Visa Look & Go
Hands-free biometric checkout for athletes at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Village, designed to earn trust in seconds.
OVERVIEW
Paying with a glance, designed for trust.
Visa Look & Go let Olympic and Paralympic athletes check out at the Athletes Village store with a glance, using facial recognition to pay quickly, securely, and hands-free, without a phone or wallet.
MY ROLE
Lead Visual Designer
TEAM
Lead Product Designer Lead Visual Designer Product Engineering
TIMELINE
1 Year
SKILLS
Visual direction · Mobile UI · Checkout experience
TOOLS
THE CHALLENGE
Make a new way to pay feel safe enough to try
Visa leadership’s open-ended prompt:
“Develop a point of view of what future Point of Purchase could look like and how the consumer experience will evolve.”
The goal was a pilot for 18,000 athletes in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Village, with 70% adoption. Facial payment was new to most people, so it had to earn trust in seconds.
RESEARCH AT THE CONCEPT STAGE
Early research backed the opportunity.
$17.5B
12
83%
67%
MY ROLE
Leading visual direction across app and terminal
As Lead Visual Designer, I owned the visual direction for the enrollment app and checkout terminal, working with the Lead Product Designer, Product, and Engineering. I facilitated the workshops and partnered on the user testing that shaped capture, timing, lighting, and trust.
RESEARCH
Workshops: building confidence and delight
I facilitated workshops that walked participants through the Look & Go experience to surface pain points and generate new ideas. Two themes came through, both about confidence, and I validated each in the user testing below.
Main pain points
Capturing the face photo. Users needed clearer guidance on positioning and capture, through both graphics and messaging.
Trusting biometric payment. Few people understood how it worked or how secure it was.
Moments of delight
I led brainstorming sessions to explore where the experience could surprise and delight.
Gamification
Easter egg surprises
Competitions and medals with social sharing
Bump to share
Donating leftover funds to charity
USER TESTING
User testing: five fixes that raised success rates
Testing ran through every phase, from early concepts to pop-up shop trials with real cashiers. Five findings drove the biggest changes.
Template setup under one minute
80% higher success rate
Less confusion
80% higher successful recognition
A more comfortable, approachable experience
THE SOLUTION
Enroll once, then pay with a glance
We designed enrollment and checkout as one continuous experience. Athletes enroll once in the mobile app, then check out hands-free at the terminal, where facial recognition replaces the phone and wallet. Privacy was built in: each athlete’s face template stayed on their own phone, and the terminal matched against an encrypted copy.
ENROLLMENT
The mobile app
The enrollment flow walks athletes through creating a face template, with clear instructions and framing guides at each step.
CHECKOUT
The terminal
At the terminal, athletes look at the camera and pay, with a countdown, bright lighting, and photo-booth framing that make the moment feel familiar.
KEY DECISIONS
Three decisions that built trust and conviction
Facial payment was new, and official Olympic assets didn’t exist yet.
Design trust end to end
With the Lead Product Designer, I designed for trust across the whole flow, from what the app explained to how the terminal timed capture.
Use fidelity to align early
Polished concepts aligned executives, the Olympic committees, and Marketing, and let Engineering test biometrics early.
Root it in the athletes’ world
Athlete stories ran from app to terminal, in Olympian and Paralympian versions so each community saw itself.
VISUAL DESIGN CONCEPT 01
Space and motion from the Tokyo 2020 marks
With only the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic logos available, I deconstructed them into animated forms and built the concept around space and motion. A mascot Easter egg celebrated each completed transaction.
VISUAL DESIGN CONCEPT 02
Athletes at the center
Bold photographic crops and typography put Visa-sponsored athletes and their achievements front and center.
VISUAL DESIGN CONCEPT 03
Original athlete video, from app to terminal
Original footage of Visa-sponsored athletes, filmed by Visa for this project, rotated on the app home and played on the terminal at checkout. It linked enrollment and payment into one continuous experience.
IMPACT & OUTCOME
Built to win a yes, and to outlast the pilot
COVID-19 canceled the live pilot before launch, so there were no live transaction results. Success is measured in what testing proved and what the work changed inside Visa.
What testing proved
80% higher successful recognition
Face-template creation in under a minute
Less confusion and greater comfort for participants
Ready to launch at scale: 18,000 athletes, up to 16 terminals and 64 in-store beacons
What it changed
Aligned Visa executives, the Olympic committees, and Visa Marketing on one vision
Its biometric experience informed later Visa projects
Raised the bar for innovation design at Visa
REFLECTIONS
Building conviction is part of the design
The pilot never launched due to COVID-19, but the work showed that a polished experience can move an organization. In innovation work, momentum is a design deliverable.
What made it hard
Compressed timelines and frequent pivots: the project name and logo changed about ten times.
Conflicting stakeholder feedback on approvals.
Team changes, then COVID-19 as the pilot began.
What I’d keep doing
Align on timing upfront, with check-ins at key milestones and team retrospectives.
Make trade-offs explicit so teams can converge.
Stay flexible in how the team works, not just what it makes.
