Implementing Communication Features to Boost User Engagement

Health & Fitness

iOS Mobile App

Fall 2023

company

Health Hero is a health & fitness app that helps users set and achieve health goals

challenge

Create communication features that increase user retention and engagement

outcome

Three features that allow users to form community, support each other, and converse within the app

team

Mascot Illustrator & Product Designer

my role

Product Designer

UX Research, UX Design, UI Design

actions

Created project plan, conducted user research, designed concept & interface, and performed usability testing

final solutions

Encouragement Feature

Send encouraging messages/videos to friends to support and motivate them towards their goal tasks.

Sending one encouragement a day is included as a daily task and viewable on home page and task page. Recipient will then be notified that an unviewed encouragement message is waiting for them that is viewable after completing a task.

Stories Feature

Users have the ability to create a video or photo record of the day's activities and message it to their friends.

Sharing daily activities around goals can help users motivate each other to take action.

Messaging Feature

Users need a way to stay connected and in communication with each other and to not feel alone in their goals.

Messaging is formatted in the text message style and forms the basis for a written log of conversation. It is also the location for any responses generated from Encouragements or Stories.

Project Steps

Click to jump to specific section

Project Brief

Research

Concept Design

Interface Design

Testing & Discussion

Implementing Communication Features to Boost User Engagement

Health & Fitness

iOS Mobile App

Fall 2023

company

Health Hero is a health & fitness app that helps users set and achieve health goals

challenge

Create communication features that increase user retention and engagement

outcome

Three features that allow users to form community, support each other, and converse within the app

team

Mascot Illustrator & Product Designer

my role

Product Designer

UX Research, UX Design, UI Design

actions

Created project plan, conducted user research, designed concept & interface, and performed usability testing

final solutions

Encouragement Feature

Send encouraging messages / videos to friends to support and motivate them towards their goal tasks.

Stories Feature

Users have the ability to create a video or photo record of the day's activities and message it to their friends.

Sharing daily activities around goals can help users motivate each other to take action.

Messaging Feature

Users need a way to stay connected and in communication with each other and to not feel alone in their goals.

Messaging is formatted in the text message style and forms the basis for a written log of conversation. It is also the location for any responses generated from Encouragements or Stories.

Project Steps

Click to jump to specific section

Project Brief

Research

Concept Design

Interface Design

Testing & Discussion

Where are we starting?

Design Challenge

Design communication features within the native app that meets business goals of increased user retention and engagement.

Problem Space

User engagement and retention within the app started to drop three weeks after initial use. Currently, there are no communication features within the app, which negatively affects user's motivation to use the app.

User engagement and retention within the app started to drop three weeks after initial use.

Currently, there are no communication features within the app, which negatively affects user's motivation to use the app.

Scope

Conduct user research into problem space
Ideate and design testable prototype that utilizes communication features to improve user retention and engagement
Define high-fidelity elements to match the existing brand personality
Validate design usability through testing

Constraints

Complete project within 2 weeks

Complete project within 2 weeks

Target User

What's behind the problem?

Section Title

What's behind the problem?

Research Objectives

1) Investigate why engagement is dropping after 3 weeks

2) Understand the role friends and family play in throughout user's health journey while using the app

3) Learn about the behavioral psychology that is behind goal-setting and motivation

User Interviews

Highlights from user interviews

A few weeks after setting goals within the app, users struggled between continuing new goal behaviors verses reverting to old habits. Reasons include: lack of motivation, stress, schedule conflicts, social life, work, etc
Once users started missing their goal behaviors, their app use also started decreasing.
If user decides to completely give up their goal, their app use stopped. Oftentimes, their attempts were cyclical, and that would reflect in their app use as well.
Users generally liked the use interface but did not like the negative tones the copy showed when they failed tasks (i.e "You can do better" )

Highlights from user interviews

A few weeks after setting goals within the app, users struggled between continuing new goal behaviors verses reverting to old habits. Reasons include: lack of motivation, stress, schedule conflicts, social life, work, etc
Once users started missing their goal behaviors, their app use also started decreasing.
If user decides to completely give up their goal, their app use stopped. Oftentimes, their attempts were cyclical, and that would reflect in their app use as well.
Users generally liked the use interface but did not like the negative tones the copy showed when they failed tasks (i.e "You can do better" )

Journey Map

User's goal and app engagement over time

Literature Review

Psychology behind behavioral change

People don't change by feeling bad: If people feel like they are failing at their goals, they lose motivation to continue working hard. Feeling successful at goal achievement motivates people to continue trying.
People confuse aspirations with goal behaviors - People often set their goal behaviors based on their desired outcome, which oftentimes is too drastic of a change to be sustainable.
The feeling of motivation is overrated - Relying on the feeling of initial excitement to drive behavior change is short-lived, and quickly wanes once the reality of the hard work sets in. If there are no other motivators in place, people will likely lose steam and revert back to their old ways after a few weeks.
Behaviors take a while to become a habit - It takes 18-254 days for a behavior to become a habit (factors include complexity, frequency, personality, environmental factors)
Motivators (punishment and reward) are needed to provide pressure to continue goal behaviors

Psychology behind behavioral change

People don't change by feeling bad: If people feel like they are failing at their goals, they lose motivation to continue working hard. Feeling successful at goal achievement motivates people to continue trying.
People confuse aspirations with goal behaviors - People often set their goal behaviors based on their desired outcome, which oftentimes is too drastic of a change to be sustainable.
The feeling of motivation is overrated - Relying on the feeling of initial excitement to drive behavior change is short-lived, and quickly wanes once the reality of the hard work sets in. If there are no other motivators in place, people will likely lose steam and revert back to their old ways after a few weeks.
Behaviors take a while to become a habit - It takes 18-254 days for a behavior to become a habit (factors include complexity, frequency, personality, environmental factors)
Motivators (punishment and reward) are needed to provide pressure to continue goal behaviors

Sources: Lally, P. et al (2010), "How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world"; Fogg, B. "The small changes that change everything"; Clear, J. "Atomic Habits"

Research Summary

As users engaged more in goal behaviors, their use of goal-tracking in the app increased
Besides the copy, there were no major UI issues that caused users to disengage from app. They enjoyed the positive reinforcement messages but were de-motivated by the negative reinforcement messages.
The main problem users are facing is the dissonance between new behaviors clashing with existing lifestyle. After the initial excitement of a new goal fades, users struggled to motivate themselves to complete their goals, causing them to become inconsistent with using their tracking app.

Persona

How do we create a solution?

Section Title

How do we create a solution?

HMW

How Might We…

Help users build a social environment that is conducive towards new behavior's success?
Provide incentives when initial motivation wears thin?
Help users get over the crux and support them through difficulties?
Help bring users back if engagement falls off?
Make the whole process feel less difficult and more fun?

Concept Ideation

If we can help users become more successful at achieving their health goals, then their use of their goal tracking app will increase.

Based on what I learned from research, some ideas for design directions include:

Change the way achievement is viewed - prioritize continued progress vs hitting an end goal
Redefine people’s “target goal” - break down aspirations into small, incremental changes that prioritizes consistency
Make it fun - Use game design principles to add the incentive of having fun,(in-app currency or rewards system)
Add social motivation - Use community as incentive in the form of accountability and social motivation

Solutions

1) Encouragement Feature - provides incentives towards goal, helps users over crux point, builds app engagement through goal success

This feature will utilize a recorded video clip from friends and family that acts as social support to incentivize users to continue pushing towards their goal.

1) Encouragement Feature

This feature will utilize a recorded video clip from friends and family that acts as social support to incentivize users to continue pushing towards their goal.

2) Messaging - builds social environment, increases app engagement directly

To increase app engagement, users need the ability to perform basic communication without needing to leave the app. Through texting with saved chat logs, users can also respond to stories and encouragement videos while forming a congruent timeline of communication.

2) Messaging

3) Stories - builds social environment, adds social incentive, builds app engagement directly and indirectly through goal achievement

During interviews, users indicated that they liked the short video formats on Snapchat and Instagram stories, so I utilized the same concept to allow users to share their health journey as they work towards their goals. Having available content will capture attention and increase user engagement, and seeing their peers work towards their goals can help motivate users to do the same.

3) Stories

Feature builds social environment, adds social incentive, builds app engagement directly and indirectly through goal achievement.

User Flows

Send Audio Encouragement

How do we style the solution?

Section Title

How do we style the solution?

Branding

Per brand guidelines, the Health Hero's personality is supposed to be contemporary, trustworthy, humorous, and motivational. Being a big video game fan, I was inspired to put an adventure-like spin to the branding and stylize the user's health goal to be a fun, epic quest where they get to be the hero. The slogan for Health Hero is "Be the hero of your health journey."

The message empowers users to take an active role in their health journey, and the whole theme's purpose is to use incentivize users to view their health tracking journey in a fun, positive light.

Brand Style

Motivational

Humorous

Adventurous

Inspiring

Art Inspiration

Mascot Design

No adventure would be complete without a trusty sidekick, so I came up with a character that would be the app's mascot and user's cheerleader. Man's best friend is a dog so I picked a goofy-upbeat dog breed (Corgi) to fit with the fun, light-hearted theme. I sketched out initial concept ideas and collaborated with the mascot illustrator to produce the final version of Routine Reggie, the Health Hero sidekick.

Evolution of Routine Reggie

Visual Style inspirations

Copy style: casual, Gen Z slang but not too much, slightly cheeky & funny

UI Elements: immersive, video game - like, clean yet fun

How were designs validated?

Section Title

How were designs validated?

Testing highlights

Testing was done at each step of the design process
Biggest challenge was capturing the right color palette and graphics to depict brand style, taking many iterative cycles to come up with the final design

Card Sorting

Open and closed card sorting done to align with user expectations for information architecture
Main question answered was where to house the Encouragement feature

A/B Testing

Feedback for original colors (A) were "peaceful and tranquil," but intent was to be adventurous and exciting
Multiple rounds of color refinement conducted before conducting a final A/B test
Unanimous agreement that Version B was more reflective of target personality

(A) Original Colors

(B) Final Colors

What are some final thoughts?

Section Title

What are some final thoughts?

Validation

Measuring the outcomes of the designs' efficacy on user engagement and retention were outside of this project's scope. However, one can argue that since the designs stem as a direct response to the research, they are validated in that fashion (especially since some communication method is better than none). As a next step, I would like to do a beta test with the new features and quantify their effects on user retention and engagement.

Future Considerations

While implementing communication features may meet the business goals of increased user engagement and retention, it doesn't solve for the root cause of failure to meet goals. That's because the root cause has nothing to do with communication nor app features, but to do with how we, as a society, have been systematically taught to view and frame success. Sure, we all know what we would like to achieve, but how often are we taught how to break down that goal into incremental, doable steps that don’t cause overwhelm? And how do we change the mindset that success is not defined by getting to the destination, but more about the journey towards the destination?

If we think larger picture towards the product as a whole, I would hope that the greatest reason users continue to use Health Hero is because this app does something no other health tracking app does - it educates their users on how to frame goals and incorporate them into a sustainable lifestyle.

While implementing communication features may meet the business goals of increased user engagement and retention, it doesn't solve for the root cause of failure to meet goals.

That's because the root cause has nothing to do with communication nor app features, but to do with how we, as a society, have been systematically taught to view and frame success.

Sure, we all know what we would like to achieve, but how often are we taught how to break down that goal into incremental, doable steps that don’t cause overwhelm? And how do we change the mindset that success is not defined by getting to the destination, but more about the journey towards the destination?

While implementing communication features may meet the business goals of increased user engagement and retention, it doesn't solve for the root cause of failure to meet goals.

That's because the root cause has nothing to do with communication nor app features, but to do with how we, as a society, have been systematically taught to view and frame success.

jessica.peng08@gmail.com

Prototype viewable on desktop version of website