Holistic Living
Sep 2021
Background
The Problem
The Solution
My Role
Holistic Living is a wellness app designed to provide a one-stop-shop for those looking to improve and/or maintain their health. The app takes a holistic approach to wellness by giving users access to resources regarding everything from herbal supplements to mindfulness exercises.
Users clearly liked the app based on the number of downloads and the high ratings online but they weren’t coming back regularly. My teammate, Dan, and I were brought in to design a flow or feature that would address the low user engagement.
Our energy went toward revamping and expanding upon the existing Daily Checklist feature. Ultimately, we transformed the single screen into a simple but robust flow that employed habit formation and gamification techniques.
Dan and I collaborated on virtually every deliverable, though we gravitated toward different areas of the design process. I concentrated on research and analysis, owning outputs like the Persona, Secondary Research, and Usability Test Report.
Getting Acquainted
To kick off the project, Dan and I scheduled an introductory meeting with our contact at Holistic Living. We used this opportunity to get to know our product and stakeholder, address any lingering questions, and set expectations for communications, goals, and deliverables. Through this debriefing we discovered a scarcity of user research and that the app launched only a year prior.
Some screenshots of the existing Holistic Living app
Devising a Project Plan
Our contact asked us to work toward what she saw as the best opportunity to address Holistic Living’s business goal of increasing user engagement: a high fidelity flow around the Daily Checklist. The constraints we had to consider while planning our course of action included a 4-week timeline, a total of 40 working hours per person, and fully remote communication.
Initially, we struggled to wrap our heads around the open-endedness of the project. We were both eager to get started but couldn’t seem to figure out where that starting point should be. After two days of deliberation, we finally narrowed down deadlines and deliverables by reverse-engineering our stakeholder’s ideal output.
Sifting Through User Data
As a lover of research, I volunteered to work toward the personas while Dan conducted the competitive analysis. My investigation started with our client’s only source of qualitative user information - a spreadsheet of user survey responses. Rather than trying to manually sift through 400 rows of long-form responses, I enlisted word frequency counters to shed light on any trends the quantitative tools missed.
Synthesizing Findings
The amount of data I had to work through stumped me for the better part of a day and eventually, I elected to do a high-level affinity mapping and document other trends as notes.
Through this exercise, I discovered that users are deeply concerned with the efficacy of alternative and natural medicines. While much of my findings did not directly relate to the flow we would be designing, they did inform my creation of the persona and provided invaluable insights for Holistic Living's in-house UX team and content creators.
Amalgamating User Traits
Meet our persona, Shannon. She lives a fairly active lifestyle, uses our app to find vetted health resources, and wants to improve her overall health. Since our client didn’t have any personas, I aimed to design Shannon in a way that aligned with Holistic Living’s broader audience rather than narrow her personality to the scope of our project.
Diving Deeper
Dan and I still lacked clarity on how to optimize the Daily Checklist to help Shannon reach her goals. After addressing this concern with our client, I opted to include scholarly research in our project plan. I hoped to learn if and how users used technology to improve their health and form new habits.
Unsurprisingly, a plethora of scholarly and scientific research is dedicated to studying the relationship between habit formation and technology. I discovered strategies, such as habit chaining and graphic representations, to bolster the Daily Checklist flow as well as cautionary tales of the paradox of choice and misaligned branding.
Sizing up the Competition
Since Dan’s competitive analysis was taking longer than anticipated, I tackled the third competitor, Fastic, so he could wrap up the other two reports. We assessed the usability of each product using Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics, focusing on the execution of 3-5 per product.
Ideating & Evaluating
After two weeks of exploration and examination, we introduced our ideas to some pen and paper. Utilizing a divergent-to-convergent framework, ideation commenced with independent crazy eight sketching exercises. Dan then organized the sketches into groups based on their commonalities. Finally, we reviewed them together.
As I spitballed ideas with my teammate, it dawned on me that I had been plagued by possibilities. Luckily, this brainstorming session was all about zeroing in on the most impactful solutions. Here we converged on the idea for Challenges as long-term goals that users achieve through a set of daily tasks, or Daily Checklists, over the course of their chosen Challenge.
Gauging Client Preferences
The Daily Checklist’s flow was a central concern of our client’s so we outlined three user flow options for her to review. Based on our research, we surmised that our designs must include data visualization and progress indicators, clear calls to action, and a balance of customization and structure. I drafted examples using variations of sketched concepts to ascertain our contact’s preferred styles and formats. Dan then designed a user flow diagram based on our client’s feedback and selections.
Rapid Prototyping & Script Writing
Our client loved the second flow option because of the Dashboard but requested that that screen come later in the flow. With this feedback and a clearer understanding of her UI preferences in general, Dan concocted a low fidelity prototype while I tackled the test script. After revising the verbiage to align with the prototype’s copy, I integrated Dan’s suggestions, then finalized the script. We resolved for users to attempt the following four tasks:
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locate the challenges hub
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start a challenge & track daily progress
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locate the dashboard
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discover the checklist items' details
Testing our MVP
We conducted our usability tests independently, in order to complete multiple tests simultaneously and avoid scheduling complications. Dan and I ran three tests each, for a total of six, all were done remotely with the exception of one of Dan’s tests. Testers expressed interest in fitness, nutrition, and/or wellness, but were otherwise selected at random.
Once all testing concluded, Dan posted his test notes and I engineered the usability test report. Curiously, the most pressing issue regarded the visual hierarchy of the current home screen rather than any of our designs. Users repeatedly cited the “Articles” section as the centerpiece of the screen or expressed confusion as to what they should do first.
Refining the Details
Our final week on the project started off with a quick review of the test report with our client, taking care to highlight findings related to UI elements she favored, such as the progress bar on the Daily Checklist screen. From there, we dove into our high fidelity mockups of the three main screens, using a similar divergent-to-convergent framework as our approach to the ideation and user flows.
Dan decided to start with individual components, creating a variety of different styles for the key elements on each screen - the Challenges Hub, Daily Checklist, and Dashboard. Following his lead, I assembled a few versions of the screens with refined components before handing them back to Dan. We opted to give users more control and direction by using sticky headers with consistent navigational buttons and juxtaposing the colorful cards with ample white space.
Supporting Additional Use Cases
As I made my edits I realized that we were still trying to force one use case to work for multiple, an issue that came up during testing. We didn’t have time nor the resources to rework the flow at this point so I designed extra screens to address additional use cases while Dan wrapped up his edits of the main high fidelity screens. Although this deliverable was not asked of us, we wanted to leave our client with the resources to continue iterating.
Continuing With Usability in Mind
To help Holistic Living improve the user experience, we wanted to leave them with actionable feedback. Dan was busy polishing the design development sequence and final screens so I took the reigns on drafting the supplemental suggestions. We briefly discussed areas we felt could use a rework and any supporting research or heuristics, I then compiled our notes into a document with accompanying screenshots. We primarily focused on the application of Nielsen’s “Consistency & Standards” heuristic on the home screen as those changes would offer the greatest impact with the least effort.
The Handoff
At the handoff meeting with our contact, we presented our high fidelity mock-ups, additional use cases, style guide sheet, and supplemental suggestions. We were pleased to find that she appreciated the additional resources we provided and expressed excitement about the mock-ups themselves.
Holistic Living’s next step should be to resolve the usability concerns we presented and schedule regular design audits. Additionally, they can continue expanding the Daily Checklist flow by building out the interactions and other use cases.
Lasting Impressions
This was my first project with an actual stakeholder to answer to and a teammate to collaborate with. Negotiating deliverables and processes with our Holistic Living contact was challenging at times. On future projects, I hope to build rapport with stakeholders early on, as it was paramount to me and Dan's success as a design team.