realized we were having users do 3 things within 1 flow which was proving to be too much and the way I solved this was to separate these three experiences at various parts of the user journey.
Experience #1: Onboarding
User signs up to save for their next trip via the saving tab of the Justfly app. Once verified the experience focuses on educating the user on the value proposition of saving which is earning a %-based reward for every $ saved plus a one-time $25 reward.
Experience #2: Funding
Recurring deposits experience was revamped to let the user choose their schedule and via interaction design the user can see rewards they stand to earn as they are typing an amount. This lets them play around and instantly understand the value of saving.
Experience #3: Goal Setting
At goal setting the user enters trip budget and optionally can enter a destination, departure date, and travel occasion to track their progress toward their goal.
Experience #4: Booking the trip
At purchase, the user can apply their travel fund through a toggle while seeing the breakout of their deposits and rewards. The saved payment method is also shown in case the trip amount is higher than what is saved.
Impact
How is this performing?
The launch of this experience is a significant step towards saving up for travel from all sides. Results are trending positively and in line with what’s expected. We expect the numbers to tick up as we plan to launch gifting in Q3 2024.
12%
sign up rate in first 3 months
6 months
from concept to launch
| KPI | How we’re tracking | Goal |
|---|---|---|
| Sign-up rate | 12.2% | 15% |
| Funding rate | 4.5% | 6% |
| First bookings via partnership | 3 | 5 |
