Five Years of yuu Rewards: What We Got Right in Design

From Graph Paper to Attention Battles

Ms Chan: Hello and welcome back to Loyalty Unlocked! I’m your host - Marketer by day, podcast host by night, but don’t be fooled, I’m also AI – as is this whole podcast and all voices.

Ms Chan: One thing that is real though is yuu Rewards – and this month is a bit special as they’re celebrating the five-year anniversary of yuu Rewards — launched on July 30th, 2020. Five years of groceries, slurpies, egg tarts, face-masks, points and more.

Ms Chan: But behind that success was a very deliberate approach to design — and today we’re diving deep into that story. We’re joined by the man who helped build it and is now writing the book on it. Mark, welcome back.

Mark Sage: Thanks very much. It’s great to be here — and I have to say, five years feels surreal. It’s flown by.

Ms Chan: Your latest chapter is deep — and kind of nostalgic! Talking about the ‘problem of the problem’, you take us all the way back to 1991, working on the IBM System/36. What’s the story there?

Mark Sage: Well, I wanted to show that the concept of constraint isn’t new — it’s actually where I learned to design. Back then, software had physical limits. I used a language called RPG to code and every bit of memory, every character on screen, every bit of disk space - it all had to be accounted for.

Ms Chan: Speaking of disk space - I love that story about the guy with the System/34 — who could hear how full the disk was.

Mark Sage: Yes! He could tell by sound alone. That shows how tangible everything was. You didn’t just write software — you physically managed it.

Ms Chan: That sounds wild now. But it taught you discipline?

Mark Sage: Exactly. It wasn’t just about solving the problem — it was about solving how to solve the problem. We called it the problem of the problem.

Ms Chan: It’s funny, because I always thought minimalism was this cool, retro aesthetic, but for you it was just… survival.

Mark Sage: Well back then, it was cutting edge. We essentially had 'dark mode' when that was the only mode.

Ms Chan: Okay, fast forward to 2019. You’re building yuu Rewards — very different world. Cloud platforms, Figma, middleware. What changed?

Mark Sage: Everything changed. We had no real technical constraints anymore. You could spin up infrastructure instantly. Design was done in almost real-time, not drawn on graph paper. But in that abundance, a new constraint emerges.

Ms Chan: So constraint didn’t go away — it just moved?

Mark Sage: Exactly. The limit wasn’t technical anymore — it was human. The new constraint was attention. We had to earn our place on someone’s home screen, just like we used to earn a byte of disk space.

Ms Chan: That’s a great line — and so true. Because the competition now isn’t so much the other retailer. It’s Instagram. It’s YouTube. It's TikTok. Anything designed to capture our attention.

Mark Sage: Totally. The app had to be simple, intuitive, and engaging from the first tap. That’s where the real battle was. A fight for relevance and attention.

Designing for Real Engagement in yuu Rewards

Ms Chan: So when you were building yuu, did you already know the app was going to be the thing?

Mark Sage: Yeah, absolutely. So, building on what we talked about before, with yuu Rewards, the app wasn’t just a channel—it was the programme. No plastic cards, no paper statements, no transactional website. If you didn’t use the app, you didn’t engage with the programme at all.

Mark Sage: That really was a huge shift from legacy schemes like Nectar in the UK, where the app was kind of an afterthought. With Nectar, we struggled to get people to install the app because, honestly, it wasn’t solving a real problem for them. Everything already worked with cards and statements. Penetration just stalled at 25%.

Ms Chan: So for yuu Rewards, if someone didn’t use the app, they weren’t in the programme?

Mark Sage: Pretty much. And that made the interface everything. It wasn’t just a channel — it was the loyalty experience.

Ms Chan: And yet, I still see some programmes treat their app like a digital brochure. You clearly took a different approach.

Mark Sage: We had to. If the app failed, the whole programme failed.

Ms Chan: Let’s talk about the principles that guided your design. You outlined four — Frictionless, Rewarding, Accessible, and Engaging. Walk me through them?

Mark Sage: Absolutely. Let me walk you through them the way we actually lived them, not just as words on a powerpoint slide.

Mark Sage: Frictionless was the baseline. We wanted every action—whether you were earning, spending, or just checking your points—to feel effortless, almost invisible. No unnecessary steps, no waiting around.

Mark Sage: Then there was Rewarding. If you earned points or got a deal, we wanted it to feel obvious and satisfying, not something hidden away in the fine print or tucked into some obscure menu.

Mark Sage: Accessibility mattered too. We knew the programme had to feel open and welcoming. Every brand should be easy to find, and nothing about the experience should feel like a maze.

Mark Sage: And finally, Engaging. This was about sparking a little joy each time you used the app. It wasn’t meant to be a chore or just another admin task—it had to be genuinely fun to use, something you’d look forward to. Those four principles weren’t just theory. They were what shaped every feature and decision we made.

Ms Chan: And these weren’t just stuck on a wall — they shaped actual decisions?

Mark Sage: Yes. Every feature, every screen got measured against these principles. They weren’t decoration — they were constraints in the best sense.

Ms Chan: I also loved how you guys took inspiration from Instagram for the offer feed. That vertical, image-led scroll is so familiar, it just invites you to keep browsing. It’s not just a list of deals—it’s actually fun to use.

Mark Sage: That was the plan. We wanted it to feel fresh every time you opened it. Offers would peek from below the fold, new ones would pop up daily, and the whole thing was visually rich. We even ranked brand banners at the top based on personal relevance, so your favourite brands were always just a tap away. No clunky filters, no breaking the scroll—just smooth, dynamic interaction.

Ms Chan: And that’s where the coalition tension comes in, right? Because you’ve got all these brands sharing the same space, and you have to make sure no one dominates. That’s where your fifth principle—Mutuality—comes in?

Mark Sage: Yeah, Mutuality was the one we didn’t talk about too much, but it was crucial. In a coalition, the app is shared real estate. If one brand tries to pull users away—like letting them earn or redeem in their own app—it weakens the whole ecosystem. So, we kept everything inside yuu.

Ms Chan: Wait, so no partner-branded QR codes or anything like that?

Mark Sage: Exactly. No QR codes in a partner’s app, no redemption outside our app. Even the sign-up process—everyone had to play by the yuu rules and use our branded templates.

Ms Chan: That must’ve ruffled some feathers.

Mark Sage: It did. But we did it to protect the ecosystem. If one big brand pulled users into their own app, they’d soak up the attention. That reduces visibility for everyone else.

Ms Chan: And that’s especially tough on smaller partners, right?

Mark Sage: Exactly. The law of double jeopardy shows that smaller brands already get hit with lower frequency. The yuu app helped rebalance that — as long as we kept it unified.

Ms Chan: That’s so interesting, because it’s not just about design, it’s about strategy. You’re balancing all these competing needs, but the principles keep you grounded. Okay, so you’ve got your principles - now let's get into the real nerdy bit — user testing. This was a multi-phase process, wasn’t it?

Learning from Users and Beating the Incumbent

Mark Sage: Yes — and we started before we even touched our own app. First, we wanted to understand how people understood loyalty and the terms associated with it – how did people feel functionality would intuitively fit together.

Ms Chan: How do you do that then? That sounds like you need to get into their head a little.

Mark Sage: We kinda did. We used an approach called Card sorting which gets the users to consider all the key features or ‘jobs to be done’ and then to group these together and prioritise them based on what feels natural – using bits of paper.

Ms Chan: So it’s like mapping their mental model?

Mark Sage: In a sense - yes. It also lets you understand the underlying context people may associate with a given label. For example: the label “My Offers” felt intuitive to us as a place to just show offers. But users assumed it meant personalised offers. If they saw generic deals under that label, they felt misled. That’s a small language choice with a big impact on trust.

Ms Chan: That’s gold. And so overlooked. So did you start testing your app next then?

Mark Sage: No – we were still focused on understanding what to build. So the next phase was testing the competition. We gave users tasks like “check your balance,” or “redeem a reward” — and then watched them use other loyalty apps.

Ms Chan: And what did you learn?

Mark Sage: Users hated friction — too many steps, going out to a browser, confusing labels. But they loved clarity. Quick access to offers and QR codes. And they really valued visual design — more images, fewer words.

Ms Chan: Then came your own wireframes?

Mark Sage: Right. In August 2019, we built two design directions — Design A was functional and packed with content, Design B was more visual and social. The business wanted more features, but we were focused on our constraint around engagement. So we ran preference testing internally to get a view from potential users.

Ms Chan: And?

Mark Sage: Design B — the visual one — won. Users said it felt more social and emotional even though the underlying content was identical and we had no actual social features in it.

Ms Chan: Because you were tapping into the language of social apps?

Mark Sage: Yes. Same features, different feel.

Ms Chan: That’s so cool. Sometimes less really is more. Let’s fast-forward — it’s early 2020, COVID hits, and now you’re trying to do user testing during lockdown?

Mark Sage: Yep. Launching a loyalty programme during COVID certainly made things a little interesting. This was the early days and people were rightly nervous mixing with strangers – so we pivoted to remote testing. We recruited via Facebook, then ran screen-sharing video calls where users completed jobs in both the yuu app and the MoneyBack app.

Ms Chan: Head-to-head?

Mark Sage: Yes - head to head! We’d previously benchmarked MoneyBack in our earlier testing, and this was essentially our main competition in the market - so it was important that we compared well.

Ms Chan: Ok - spill the beans!

Mark Sage: Well, thankfully it did test well! People found our app twice as appealing and twice as informative as the competition. When it came to the way we designed offers, we scored four times higher.

Ms Chan: Wow, four times? That’s impressive.

Mark Sage: Yeah—and get this: 70% of users described their experience of using our app with words like “playful”, “delighted”, and “creative”.

Ms Chan: That’s a massive emotional win.

Mark Sage: It was. Even our QR code page — a functional tool — was described as “more exciting"!

Ms Chan: But then you did something a bit rebellious — you added friction back in?

Mark Sage: Well, you know, data only gets you so far. Sometimes, you have to trust your gut. And, funny enough, even though our first principle was Frictionless, we did end up adding a bit of friction back in. Because sometimes, slowing the user down actually makes the experience better.

Ms Chan: I love that. It’s like, sometimes the best way forward is to pause.

Ms Chan: Mark, I could keep going forever. But this chapter really hits home. It’s not just about UX — it’s about how you think about UX. It’s also fascinating to see the work that went in behind the scenes to make sure you had an app experience that was going to land well. Final thoughts?

Mark Sage: Just this: Constraint isn’t the enemy. It’s the path. Whether it’s 80 characters on a green screen or 1.5 seconds of attention today — great design starts by understanding the real limits you’re working with.

Mark Sage: With yuu Rewards, we leveraged those constraints to focus our design and development – and it paid off! When we launched 5 years ago, we landed 2 million members in that first month and it’s been growing ever since.

Ms Chan: Wow – that’s a testament to focusing on the problem of the problem. And happy birthday again to yuu Rewards! Thank you for unlocking so many lessons with us today.

Mark Sage: It’s a pleasure as always. And just to add - it’s lovely to see yuu Rewards continuing to grow both in terms of members and partners – now 5 years on. Sure, great design helped, but ultimately, it’s down to the amazing team – both past and present.

Ms Chan: Alright, I think that’s a perfect place to wrap up for today. Mark, thanks for sharing all those stories—so much to learn from the journey. And thanks to everyone listening! We’ll be back soon with more on Loyalty Unlocked. Mark, see you next time.