Persona's Mobile App
SUMMARY
From ideation, to leading brainstorms, to designing and testing various ideas, all the way to final implementation — I led the team on a journey to redesign the mobile app, improve the user experience, and develop a new customer acquisition channel for the business.
ROLE
Product Design, Product Strategy, User Research, Interaction design, Visual design, Prototyping & Testing, Advocating UX across the organization
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September 2021 - February 2022
Background
Persona’s mobile app had become a bit of a “Frankenstein”. Outdated information, an overly complicated information architecture, a clouded user flow, slow response times, and the lack of any kind of design system, were all contributing to major usability issues. The app was prone to technical instability, frequent crashes and general customer frustration.
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In addition, there was no way to acquire new customers via the mobile app. Instead, it was used solely as a means for existing customers to make account changes and updates to their program.
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Data showed that 12% of customer service calls were attributed to bugs / UX issues with the mobile app.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
How might we redesign the mobile app to include a stable acquisition funnel so that our customers are able to successfully purchase and easily make changes to their vitamin program, as determined by a 3% reduction in customer care calls and a 4/5 star rating on mobile app stores.
Think
RESEARCH
To determine what problems existing mobile app users had, the team and I combed through 200+ social media reviews, trustpilot reviews, and app store reviews. Here's what we learned.
The iOS app needs a refresh. It looks like a very old app and this would vastly improve the product.
The app needs some work. I cannot click on links to contact them. If you access these via the web you can access these services. They have excellent customer service.
The website and quiz looks like a completely different company than what I see on the app. Is this legit?
I love this program. My only concern so far has been the app. It's very hard to navigate and make changes to profile information.
The app is terrible. I couldn't easily update my pills so I just cancelled.
Great supplements but the app needs improvement. It is hard to use and I want to cancel some of the supplements I am getting but it seems like I can't from the app.
67%
Of users complain it is difficult to add / remove supplements from their pack.
53%
Uninstall the app within 30 days of downloading it.
$16,003
Dollars per month in lost revenue due to users being unable to add to their pack.
12%
Of calls to customer service are regarding app related tech issues.
8%
Of users cite mobile app issues as a contributing factor to cancelling.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
USER INSIGHTS
Data from customer service, user surveys, and user interviews yielded the following insights:
Users need to quickly and easily adjust their pack prior to the next months delivery
Users need help remembering to take their vitamins on a daily basis
Users need to make updates to their account settings quickly and easily
Users need to know how to get help if they have questions about their program
The team and I created proto-personas. We refined these and decided to focus on the ones below.
Make
Using the data acquired during research, I asked the team the following questions:
What is the user trying to accomplish?
How does the user want to feel during and after this process?
How does our mobile app get the user closer to a life goal?
Why would a user seek out our mobile app?
What behavior change can we observe that they've achieved their goal?
This helped us develop a shared understanding of the user we were designing for, as well as build empathy for what the user wants to achieve. From here, we set out to define the MVP.
AFFINITY MAPPING
JOBS TO BE DONE
I used the jobs-to-be-done framework to prioritize the "jobs" or outcomes we wanted, rather than the features the team wanted to build.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
From the Affinity Map and the JTBD framework, I mapped out a new information architecture that significantly simplified navigation. We went from this:
To this:
WIREFRAMES
Keeping in mind the data from above, and the question what is the least amount of work we need to do to learn the next most important thing, we created the below wireframes for MVP usability testing.
WHAT WE LEARNED
Initial usability testing and stakeholder feedback revealed the following insights:
Shorten the onboarding process (or allow users to bypass it) and enter the funnel earlier
Personalization = reduced churn. Leverage past behaviors to remove repetitive and unnecessary steps. Let users pick up where they left off in the quiz / editing their pack.
Improve discoverability and feedback. Provide users the ability to view supplement details prior to purchase. People want to know what they are putting in their bodies.
Prioritize ruthlessly. To stay true to the idea of an MVP, keep the health quiz the same as the website experience.
MVP
The MVP was the fastest thing we could get out the door that still worked. The primary goal was to learn what was important to our customers and how it could add value to the business. Below are some of the ways in which we incorporated our learnings. For a full prototype, please click here.
LAUNCHED MARCH 10, 2022
Check
Not enough data has been collected to report on results.
TESTING
The Lean UX cycle will continue with a build, measure, learn process. We have a weekly cadence of user testing where we "test what you got". Whatever is ready on testing day is what goes in front of users. Next month we will launch A/B Testing on the mobile app and are in the process of building our testing hypothesis backlog in the areas of acquisition, user engagement, and retention.