USA Today
User Engagement Strategy
Role:
Product Lead
Company:
Partnership with USA Today CX
Tools:
Figma, Adobe, Qualtrics
OVERVIEW
Only 2% of USA Today's app users authenticated: meaning 98% of readers were invisible to the business, with no behavioral data, no personalization capability, and no path to subscription conversion.
The USA Today CX team brought this project to us to determine why users weren't signing up and what it would actually take to change that. I led research, product strategy, and end-to-end design of a gamified rewards system to answer that question with something testable and measurable.
As a result, 84% of users reported rewards as their favorite feature, and 64% of users were somewhat to highly motivated to engage with app long term. This secures at least a 12% increase in long-term user engagement, and encourages the bridging of existing infrastructures like subscriptions into the rewards system.
OBSERVATIONS
Competitive analysis showed that publications like NYT and Washington Post both implemented and rewarded habitual content behaviors through programs like NYT Games as well as subscriber rewards.
Additionally, rewards should be implemented mindfully: gamified rewards may risk a publication's credibility if they become the focus of the experience. Based on user feedback, I prioritized minimalist and strategic implementation: rewards indicators appear on the news feed, prior to content, and after article completion reinforcing reading behavior at the moment it occurs without interrupting the editorial experience.
I explicitly prioritized rewards as they were more directly tied to the authentication behavior the business needed to change.
PERSONAS
Three distinct reader segments emerged with meaningfully different authentication motivations and risk tolerances:
Habitual readers: Users already returning consistently, identified as the highest-priority target. Large enough to move aggregate authentication rates and already predisposed to engage with a rewards mechanic.
Passive scanners: Lower priority as they don't visit frequently enough for rewards to accrue meaningfully. However, future functions like games may encourage regular engagement.
USER JOURNEY
User journey was critical throughout the rewards feature development process, as the goal is to both improve current experience as well as lay the groundwork for future improvements.
Focus included KPIs at each stage: ad insights, onboarding conversion rates, login frequency, and referral traffic and how user flow translated the strategy into a product architecture.
SURVEY OUTCOMES
Survey research (n=43) revealed that sign-up itself presented a significant barrier:
48% cited spam concerns, 27% questioned data legitimacy, and 23% named privacy as their core concern. The barrier was trust, which I addressed with more transparency regarding data usage and rewards.
I redirected the product strategy accordingly: from reducing sign-up steps to redesigning the value exchange itself.
PROTOTYPES
The select screens showcase the implementation of rewards logic end-to-end: an explicit sign-up prompt on the homepage with privacy messaging, a personalized recommendations feed with per-article points indicators, post-article reward confirmation, a rewards dashboard showing tier progress and star balance, and an audio summary tab that earns points through listening.
Throughout my design, I am addressing the retention and consistency stages of the journey map directly. Every screen was designed around the principle that the editorial content is always the primary experience; reward indicators are present but peripheral until a milestone is reached. The tier system (Intern → Reporter → Editor) was also designed to route toward subscription conversion, not compete with it.
REFLECTION
Next steps may involve further analysis of usage and user response to increased transparency in addition to rewards. The survey (n=43) supports directional conclusions but not segment-level confidence: a longitudinal cohort study with habitual readers over 60–90 days would sharpen every behavioral claim the prototype testing suggested.
Additionally, I would evaluate what authentication rate lift makes the program cost-effective given reward redemption costs.
Finally, I would evaluate additional functionalities that encourage user interest and engagement:
AI personalization
Podcasts
Games (i.e., Crosswords, etc.)