A two-week usability research sprint
In January 2022 I ran a two week usability sprint for a B2B client's online loyalty program app. The product offers discounts, cashback and bonuses across B2C and B2B2C scenarios. The trigger was a plain support ticket: some people did not know where to click to buy again. This article walks through the full research report. Client identity and screen details are blurred; the process and method stay intact.
Five steps, one reported problem
To avoid disrupting the existing flow, the product had split first purchase and repeat purchase into two separate buttons. That made business sense, but the support reports showed people getting lost. I framed the research as five steps: gather questions internally, prepare the user test and find target users, summarize results, analyze the target users, then redesign and retest.
What eight users showed us
Following Google's UX testing guidance, a group of 3 to 5 users already yields stable signals; we interviewed 8 people aged 22 to 50 who had never used the app. In person participants walked a 1 on 1 script; the rest ran a remote Maze track. The result: 2 of 8 failed the repeat purchase task, and both noticed the Redeem area first, then New, leaving the actual buy buttons third in their reading order.
The secondary findings mattered just as much: users unfamiliar with digital wallets clicked Good deals first, wallet savvy users tapped their balance first, and every single participant found the words Good deals confusing. Older users were unsure which buy button was meant for them, and almost nobody read the long descriptions.
Redesign, prototype and retest
Analysis turned the two blocked participants into a persona and a journey map with emotions, thoughts, touch points and unmet needs, then a do or do not decision per pain point. The redesign raised the buy entry in the visual hierarchy and rewrote labels in the users' own words. A clickable prototype went through a second round with target users: all 10 completed the repeat purchase.
Takeaways
Two weeks, one designer and eight users were enough to turn a support complaint into a verified redesign. Three takeaways: collecting internal questions first aims the script at real disagreements; mixing in person and remote testing fills the sample within the timeline; and a journey map is not a deliverable, it is the shared language that convinces the team the users really think this way.
