summary
mission
Mastercard, a globally recognized brand and one of Sure's clients, aims to enter the dining reservation space with their own design solution. They partnered with our team to create a high-resolution proof of concept to launch this initiative.
my role
I was the primary designer tasked with researching, iterating, and providing final designs for this project, before sending them off to our CEO for the official pitch.
impact
Mastercard, a company with reach to over 350 million cardholders, was thrilled with the execution of this project and intends to launch in 2025.
client
Mastercard
services & skills used
User Experience Design
User Interface Design
Research & Analysis
Hi-Resolution Prototyping
Making reservations online has never been easier.
For many credit card companies, there's instant appeal: customers are looking to dine out, and how better to do so than with exclusive benefits and access?
The entry into this market has already begun with American Express buying Resy (among other competitors), and so naturally Mastercard was looking to do the same.
Mastercard, a client of Sure, approached us with the premise: what would a branded experience look like?
I had worked with Mastercard quite a bit as a partner on the Creative Services team; including:
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maintaining and streamlining variable tokens for their Design Library,
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modernizing and cleaning up their design files,
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developing new concepts for existing products.
The exciting thing about this project, however, was that it was unlike any other product we had worked with them on thus far - this fell outside of the scope of digital insurance solutions and into an exciting new horizon.
competitive analysis
The market for reservations platforms is currently occupied by a few major names: Resy, OpenTable, and Tock. There were clear commonalities between them, though - access to many different options, a map view, clear time options.
It's not hard to imagine why these things work; a user is looking either because they have a spot, location, or cuisine in mind, or because they are hoping to come up with an idea for a same-day or future dining event.
Plus, if they've accessed this through their benefits portal (as would be true in the case of Mastercard), they'd want to be able to make any reservations in a way that was
frictionless, easy, and even incentivized.
Some of my initial observations were that it would be important to use recognizable patterns, it would be key to emphasize beautiful and appealing imagery wherever possible, and it is easy for these platforms to get overly complicated.
There is a deceptive amount of capability possible to be built in - in the filtering alone, a user might be able to select any number of options to specify their search down to the perfect result.
iteration & design
After several iterations and attempts to simplify the "purchase flow" - or, entry through confirmation - I decided there were a few pieces that were crucial to focus on.
The primary questions were: is the solution simple?
Is the design clean, while using exclusively what users are used to seeing in Mastercard designs?
Is there a proven time-to-value, when a user enters the flow to the point they've secured the reservation?
In the end, the designs were a hybrid between what the Mastercard Component Library leant itself to and what the average consumer is used to seeing, in terms of flow and convention.
I decided, for the sake of this high-fidelity proof of concept, to air on the side of simplicity.
This meant rather than leading with a map view, the search feature was key. With as little overwhelm as possible, the user can easily go from their Benefits Portal to securing a spot for tonight.
in conclusion
In late 2024, Sure's CEO held a successful meeting with Mastercard's team, showcasing a high-resolution prototype of these designs.
Creating for such a global brand was an exciting challenge, especially given my familiarity with their component library.
Looking ahead, there’s a real possibility to keep improving these designs by adding more user-friendly features, giving the map greater prominence, and better showcasing Mastercard's promotional offerings. That being said, it was exciting to have the concept met with enthusiasm from their team; looking forward to seeing these live in 2025.