HEINEKEN · 2025–Present
Making the best market everyone’s standard
Part of Heineken’s broader push to digitalise the sales-rep role — starting with promotions.
Project overview
Role
Senior Product Designer
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Impact
As Heineken standardised promotions across 20+ markets, each one carried its offline habits straight into the platform — treating digital promotions like the in-person deals and negotiations they'd always run. That's what caused the problem.
Offline thinking in a digital world
Each market ran its own offline promotion mechanics — recreated digitally, they were hard for customers to understand and hard for the business to scale.
When offline behaviours go digital
My role: Lead researcher — interviewing key markets and mapping the customer journey.
I interviewed teams across key markets. The same problems recurred: complex mechanics, inconsistent experiences, and customers unsure whether they'd redeemed a promotion.
Customer journey
Getting everyone behind one approach
My role: Led strategy workshops with markets and leadership to define a shared approach.
The challenge wasn't the design — it was changing established ways of working. Getting markets and leadership behind a shared set of strategic pillars aligned everyone, and those pillars became the foundation for every design and product decision that followed.
Strategic pillars
“Tom’s strategic thinking was a real asset to the project. He has a natural ability to quickly understand complex problems and translate them into a clear direction that moves things forward.” — Senior Stakeholder, Heineken.
Applying a systems lens
My role: Created the promotions system model that shaped the design framework.
Before designing the experience, I mapped promotions as a connected system, bringing together business inputs, mechanics, rules and customer journeys into a single model. This became the foundation for the product architecture and design approach.
Promotions system model
Defining the system architecture
My role: Led architecture workshops with product, engineering and architects.
I brought engineering, product and architecture together around one approach — balancing business, technical and customer needs. Separating the promotions engine from the core platform kept it technically achievable while still feeling like one seamless experience.
System architecture
Product and promotion engines, integrated into one journey.
From market-led to platform-driven promotions
My role: Lead designer — translating strategy and architecture into a consistent product experience.
Every market developed promotions differently. I brought those needs into one scalable experience — consistent for customers, workable for the business across markets.
Product listing (PLP)
No clear promotion visibility — customers unsure about eligibility and redemption.
Promotions clearly surfaced, easy to filter, and simple to act on.
Cart
In the cart, the focus shifts to completion. Promotions are clearly grouped, easy to apply, and customers are nudged when there’s value they haven’t picked up yet.
Promotions were easy to miss — bonus items and rewards hidden from the main flow.
Promotions grouped and actionable, with real-time feedback so customers don’t miss available value.
Validating the concept before build
My role: Explored and designed an AI-assisted usability testing workflow, then translated the findings into prioritised design recommendations.
Alongside the project, I explored how AI-assisted usability testing could help validate concepts before engineering investment. Using the promotions listing as a case study, I simulated moderated sessions to identify potential usability issues and prioritise areas for further research.
Across twelve simulated sessions, the same pattern emerged: participants could understand a promotion once they reached it, but nothing on the page signalled that promotions were available in the first place.
The intent was to see how AI could complement traditional usability testing by accelerating early concept validation — not to replace research with real users.
Find a product that is on promotion today and add it to your cart.
Tell me what you would do if you were looking for products on promotion today.
I would start at the top, with the brands I already stock.
I don’t see anything telling me what is cheaper this week.
Where would you expect to see that?
There — twenty per cent off. But I only saw it because I scrolled down.
Enters through the brand carousel, not the promotions filter.
No cue above the fold signals that promotions exist on this page.
Label is legible once in view. The failure is findability, not legibility.
Promotion label awareness on the promotions listing
Buyers can read the promotion label once they reach it, but nothing on the page tells them promotions exist. Discovery is accidental — nine of twelve participants found a promoted product only after scrolling past the fold.
found a promotion, all by scrolling
could list all promotions available
median time to first promoted tile
flagged for real-panel validation
Announce promotions before the buyer starts scanning
State a count in the filter bar so the page declares that offers exist, and how many.
Rename the filter to state the action
“Only promotions” reads as a filter. “Promotions” reads as a category.
Raise expiry to the same level as the offer
The most valued copy on the tile was also the last thing seen.
Measuring and evolving the system
My role: Defined the measurement framework and oversaw rollout with third-party testing.
The rollout is iterative: launch in one market, measure, learn, refine, then scale. Early results are shaping a proven model markets can adopt consistently.
Measurement framework
What this means for you
Heineken didn’t have a design problem in any one market. It had thirty-five versions of the same product, each locally sensible and collectively unmanageable. The pattern I found was that the answer already existed — one market was doing promotions well. My role was proving it, then turning it into the platform standard rather than another recommendation.
So I look for what’s already working inside a business before proposing anything new. It’s faster, and it’s far easier for people to get behind. If you’re scaling a product across markets, brands or teams, that’s the difference between a standard people adopt and one they quietly ignore.