Employees get Suntory Plus through their workplace as a health benefit: log small health actions and earn point-based rewards for staying consistent. The model hinges on one behavior repeating, completing tasks three times a week, until a habit forms.

That loop is also the weak point. When users drift from the rewards, little else pulls them back, and by the time I joined, that drift was already showing in the data.

If employees stop opening it, the client's investment, and contract renewal, are at risk. The declining retention curve wasn't cosmetic. It was existential.

My brief: break the stagnation and make the app form a habit on its own. There was also a hard constraint: the client needed to launch before year-end to capture a clean Week-8 retention read, leaving me about two months to design freeze. Speed was a fixed requirement, not a nice-to-have.

I started from data, not assumptions. Log analysis surfaced a clear lever: users who earned the 3×/week reward retained far better, and users who stayed active through their first eight weeks rarely churned afterward. That made Week-8 retention the metric to move, the point where the habit sets, and it tracked closely with reward acquisition.

So the real question wasn't "what feature do we add?" but "why aren't more users reaching a loop that already works?" A UX audit found two root causes.

Problem 01

The reward feature was buried

Deep in the app, so users never saw the earning opportunity and lost the motivation to stay engaged.

Problem 01

The reward feature was buried

Deep in the app, so users never saw the earning opportunity and lost the motivation to stay engaged.

Problem 02

The reward rules weren't intuitive

Even users who found them couldn't tell how to earn points, or what their effort was worth.

Problem 02

The reward rules weren't intuitive

Even users who found them couldn't tell how to earn points, or what their effort was worth.

The team was mostly new, with no shared definition of success. Before touching the IA, I ran an alignment workshop to lock down one product vision and the metrics we'd measure against, so the redesign had an agreed direction from the start.

I then worked in two roles. As project manager, I owned the schedule and facilitated the meetings that kept PO, engineering, and design in sync. As UX lead, I set the direction, made the core interaction decisions, and directed two UI designers through design reviews.

During wireframing, the main design challenge was to communicate the “three times per week” rule without relying heavily on explanatory text.

I explored a stamp-card pattern because it made weekly progress feel concrete, familiar, and easy to scan. This allowed users to understand their current status at a glance, even before reading the details.

Point 01

Reward path on the redesigned Home

Progress toward the next reward moved to the top level, visible the moment the app opens.

Point 01

Reward path on the redesigned Home

Progress toward the next reward moved to the top level, visible the moment the app opens.

Point 02

Visible Progress

A calendar card that earns a stamp per completed day. The "3×/week" rule becomes self-evident: you see what's done and what's left.

Point 02

Visible Progress

A calendar card that earns a stamp per completed day. The "3×/week" rule becomes self-evident: you see what's done and what's left.

Point 03

Onboarding coach marks

On first launch, coach marks walk users through the core actions and surface that rewards exist, closing the discovery gap before it costs engagement.

Point 03

Onboarding coach marks

On first launch, coach marks walk users through the core actions and surface that rewards exist, closing the discovery gap before it costs engagement.

The final design brings weekly progress, remaining tasks, and reward status into one visible area on the home screen.

By using a stamp-card format, the interface translates a complex reward rule into a simple visual habit loop: complete an action, earn a stamp, see progress, and move closer to a reward.

This helped users understand what to do next and made continued engagement feel more achievable.

After the redesign, users were more likely to earn weekly rewards and continue using the app over time.

The reward acquisition rate increased by 12%, suggesting that more users understood and completed the weekly reward flow. Week 8 retention also improved by 6%, indicating a positive impact on continued engagement.

The biggest lesson was leverage: one well-surfaced core loop beat any amount of new feature work, and aligning the team on shared metrics early saved weeks of rework.

Under the deadline, I made a deliberate call: ship to capture the Week-8 retention window rather than spend the runway on pre-launch testing, keeping the bet defensible through log analysis and prior data. With more time I'd front-load lightweight usability testing, but the skill this project sharpened was making a high-confidence call under a real deadline, clear-eyed about the tradeoff.