Connecting Customers Instantly
AmigoClub is for Telcel customers without credit cards who pay 100-300 pesos a month and crave connection 24/7/365. The product keeps users running with one-click advances and loyalty gifts—customers are rewarded with 1MB per 1 peso spent on the platform.
My role
Lead and solo designer— discovery, user research, design, facilitator
The Team
Mike Heizte, Senior Manager Product Design
John Anderson, VP Product Management
The Challenge
Create Magic in 2 Weeks
Conceptualize, test, learn and design the AmigoClub Pre-Paid experience for Mexico’s telecommunication company TelCel.
Craving Connection
Preliminary research was conducted in Mexico City. 29 participants were interviewed about AmigoClub concept.
How much do you spend to recharge your phone?
29% 200 pesos/month
21% less 100 pesos/month
21% 150 pesos/month
15% 100 pesos/month
What is your primary use of your mobile device?
25% Social Media
25% WhatsApp
23% Calling
15% Music
How many times a month you recharge your phone?
66% once a month
24% twice a month
5% three times a month
5% four times a month
“I’d like to get rewards such as, earphones or chargers. I’d use this app right away.”
IDEATION SESSIOn, Week 1
Facilitation - Raising a Barn
Our goal for the project was to create an end-to-end experience for customers to capture their mobile device number and initiate the AmigoClub app. I facilitated a two-day design sprint or “Barn Raiser” ideation session where the team focused on long-term goals, challenges, sketches, and mapping out a rough journey for our customers.
Our high-level goals were to:
Make it fast and easy to use for our pre-paid customers.
Give pre-paid customers more control of their time and money.
Create a scalable platform for other business initiatives.
Let’s Design Inclusively
The user base for the app are individuals that live in a different location, environment, and mindset. To move beyond existing biases, I educated and experimented on a concept with the team to design for everyone, everywhere. This framing exercise was used to destroy any stereotypes that the team had about people and marketplaces.
Spectrums attempt to highlight the range of temporary or permanent challenges to consider when a person is interacting with AmigoClub.
Situations attempt to highlight situational challenges that everyone experiences. A situation is a temporary context that affects the way any person interacts with AmigoClub for a short time.
Review Ethically
I recommended the team to think ethically by using a 360 Review. This exercise is a way for the team on how the users might be affected at each stage of the product. We thought about effects in terms of emotional, physical, monetary, and safety.
After the exercise, the team thought about situations that forecast impacts and risks the product and the users might experience.
Start from the Beginning
The team created a map that illustrated how a customer will initiate from a TelCel representative. We envisioned that we will partner with TelCel to present a 10-15 second about the benefits of AmigoClub.
Sketch it Out
The team did several rounds of Crazy 8s on several touchpoints of the experience. We created SMS messages, collateral, and wireframes. These sketches positioned the project on a great foundation.
Key experiences and needs
Validation through Mobile Device Number
How might we evoke celebration?
Andriod first design
TelCel branded experience
Flexible Experience
I designed the flow based on the idea of a simple choose interface. Our hypothesis is to allow our users to separate each experience so that they are not confused between Advance and Top-up.
Instead of designing for the right answer, I designed a flexible system optimized for learning and optionality.
Who is TelCel?
After the two-day Barn Raiser session, I had to research TelCel from a brand standpoint. AmigoClub had to have a consistent look and feel to believe that it was part of a suite of TelCel products.
While researching TelCel the team discussed at a high level to use a progressive web application approach. Having a native web app will have versioning risks that might impact the project.
Iteration 1, Week 2
Let’s Get Advanced
The first iteration of the experience combined both the Advance (instant connection) and Top-up (pay first) use cases. In this scenario, the customer has validated with TelCel to be part of AmigoClub and choosing which plan is best for them. The team was concerned about the “choose” page and how complex it was. If we assumed it was confusing the users would be roadblocked.
The Pivot. 😱 The experience changed the same day. I had to quickly design another solution that highlights two flows. This allowed us to test and learn what users are engaging.
Iteration 2
Making it Simple
A critical part of the experience is for users to decide what they want to do. By adding an in-between page where they can choose their action our hypothesis is that it will help users on than specific scenario.
During this iteration, we wanted to use Material Design components because of the high usage of Android devices from our user group. Although this is a hypothesis we wanted to experiment with this theory and test it to our target audience.
Designs were critiqued with the Asurion Design Group
PREPARING THE TEST
Travel and Next Steps
The team wants to continue to iterate and prepare to travel to Mexico City to validate the designs. We will utilize a InVision prototype and approach users who are comfortable to provide their feedback. This might be disruptive for our users and wanted to validate location that is safe for the team to execute the test. This will give us insight on their needs, wants and expectations. We prepared some learning opportunities for us to capture while we are conducting our tests.
More to come!