How might we overcome the negative feelings towards giving a gratuity?

Tanner Williams did extensive research, not jut on the act of tipping, but cultural impacts as well. This led directly to our solution.

I experimented with several different concepts like this whole-dollar option. It makes the math easier for the customer, but it's still math.

I rejected this outright. The whole dollars were too much and reversion was the imediate response from our testers.

Conventional methods have there place. Users are used to it, but that lack of pause can work against us. Hitting "No thanks" could be alearned reaction.

This is where I landed. Tanner had a piece of stand-out data in his research. Jimmy Johns has had a lot of success with a physical tip jar, in some cases raising hourly wages from $12/hr to $17/hr. Their tip jar looks amateurish and definately not part of the corporate brand, and that's it's charm.

I digitized the tip jar and made a few key decisions around the user interface:

• I don't mention the word tip.
• It's not about paying more, it's about showing care to someone who just performed a service for you
• Passive rejection; the button has a countdown timer so the customer doesn't have to actively say "no."

The Results

Unfortunately, this project never launched; newer, shinier projects were chased instead. If we had the chance, I would have A/B tested my concept against a more traditional percentage-based method. I want to know if my approach would yield more engagement and money.

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