Kate Youk - UI/UX & Graphic Designer

BiteBack

BiteBack is a mobile rewards platform focused on making reward redemption clearer, easier, and more engaging.

As the UI/UX design intern, I redesigned the mobile rewards experience, identified friction points in the user journey, and helped shape a customer-facing MVP.

The redesign increased reward redemption from ~20% to ~40%, improving feature adoption and overall engagement.

Client

BiteBack

Service Provided

UI/UX Design, User Research, Product Design

Product Design

Case Study 01 · 2025

BiteBack

Redesigning rewards to double redemption.

Redesigned BiteBack's mobile rewards experience as the sole UI/UX intern at a 7-person startup. During the observed pilot period after launch, the share of eligible rewards redeemed moved from approximately 20% to approximately 40% — a directional product outcome I contributed to, not an isolated causal claim.

UI / UX

Mobile

Startup MVP

Impact

20% → 40%

Redemption, pilot period

ROLE

UI/UX Designer Intern

Sole designer on rewards

Timeline

3 months

2025, MVP sprint

Team

7-person startup

PM · Eng · Design

—— THE PROBLEM

A large share of qualified users weren't redeeming.

Founders flagged that only about a fifth of users who had earned a reward went on to redeem it. Walking through the app end-to-end, I could see why: progress, discovery, and redemption lived in three different places, and each step asked the user to guess what came next. The rewards experience was behaving like a scavenger hunt, not a loyalty tool.

—— Context & My Role

The context

BiteBack is a 7-person startup building a mobile rewards platform for local restaurants. I joined as the sole UI/UX intern during the MVP push, working directly with the founders and two engineers.

What I owned

I led the redesign of the rewards redemption flow end-to-end — auditing the existing experience, mapping friction points, and delivering build-ready specs that were implemented in the customer-facing MVP. Business, marketing, and partner acquisition were owned by the founders and ran in parallel.

—— CONSTRAINTS ——

Before I could redesign, I had to work inside three tight boundaries.

—— Insights ——

Three findings shaped every decision after this point.

—— Outcome ——

A directional product outcome, honestly reported.

During the observed pilot period, the share of eligible rewards redeemed increased from approximately 20% to 40%. Because product, partner, and marketing changes occurred during the same period, I treat this as a directional outcome the redesign contributed to rather than a controlled attribution.

Figma exploration board — customer flow (top) and business flow (bottom), plus punch-card and onboarding variants.

—— Final Designs ——

Four end-to-end flows delivered to engineering for the customer-facing MVP.

01 Launch — sets the brand tone and invites sign-up.

02 Home — partners surfaced with visual, comparable cards.

03 Partner detail — current

deal is the first thing you see.

04 Punch card — visual progress replaces abstract point tallies.

05 Reward earned — a clear preview before commit.

06 Redeem — one-tap barcode, staff-scan, done.

—— Reflection

This project taught me that reducing hesitation can be as valuable as adding functionality. Making progress visible and outcomes predictable helped turn an abstract rewards system into a clearer, more actionable experience.

—— Findings → Decisions ——

Three observations from the audit, and what I changed because of each.

Findings came from a walk-through of the existing app plus founder interviews. Each finding is paired with the specific design decision it drove and the reason the decision was made — written out here rather than buried inside a mockup.

—— Iterations

From 40+ frames explored to a focused set delivered to engineering.

I moved from wireframes to mid-fi to final in weekly cycles, reviewing with engineers on feasibility and with the founders on business fit. Punch-card visuals went through four rounds before landing on a version that felt both branded and buildable within the sprint.