Context

DoorDash had plenty of rewards, but customers didn’t experience them as a system.

Credits, promos, and other benefits appeared across the app, email, and notifications. Customers regularly told support they “didn’t know they had a credit.”

In-app card: You're on your way to a reward at Shake Shack.
Push notification: Your reward is expiring at Shake Shack.
Store card for sweetgreen showing a $10 reward badge.

The insight

We initially thought this was a discoverability problem. Mapping the experience showed something bigger:

The problem wasn’t finding rewards. It was understanding how they fit together.

How might we make DoorDash rewards feel like one connected loyalty program?

Research

I mapped where rewards appeared across DoorDash and how customers encountered them. Three findings shaped the product direction:

  1. Fragmentation broke the mental model

    Customers needed a durable home.

  2. Timing mattered as much as discovery

    Rewards also needed contextual surfaces.

  3. A destination alone wouldn’t solve it

    The product had to be a system.

Checkout and order submission screens showing a $10 reward available next order.
Rewards disappeared after they were earned.

Outside of notifications, there was no durable place to return to them.

DoorDash home and sweetgreen store page where the reward only appears under Deals & benefits.
Finding them required remembering where they came from.

Customers had to return to the original store to see an earned reward again.

The issue wasn’t another missing entry point. Customers lacked a persistent mental model of what they owned.

The decision

The team’s instinct was to build a rewards hub: a place you go when you’re looking for something. I pushed for a wallet instead.

A hub is where you go when you’re looking for something. A wallet is something you already know is yours.

We also looked at leaning harder into contextual experiences alone: surfacing rewards only in the moment, without a durable home. That would have helped redemption, but it wouldn’t have solved the mental model. Customers still needed one place that made the program feel whole.

We killed the hub concept, converged on the wallet metaphor, and treated contextual entry points as part of the system — not a substitute for it.

I chose not to pursue three directions reviewers pushed for.

Out of scope

  • Gamification (badges, streaks, tiers)
  • Personalized recommendations inside the wallet
  • Redesign of the checkout credit application

The wallet had to earn its keep as a surface first, not carry the weight of a full loyalty overhaul.

Finding the right shape

We explored a few ways to bring rewards together for all DoorDash customers, from a broader rewards hub to a more focused wallet. The hub could do more, but it also introduced more to navigate. We chose the wallet because it gave rewards a clear home without creating another destination customers had to learn.

Rewards hub

Rewards hub concept: a destination with search, categories, challenges, and restaurants with loyalty.

A broader destination for everything rewards — more capability, but another place customers had to learn and navigate.

Contextual rewards

Contextual rewards concept: a My rewards row surfaced in the home feed between Order again and Top restaurants.

Rewards sprinkled through the shopping experience — homepage, storefronts, and other moments customers were already in.

Chosen direction

Wallet + contextual surfaces

Wallet concept: earned rewards and progress toward the next ones in one focused Rewards list.

A clear home for rewards, plus surfaces in the moments customers were already in — the direction we chose.

The system

Three pieces had to work together: a durable home for rewards, contextual entry points throughout DoorDash, and a clear path from detail to redemption.

System flowchart showing how the wallet, contextual entry points, and redemption path work together.

Wallet

A single stacked surface that consolidated credits, promos, and other rewards into one scannable list — available to all DoorDash customers — with a card-shaped anchor at the top that reinforced ownership.

Annotated My rewards list ranked by expiration and progress, with Redeem opening the reward on a store page.

Redeem lands the benefit on the store page under Deals & benefits.

Annotated ranking behavior for My rewards: urgency and value determine list order.

Urgency × value

Rewards rise as expiration approaches; ties prioritize higher-value rewards.

Contextual entry points

Rewards still needed to show up where customers were already making decisions — not only inside the wallet.

Persistent access

Account

Account tab with a highlighted Rewards button among Orders and Settings.

Contextual reminders

Home

Home feed Deals & Savings section with a highlighted arrow into rewards.

Store

Store page Deals & Savings section showing reward progress and a highlighted entry arrow.

Notifications

Notifications screen highlighting an unused rewards card with redeemable store tiles.

Reward details / redemption

Redeem had to feel continuous with the rest of DoorDash. From the wallet, customers could open a reward and land on the store page under Deals & benefits — close to the moment of ordering, not stranded in a separate loyalty flow.

Redemption flow from My rewards through reward details and the store page to checkout with the $10 reward applied.

Redeem doesn’t apply the reward in isolation. It takes customers back into the shopping journey where the benefit can be used.

Outcome

$322K+

redeemed through the wallet during the initial launch

+0.51%

stat-sig savings lift observed in the launch experiment

During the initial launch, customers redeemed $322K+ in value through the Rewards Wallet. In the launch experiment, we saw a +0.51% statistically significant lift in savings. Post-launch NPS comments shifted from “didn’t know I had a credit” to “love that everything’s in one place.”

Reflection

The wallet solved the functional problem. It gave rewards a home.

Looking back, I’d spend more time on what happens after that. Once rewards are easy to find, how do you make them actually feel rewarding?

The next step wouldn’t necessarily be more mechanics. It would be finding small ways for the program to feel more personal, timely, and aware of what a customer values.

The wallet made loyalty easier to understand. I think the next opportunity was making it easier to feel.

A loyalty program is a relationship →