An app eight million stronger
From the whiteboard to real growth.
I shaped Best Buy’s app growth strategy with key leaders, then delivered it hands-on. Every reason to open the app was placed where the research pointed, and eight million more people came in.
Eight million more people in the app over two years.
The store listing started selling reasons to install.
Customers got the dial on what Best Buy sends them.
One loyalty framework turns any team’s ask into a reward worth earning.
Growing past the best customers.
Best Buy’s best customers were already in the app. Growing past them was the company’s top priority, and every leader in the building had a different idea for how.
Growth was a business target and a customer promise at the same time. The next eight million opens had to be earned, not borrowed from the people already there.
Design the reasons.
People grow an app when they have a reason to open it, so design the reasons. I set the strategy with senior directors, then went hands-on to build those reasons wherever customers meet Best Buy, from the store listing to the navigation to the notification to the reward.
Workshops with the people who had the ideas.
I co-led sessions with business leaders and synthesized them into one set of reasons to open the app.
Readouts that went to the top of the house.
Research under every decision, designed with product partners and roadshowed from executive leadership down.
Then I built the reasons.
Principal at the strategy table and designer in the file, from the store listing to the reward.
The storefront before the store.
The listing said shop anytime, anywhere, which is true of every retail app. I rewrote the shelf so each screenshot names one thing only the app can do, with the real screen as proof.
A year later the same system carried the AI Gift Finder onto the shelf the week it launched, live on the App Store by the fourth of November.
Every reason within reach.
Finding things was the quiet growth lever. On the app and on bestbuy.com I named the zones before anyone argued about pixels, so search, fulfillment and account stayed fixed while a flexible row carried what the business wanted to steer that week.
Personalized links in the small-viewport navigation drew twenty times the engagement of the rest, so the dynamic zone earned its place, with guardrails so merchants cannot break it. The web header launches in 2026.
the engagement of personalized links against the rest, small viewport
breakpoints named, one system
Best Buy data as cited on the June 2025 navigation deck. Hand-off August 2025; launching 2026. Engagement and search metrics = xx.
Craft as a growth strategy.
The app was illustrating itself with borrowed figures in styles that disagreed with each other. I gave the visual language a vocabulary before a look, eight styles drawn on the same speaker and a mixing board that turns a direction into proportions.
Recipe 1 landed on 3D and isometric, modelled and rendered in Cinema 4D, strong when static and built to move. It is the bellwether for how the app looks and behaves, from the notifications prompt to the gift card.
The growth strategy that promised less.
Fewer than four in ten customers had push on, and the controls were the reason. One switch for everything and four places to change the rest.
The hypothesis was control. Customers bent it toward consolidation, choosing one page with no sub-menus over both drill-down concepts, and three in four said they would turn notifications on if they could choose what and how. I designed that page, the dependency logic behind it and the one permission the operating system lets you ask only once.
would turn notifications on if they could choose what and how
chose the one-page concept over two drill-down designs
picked the name Manage Communications
Best Buy Experience Design research, July 2024, n = 500 and n = 50. Scheduled for February 2025; opt-in lift = xx.
What play taught the program.
Gamified loyalty drew the spotlight and has its own case. The lessons from its research carried into everything else here.
People want stuff.
Customers ranked real rewards first and status last, so every reward in the program pays out in something real.
Pay for doing, not only for buying.
Reviews, quizzes and surveys were worth earning for, so any team’s ask can become a quest.
A framework beats a feature.
Five quests on one template meant any team could add the next one. The same thinking shaped the shelf, the navigation row and the communications page.
found a gamified rewards program desirable
quests on one template, each built on an ask the business has
Best Buy Experience Design research, July 2024, n = 424. Concept stage. The spotlight piece has its own case: Best Buy · Loyalty worth playing for.
The reasons worked as one journey.
The reasons worked as one journey instead of a feature list. The store listing brought people in, navigation across the app and bestbuy.com put every reason within reach, illustration and motion made the app worth staying in, Manage Communications earned the right to reach them, and gamified loyalty gave them a reason to come back. Trust bent the plan. Handing customers control over what Best Buy sends them was designed to grow opt-in rather than shrink it. Eight million more people came into the app over two years while I moved between the strategy table and the design file.
more people in the app over two years
holiday seasons on the store shelf
Eight million is Best Buy’s program figure. Shipped and in flight across 2023 to 2025, with bestbuy.com’s new navigation launching 2026. Opt-in lift and store conversion = xx.
What two years at the strategy table taught me.
Alignment is designed, not requested.
The workshops in and the readouts out were the first thing I designed, before any screen.
Restraint is a growth lever when trust is the constraint.
Promising customers less, and keeping the promise, is what earned the right to reach them.
A vocabulary before a look.
Illustration, navigation and rewards each started as a shared language teams could argue with, so the screens that followed held.