Balance - a feature to reduce friction and drive retention
How to support millennials to have a consistent meditation practise.
Project
Mental Wellness Application
Role
Product Designer
Timeframe
2 weeks
Target User
Conscious millennials
Goal
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"Streamline Balances' user flow and find solutions to incentivize users to engage."
Overview
Why this project?
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My meditation group and I picked up Balance to learn new meditation techniques. However, when we discussed our experience with this app two months after adoption, 80% of the group had stopped using it.
I couldn’t help but wonder why exactly this happened.
At a glance
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My research showed that the basic meditation content provided in this platform was not enough to keep users motivated to stay engaged and convert. I streamlined the process of setting up advanced reminders and integrated a social feature to help users connect deeply with like-minded individuals. The increased convenience and connection set the user up for success to build healthy habits.
Process
Reflection
Overview
Define
Discovery
Design Goals
Iterative ideation & testing
Goals
What does success look like?
For our users, success looks like an effortless meditation experience that complements our existing content and helps them build healthy habits and improve mental well-being.
For the business, the following KPI’s will measure success:
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Numbers of new users on-boarded
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An increase in conversion rates
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A 5% to 10% increase in retention rates
For the project, design and build a functional prototype within a set of constraints (i.e. existing style guide and timeline) by streamlining the user flow to deliver an effortless experience.
Discovery
What does it take to create habit-forming products?
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I stumbled upon the book “Hook Model” by Nir Eyal. He illustrates the process of habit-forming products in 4 steps.
01
Trigger
The trigger is the impulse that makes the user want to engage with the app or service. This ranges from internal impulses like ‘It’s morning and I start my routine with meditation’, or external impulses such as push notifications.
03
Reward
There has to be something in it for the user, the rewards are the benefits of the user. This is in most cases why the user engages with the behaviour, the feel-good emotions. Such as relief of pain, stress, anger, anxiety etc. These are high-value rewards. This also includes being congratulated for completion, achievements, progress tracking and streaks.
02
Action
This is the habitual behaviour itself. To create an effective habit loop, the product has to enable the user to take action with little to no conscious effort. Meaning, the lesser buttons a user has to press to get what he/she wants the better.
04
Investment
Investments such as paying for a subscription, buying extra content, inputting information or just spending more time increase the chances of the user coming back through the habit loop. The simple fact is, the user needs to have a good reason to care in order to make investments.
What are the existing strategies in the mental wellness market to drive user engagement?​
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Creating habit-forming products is a core focus in all digital products on today's' market, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Evaluating the competitive landscape allowed me to gain insights into existing strategies of direct and indirect competitors.
Below is an analysis of their engagement, usage patterns, and types of content.
Insights
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All competitors had the same framework by providing their users with a diverse library of meditation sessions. Headspace, Waking up, Stop, Breathe & Think and Moodnotes all had one unique feature that set them apart and targeted a different audience.
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Headspace targets a younger audience with their unique use of graphics and animations to educate users in a playful manner
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Waking Up is more focussed on delivering a deeper understanding of mindfulness with theoretical content and hour-long guided meditations
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Stop, Breathe & Think and Moodnotes both take a different approach. They focus more on reflection and qualitative input to connect users more deeply with themselves. Perhaps targeting a wide range of both young and mature audience
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How can we support our users to have a consistent meditation practise?
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Conducting 4 user interviews, my objective was to:
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Find out what motivates them
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Better understand their relationship with habits
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find out what is most important to them when practising mindfulness
While user motivations were inconsistent among the group, they had one common deep-seated motivation to practise mindfulness. They needed a good reason to care, they wanted to walk away with profound results after meditating, such as increased awareness or focus. This relies on the content guiding the user and supporting them when beginning meditation in a way that avoids frustration and confusion.
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Other insights​
Social pressure
Users identified their main motivations as being held accountable by others
Analysis paralysis
Users get demotivated by having to enter an app and look for meditation content, it leads to analysis paralysis rather than tranquillity
Deeper connection
A deeper connection with their practitioners helped them look up to someone with similar goals
The archetypes that we want to support
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Two types of users formed after looking at repeating patterns in my research. These will help me make decisions based on their attitude, motivation and behaviour.
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The gracious boomer
Being a seasoned professional in their area of expertise yet still wanting to improve and shape their character in order to deeply connect with the people around them, whether it’s in their career or personal life.
The conscious millennial
A hard-working and well networked young adult looking for time to find peace in the midst of a stressful world.
Design goals
Connecting the gap
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The insights discovered from the "Hook Model", competitive analysis and user interviews led me to understand that these human users desire connection with other like-minded individuals. It's also important for them to resonate with the brand and voice of the product they use. These two factors result in a sense of 'belongingness'. As social beings, this is deeply ingrained in our genes and we shouldn't ignore this in the design of products.
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Let's also not forget the need for efficiency and simplicity that we look for in this busy and chaotic world. This craving for tranquillity is essentially why these users start meditation in the first place.
What needs to be true to succeed?
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To keep the project and testing phase oriented toward an objectively evidence-based process, it starts off with a tactical and testable hypothesis.
“We believe that retention and conversion rates will increase if millennials get more motivated to habitually incorporate Balance in their meditation sessions”
Ideation
Top three potential solutions
Team
Users can create a team where they can keep each other accountable as a group to reach common goals. They can also exchange messages to share experiences and techniques.
Custom Push Notifications
Notifications are more personalized where they can customize their reminder and link directly to a specifically chosen meditation session. Skipping 90% of the current steps the user has to take.
Meditation Coaches
A feature that allows you to follow your favourite coach which supports a stronger emotional relationship with the voice that guides them on their journey.
Failing fast, moving from sketches to high-fidelity prototypes in three days
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The brainstorming sessions resulted in two features per user insight gathered from discovery. These were turned into paper prototypes to help validate the value of these concepts and make them more concrete. Rapid feedback from users removes assumptions and helps me focus on solving the right problem.
DAY 1
Team
01 This iteration integrates the social feature on their profile screen to avoid the risk of removing the focus on users' main goal, finding meditation content. 'Team' subtlety replaces the existing 'Skills' tab.
02 Granting the social feature 'team' its very own section in the navigation bar would emphasize and encourage a more interactive and engaging platform. User testing will validate how valuable social engagement is to users.
Customization in Home screen & Push Notifications
01 “I simply ignore the notifications, the stakes aren’t high enough for me”
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Adding the ability to customize the notification message, choose a specific session, voice and time will raise the stakes for the user speaking more directly to them. It also cuts 6 steps out of the existing user flow.
02 Giving the user more control by letting them customize their home screen with their favourite content and remove unwanted elements. This tailored approach also contributes to a shorter user flow when customized well.
Meditation Coach
01 Respecting the existing design for starting a session, I kept mostly all elements in place and added the ability to visit the meditation coaches' page. Balances' product team did a great job already of optimizing the flow to allow the user to effortlessly start their sessions.
02 In the second 'Team' iteration, 'Plans' and 'Singles' were compiled into a single section 'Explore'. Using this to my advantage, I gave the ability to the users to search for content based on their favourite meditation coach.
As content will grow, so will the number of users. And that brings a more diverse set of preferences for coaches. This different content structure allows breathing room for more coaches to join the force.
DAY 2
Testing with paper prototypes eliminated concepts with no value
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Insights
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The first iteration of the ‘Team’ feature generated positive reactions and proved to increase interest. Social encouragement and accountability is a major motivator for us social beings.
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The improved ‘Push Notifications’ feature was greatly appreciated as it resulted in no or little effort to start a planned meditation session
“When I wake up, I am set on having little to no screen time to avoid distractions and start my day with mindfulness”
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The 'follow your favourite coach' concept turned out to have no value at all. Their main objective is to effortlessly start meditating, not read the bios of meditation coaches. The users’ emphasis on efficiency when using this product proved to be a priority
This feedback paved the way for the low-fidelity clickable prototype that would result in further insights about the length of the flow, specific elements, usability and copy.
Implementing learnings to create a low-fidelity clickable prototype
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Since the ability to invite friends or create a team with users based on similar goals was valued in the first test, I expanded on the team feature. It also proved to be more respected when located in their profiles. Giving it a spot in the navigation bar took away some of the value of the meditation content, which needed to be avoided.
Team
Custom Push Notifications
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Users emphasized their need to be able to schedule sessions ahead, therefore I also expanded on the custom push notifications. This design is slightly different from the existing design. This subtle added functionality results in less time being spent looking for sessions which, if successful, is meant to an increase in engagement.
DAY 3
The final round of testing and measuring success metrics
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Goals for the user test
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Define and measure success metrics (i.e. error rates, usability, accessibility, satisfaction, etc.)
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Find out whether and how much any of the solutions increase user motivation to use Balance for their mindfulness practise
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3 tests were conducted in a local meditation centre in Vancouver and 1 was done remotely.
Findings
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The ‘create team’ button raised too many questions, users weren’t sure why they should create a team. This uncertainty discouraged them to take action
“Why would I create a team? I don’t even know anyone on this platform”
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There was a lot of curiosity and interest in the ‘challenges’ concept and wanted to engage and explore it further
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The copy created confusion. Users were unsure about the term ‘thread’ and didn’t see the purpose of it
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Overall a lack of guidance. The users found themselves getting frustrated about the lack of clarity. There were too many options to invite friends which overwhelmed them. They didn’t know how to sign up for challenges and weren’t sure how many goals they were allowed to select.
Heuristic evaluation round #1
avg
0.59
Success rate
9
avg
# of confusions
avg
3.8
Usability
4.1
avg
Satisfaction
Finishing off with a high-fidelity clickable prototype
Team
The subtle guidance in ‘Team’ took the pressure off and they were far more likely to create a team
More time needs to be spent on expanding the ‘challenge’ feature. There was unanimous interest in exploring how they could push this piece to its limits
The chat feature got overlooked by 3 out of 4 participants. The desire for messaging has to be evaluated when in use with real team members.
Custom Push Notifications
Confusion decreased and speed increased as the copy was inherently clarified
The newly distributed bell icons put a huge emphasis on the push notifications feature. Success rates for setting reminders doubled.
Heuristic evaluation round #2
avg
0.87
Success rate
3
avg
# of confusions
avg
4.4
Usability
4.7
avg
Satisfaction
Reflection
Conclusion
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Consumers are increasingly seeking products and experiences, which actually promote well-being and healthy habits along with modern-day wellness. Discovering what really supports people in a service like this is no surface-level research, but it presents exciting and challenging problems to solve.
As social creatures, we have a desire to foster alliances and act in a compassionate and collaborative way with other people and this is a powerful motivator in neuroscientific terms because it activates the brain's empathy pathways. These emotions trigger the release of the neurochemicals oxytocin and dopamine, which contribute to feelings of bonding and pleasure as part of the brain's reward system.
As a result, this collaborative concept increased engagement and can, in the long-term, increase conversion rates with the use of a referral program.
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Future considerations
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​If the device constraint of this product were non-existent, I would integrate this service with smartwatches and increase efficiency, even more, to support users in creating effective habit loops.
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I wish to use the team feature as a referral program. Initially, this feature will only be available for premium members but if they invite an X amount of friends, they will get a discount on this membership.
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I would also keep testing and analyzing the team feature to get a long term synthesis about the engagement, optimizing it over time.
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What did I learn?
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Being a lone ranger in a project like this has taught me a holistic view of designing solutions that connect business goals with user needs. I was in charge of the whole process from defining goals and success to ideation and testing. It showed me that, good decisions are made with a deep understanding of the research findings, especially when working in crossfunctional teams.
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Choosing the right discovery methods for your particular problem and product is not easy. You need to have clear goals of what you want to learn and what the most effective way is to reach those goals. Choosing a method that is not going to get the insights that you need to solve your problem, can be a big waste of time.
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Lastly, I learned how to synthesize more accurately. It comes down to converting a lot of data into an accurate picture. And the quality of this synthesis will determine the quality of your decision making throughout the project. This has a huge impact on the outcome as these decisions can steer you in the right direction, but they can also take you further away from solving the right problem. So make sure you pay attention to getting the data from the right source (interview the right people).