Future Innovation for Miles & More: Design Fictions for Lufthansa’s Premium Loyalty Program

With more than 30 million members, Miles & More is the largest frequent flyer program in Europe. But what will it look like in the future? With this exciting question in mind, Miles & More — a wholly owned Lufthansa subsidiary — turned to us to transform its existing frequent flyer rewards program into a comprehensive, intelligent and digital premium customer loyalty program. In a multi-stage process, we were to find out what premium means in the digital world and how this would be reflected in digital brand management. This is how our first vision project for Miles & More came about.

In the discovery phase, we further developed already defined user personas, enhancing them with a customer journey and touchpoint analysis. Through intensive user research, we sought to understand what status and (new) premium mean in the digital world. What will premium look like in the future? How can we bring unique user status to life?

We aimed to better understand the needs of Miles & More’s target groups. Along with individual interviews, cultural probes proved particularly suitable for the project. These diary studies with users shed light on the motivations, needs, desires, and behaviors of the target group, as well as any obstacles hindering a positive user experience. Based on these insights, we embarked on the ideation phase of the project, where the actual design began.

In two ideation workshops, we collaborated with the Miles & More team to develop ideas and concepts for enhancing services, communication, and product quality. Using the results from these workshops, we crafted an ideal future scenario, identifying the touchpoints in the customer journey that were most relevant from a user’s perspective. From this scenario, we then determined the strategic fields of action.

Design Fiction
Design Sprints
Service Design
User Research
UX/UI Design
Visual Design