Samsung Pay Cash Back

Company: Samsung Research America
 

Overview

During my second contract at Samsung, I worked on the Samsung Pay team. Over the course of the next 6 months I was the lead designer responsible for the new cash back promotion program. As UX designer I was involved with a number of releases from the initial feature launch, the v2 update, and a cross-channel cash back feature as part of the Samsung Browser shopping assistant Quick Suggest.

Samsung Pay - in-app cash back flow

The cash back feature was a major change for the release of Samsung Pay. The team worked under tight deadlines to release the first version in just under 3 months. I was responsible for the UX and general UI layouts but the team have a separate visual designer for the finished look and feel.

The core work was creating the user flows, the various endpoints, edge cases and subsections where cash back would appear in the app.

The first version of the app was primarily focused on initial release of cash back as a feature with onboarding cards and tips, a new deals section, a new transaction history, and a variety of push notifications (not shown). I also worked closely with the legal, PM and localization teams to create the UX writing copy to be both natural and transparent about the nature of the promotion.

The second version of the app added two additional main features: the cash back offers became part of the wallet section, and you could now pay for a gift card using your accumulated cash back balance (not shown).

Quick Suggest - in-browser cash back flow

A separate but related project was Quick Suggest, a Samsung Internet browser add-on which promotes deals while browsing eCommerce websites.

If quick suggest is enabled, a small circular ⓘ appears in the bottom corner of eligible pages, including a first-time onboarding animation where the icon unrolls and displays the message “get coupons and cash back”. Clicking it takes you to a mini window with available deals. If Samsung Pay is enabled, the relevant deal will appear and any earned balance gets applied to your Samsung Pay cash back credit.

Conducting user research and working with other teams

In addition to my work on the cash back and Quick Suggest projects, the lead researcher on the team and I conducted a deep analysis on competitor payment experiences, as well as perceptions on the Quick Suggest prototype. We even had in-person participant research with live terminals to test out alternative concepts for making the in-store payment experience simpler. Despite the short production cycles we were able to get feedback from customers on both sets of products which was great for staying connected with the work we were doing.

I also spent a good bit of time fostering relationships with the marketing and hardware engineering teams, each with its own advantages. Building a relationship with the marketing team gave both groups better alignment on what features we were showing potential customers. Speaking regularly with the hardware engineering team led us to some insights about how to improve the user experience from a physical/mechanical sense of placing the phone on the scanners, in particular when using older MST or “magnetic stripe” card readers, a key advantage of Samsung Pay.

Individual contribution and takeaways

Unlike many of my previous contracting projects, the work that I did on Samsung Pay cash back and Quick Suggest launched during my tenure there. This was my first experience dealing with a full cycle from the early stages through engineering and legal reviews, translation and QA. This was also my first time being the proxy for the UX team, having the tough conversations with engineering and PM. As stressful as it was at times, it ultimately led to a successful launch and a better relationship between UX, PM and engineering by the time of v2. Beyond the core work of UX, the work at Samsung Pay gave me a lot of confidence in navigating tense conversations about conflicting objectives and being a better design leader and decision maker.