Crafting Immersive Product Experiences Through Behavioural Economics
This is a collection of some of our work at Jar to improve retention, in which we used game design principles to create immersive product experiences for Jar app users.
My Role
✦ I led the multi-disciplinary design team, where I was actively involved in the user research and creative & strategic design direction,
✦ Owned problem framing with Product,
✦ Led design direction and experience strategy,
✦ Worked closely with Engineering on feasibility & rollout.
Success metrics were defined upfront, and design decisions balanced simplicity with scalability through close collaboration and a good deal of iterations.
PS: Image illustrates the team's joke on "badges"
We resisted the temptation & started by asking…
Our approach to addressing the challenge
The work started by understanding where users disengaged.
✦ Engaging with retained users (What keeps them going?),
✦ User who dropped off after saving for 2-4 weeks,
✦ Analysing data to identify existing user patterns,
✦ Extracting the value generated for users through current engagement features.
3 Key themes surfaced for us
Unable to see value in continuing
Value Perception
Saving remained an "intention" not a habit
Daily expenses fluctuate
Progressing to the next phase, as we understood the themes better.
A two-pronged approach
We used game design principles to build new and stitch together existing user touch-points to improve user retention, satisfaction and overall engagement.
Maximise momentum
✦ Achievement unlocked
✦ Streak psychology
✦ Celebrating smaller successes
✦ Social proof
✦ Progress visualisation
Make it meaningful
✦ Micro-learning modules
✦ Savings stories
✦ Goal visualisation
✦ Relatable interactions
Growth Area #1
Motivating users to save a little extra every week
Identified user behaviour
On Jar, users can start saving (daily, weekly or monthly) with autosave and manually as they wish. Some traits that we saw amongst users, that set the foundation for this new engagement feature…
✅ We saw that about 30% of the users who start “Daily Saving” also do a one-time saving with a small amount on the same day.
✅ Users who do not opt for “Daily Saving”, a small percentage of them also do a one-time saving with a small amount on the same day.
⚠️ Frequency of a one-time save (manually save) was generally low for users choosing to autosave daily, and even lower for users on the fence choosing to save manually.
Approach #1:
Weekly Magic
The construct of the game
Weekly Magic (version-1) is a 7-day “Mystery Card” collection challenge and repeats every week on Monday.
✦ The user gets a mystery card every time a saving is made.
✦ Each challenge has a different number of mystery cards: 5, 8 and 12, respectively.
✦ Upon completing a challenge, the user wins an “Extra Gold” reward, which gets added to their saving.,
✦ The saving amount increases as the weekly challenge progresses. The higher the savings, the higher the completion reward.
✦ When a challenge is not complete by the weekend, the same challenge is refreshed for the upcoming week.
Business impact
While initial performance missed targets, strategic optimisation of key user touchpoints transformed our metrics. By introducing contextual entry points at high-intent moments, visualising progress prominently, and crafting personalised re-engagement narratives for dormant users (3+ Days), we achieved significant traction across core KPI - Increase one-time.
Highlights
The 'Mystery Card' mechanic emerged as a powerful driver of user behaviour, accounting for 30% of all manual savings transactions - transforming an engagement feature into a significant lever for core business metrics.
✦ Users with “Daily Saving” active before the start of a new challenge almost always won the first challenge, reinforcing their saving momentum.
✦ Manual saving for an auto-save user increased from 1 transaction per week to an average of 2.7 transactions.
✦ While Weekly Magic demonstrated sustained value in user motivation, we observed predictable engagement decline patterns from Week 3 - reflecting the natural lifecycle of reward mechanisms and signalling opportunities for strategic refinement.
Approach #2
Spin the wheel
Growth Area #2
Transforming exploratory interest into confident engagement
About two-thirds of the users who create an account on Jar reach to home screen without having initiated saving on the platform. We tagged them as “Explorers”.
Day-one saving activation emerged as the defining retention predictor: users who bypassed saving opportunities in their initial session demonstrated only 10% organic return rates, crystallising the urgency of driving first-day saving engagement.
User questions during research
✦ “I saw the ad and was just exploring. What does this app do?”
✦ “What do I have to do?”
✦ “How does this app work?”
Our point-of-view
Explorers are the potential savers once they’ve been adequately informed about the workings of saving on the platform. For these users, we should create a learning experience once they have sped through the onboarding journey.
Approach #1
Quest
Unlocking different Quests based on the savings journey, interactions and engagements with the product
The construct of the game
A Quest is an interactive journey broken into smaller tasks, where users earn rewards for each milestone they reach. Completing all tasks unlocks access to the new Quest.
Quest is designed to be scalable, steps in quest could be customised as the user’s lifecycle and engagement journey on the platform.
Highlights
We saw encouraging and positive user behaviours upon making Quest live for a controlled crop of 20% of our DAU.
✦ 80+% of users who started the Quest completed more than 1 Quest task.
✦ We were able to reinforce the basics of saving on Jar via multiple-choice questions with 3 chances to provide a correct answer.
✦ 7% of the users who entered Quest activated their Daily Savings.
✦ Experiments for the focused discovery of new product offerings (in this case, a loan product we had launched) achieved higher CTRs.
Next steps: To scale and create tailored quests for unique user journeys.
Growth Area #3
Creating a clear sense of progress
While Jar users currently benefit from various reward structures, the perception of the same was disjointed. The existing journey lacked a clear way for the users to track the progression of their saving habits and offered incentives for their consistent saving behaviour.
To create a more coherent experience, we designed a comprehensive savings and rewards framework that:
✦ Seamlessly links a user's savings and reward milestones.
✦ Provides an intuitive progress tracker so users can visualise and take pride in their advancement.
✦ Offers meaningful rewards that feel closely tied to and are a validation of their consistent saving efforts.
Approach #1
Savings streak
How it work?
To reinforce the benefits of consistent saving behaviour, we introduced a 7-day streak system. Users who maintain a daily saving habit for a full week will be rewarded with a special bonus, such as extra gold added to their savings and smaller rewards in between.
What pain point it address?
This 7-day streak incentive addresses a key friction point for many users - the applicable GST (government tax of 3%) on each saving, which was leading some to perceive Jar as a 'loss-making app'. Data analysis has shown that users who save for 5+ consecutive days have 25-30% better week-over-week retention rates.
Our goal?
By creating this gratifying 7-day savings journey, complete with a meaningful reward, we hypothesised that we can overcome the negative perception and instead foster a strong sense of progress and accomplishment. This should help drive higher user engagement and long-term retention as customers feel motivated to maintain their saving streak.
Why it made sense from a business perspective?
By strategically aligning our existing reward structures with the new 7-day streak mechanic, we were able to offer users a highly compelling Extra Gold bonus at the end of the streak - without increasing the overall 'burn' rate.
We recalibrated the initial 'Daily Saving' and 'Weekly Magic' rewards to help offset the reduction in net savings due to government taxes during those first critical 7 days. This approach converts what was previously seen as a 'loss-making' experience into a gratifying saving journey
Approach #2
Progression of streak to “Savings Target”
Closing note
Our solutions helped us meet our user experience and business metrics to a good extent. There are new versions in the pipeline, based on the learnings from each solution. Each solution creates a virtuous cycle: meeting current metrics while uncovering new user patterns and behaviors. As users evolve through engagement, they reveal fresh opportunities for innovation. This continuous learning powers our product pipeline, ensuring our user experience stays ahead of emerging needs.
If you adopt anything from my experience at Jar, I hope you adapt it to your own context using your best judgment.
Acknwoledgement
Team members who contributed to bringing these ideas to life
Design team members: Riddhi, Lakshya, Sadaf, Swatishree and Sushant.
Product team members: Simran, Preksha & Samiksha.