Enhancing the in-app and physical experiences for a precision-biology based health monitoring app and implementing design changes to improve user engagement.

Objective

Improve the app’s poor user retention rate and identify design drawbacks that needed to be altered to ensure a steady increase in daily active users stickiness.

Jump to Impact

Market Research

The first step was to conducting market research, which was pivotal in delineating the distribution and psychographic profile of Digbi's target audience. This process afforded a comprehensive understanding of our target audience demographics and behavioural patterns, crucial for informing strategic design decisions tailored to meet their needs effectively.

Graph plotted to show a comparison of Digbi's competitors and in which quadrant for the users does Digbi lie in

Story-arc of competitors

Mapping out competitors' customer journey arcs, and identifying patterns to evaluate their standout features and shortcomings, was instrumental in locating gaps within our own end-to-end experience. This analysis facilitated a targeted approach to refining and enhancing our product offering for optimal user satisfaction.

Story arc comparison showing Digbi's incomplete arc compared to the ideal graph. Digbi's arc does not follow a 3 act story structure

Determining problems in the bigger picture

Identifying the underlying values guiding user actions was essential for realizing the significance of each action within the process. This involved discerning whether actions stemmed from specific emotions or occurred more subconsciously, and using this to find the root cause of user issues.

Identifying pain points of your audience

Even though we had a lot of user feedback from our Facebook community, online reviews and filed grievances, along with two focus group studies, none of the raw data had been analysed. I took the time to collate and synthesize all the data effectively, enabling us to extract actionable insights from the identified pain points, categorize them and formulate assumptions for user behaviour.

A quote by a user: Interesting offers by other health apps on the internet

Quote from user 2: The guidance and videos don't feel personalized to me

Quote from 3rd user: I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do every day on the app"

Quote from 4th user: Every task is too cumbersome and tedious to finish

A map of Digbi's expansion to Gut and gene tests, pharma, diet, exercise and lifestyle

INSIGHTS

1 Too many things for the users to navigate

2 How is Digbi different from Noom or Mahana?

3 How do we sell our USP to customers?

4 No defined path for the users to follow

Major Challenges

Significant expenses in maintaining Gut and Gene testing kits emphasized the vital need for user data collection.

Escalating expenses hindered expansion of personalized care coaches.

Encouraging users to share comprehensive data including weight, medical conditions, dietary habits, exercise routines, & more for enhanced personalization.

Fixing Digbi story arc

The next step after extensive collection and organization of insights was to fix the ideal user journey and ideate on the possible intervention points for introducing the journey.

This had to be completed before feature enhancements on the app could be formulated, to anticipate how users might feel every step of the way.

Problem: Each action currently takes 7-10 mins with no actionable reward at the end.

Make each action in digestible bites (digbi) with a feedback in the design as a reward

Issues identified in old design

Digbi's old design showing 2 tabs of e-learning modules, a CTA to contacting the coaches and the description of each module is vague to understand

"Additional" tab consists of optional modules

Less intuitive. Not following Hick's Law

Vague descriptions. Lacks encouragement and excitement for the users to enter

Users cannot see description of other modules until previous module is finished

When clicked on a session, the app page shows a video with a lot of negative space beneath it, which ideally could have been used for transcript or summary of the video

Each video was about 25-40 minslong

No media controls (full screen, fast forward, closed caption settings etc.)

Unnecessary negative space. No transcript for the video.

Wireframing

Digbi wireframe showing an improved layout of the digbi e-learning module

Building encouragement
User friendly language for building familiarity

Wireframe showing affordances and signifiers

Introduced progress indicators
Easy to understand description
Transparency on next steps

A success screen at the completion of all the modules

Success screen + next steps
Up-selling modules
Linking other features

Challenges Faced

1 Development effort for needed for considering micro-animations

2 Back-end integration for introducing new interactions could not be finished in the decided timeline

3 Aligning stakeholder expectations without any concrete user testing data

What did we miss out on?

1 User testing

2 Heatmaps

There was no budget or time from the stakeholders to incorporate user research or testing in the product timeline until Q3 2023, which was past the app launch date.

Handover to the UI Designer and developers

The prototypes were transferred to the UI Design team along with detailed documentation of interactions, utilizing Google Docs, Excel sheets, and Zeplin. Developers collaborated seamlessly with the design team via Zeplin, facilitating communication and iteration.

Any additional adjustments or feedback on the developed design were provided through Zeplin, ensuring efficient and organized workflow throughout the design and development process.

Accessibility Guidelines

Recognizing a gap in the product team's understanding of WCAG guidelines, I proactively established comprehensive guidelines for the UI Designer, PM, developers, & the marketing team.

These guidelines served to ensure that our digital products met accessibility standards, enhancing inclusivity and user experience for all individuals, regardless of disabilities.

Final Design

Introduced breadcrumbs
Coordinated with marketing team to adjust content and created bitesized episodic videos
Introduced media controls for accessibility
Coordinated with content team to write descriptions for each video

Impact

NPS increased to 67 in Q1 2023, compared to 27 in Q4 2022

Daily active users increased by 23% in a span of 2 weeks after the launch of the new feature

Goal completion rate for the "Learn" module increased by 47%, leading to a positive user satisfaction

Future Integrations

Introducing QnA after each session to increase data retention rate of each user

Gamifying the learning experience by linking it with other features in the app