Ace Hardware

Retail

Ace Hardware is the largest retailer-owned hardware cooperative in the world, with thousands of locally owned stores across the United States and internationally. Ace Rewards, its loyalty program, is a key part of how the brand connects with customers both in store and online.

The Challenge

Ace Hardware set out to design the Ace Rewards experience, a program that needed to work for a broad and loyal customer base. Before committing to a design, the team needed to understand what customers expected from a rewards program and how they thought about earning and using rewards. Building on assumptions risked launching an experience that didn’t match how customers actually think.

The Solution

Ace Hardware relies on PlaybookUX across its customer experience work, using surveys and unmoderated usability studies to bring customer input into design decisions. Ace Rewards is a strong example of how the team puts the platform to work from start to finish.

1. Discover what customers expect
The team began with surveys to understand how customers think about rewards programs: what they expect to earn, how they expect to redeem, and what would make a program worth joining.

2. Turn insights into a design
Using those findings, the team built a design hypothesis grounded in customer mental models rather than internal assumptions, then developed two prototypes to put that hypothesis to the test.

3. Validate before launch
Ace ran unmoderated usability studies on both prototypes, watching real customers work through each one. This showed which concepts met customer needs and where the design needed refinement.

The same survey-to-usability-test approach gives Ace a repeatable way to ground each new project in what customers actually need.

The Outcome

PlaybookUX gave Ace Hardware a clear path from customer insight to validated design. The survey findings shaped the direction of the Ace Rewards experience, and the usability tests confirmed which concepts met customer needs before launch. The result was a rewards experience built around how customers actually think, backed by research at every step.