UX'ing the Vitamin Advisor Quiz
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
September 2021 - February 2022
Background
Persona has a robust, detailed, and very lengthy vitamin questionnaire. It is what the company was built on and is fundamental to our conversion funnel. However, over the last few years, as supplements and user needs changed, questions were added to the VAQ, but none were ever removed. This was a clear case of additive cognitive bias in action. The result was a quiz that was almost 7 mins in length, and didn’t have a smooth user flow. Questions appeared in a haphazard manner and some were even duplicated.
Usability testing revealed that users found the language in the VAQ vague and confusing.
In addition, since questions continued to be piled on top of the existing logic, technical issues were beginning to emerge. There were issues with the back button landing users in alternate tracks.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
How might we redesign the vitamin advisor questionnaire that makes our users feel confident and secure in the vitamins recommendations they receive.
Think
RESEARCH
To determine what problems existed in the vitamin advisor quiz, the team and I ran user testing on both existing customers, and non-purchasers. We spoke with customer care agents, as well as members of our nutrition team. I also had partners at Facebook conduct a usability audit on the assessment, particularly with mobile users in mind. Here's what we found:
The nutrition team had multiple instances of customers using the back button in the VAQ and ending up in the wrong track. The quick fix was to remove the 'back' button. This increased support calls by 17%. Users need and want the flexibility to go back and edit answers.
Users describe the language in the VAQ as "confusing", "unclear", and "old".
Answers in the VAQ lack consistency, for example, "yes / no" often switches to "no / yes".
Users say the VAQ is too long, it takes longer than the 3-5 mins advertised. In fact, data from Google analytics indicates it takes users 7+ minutes to complete the VAQ.
Users complain the VAQ does not let them know how far along they are in the process.
71% of dead clicks occur on the height and weight screens.
51% of rage clicks occur on the medications and email capture screens
I applied the data gathered during research and user testing to the next stage.
Make
Due to the proprietary nature of the VAQ, it is a project I can't share a lot of detail on. However, I can outline the steps I took to UX the heck out of it.
ALIGN STAKEHOLDERS
The first step in the process was to get all relevant stakeholders in the same room and agree that this was a project we needed to tackle. I had broached this issue in the past and it was met with considerable resistance. However, with other companies entering the competitive landscape, the timing was right.
GATHER THE TEAM
With approval from the appropriate stakeholders, I assembled a team with 2 nutritionists, 2 copy writers, 1 claims expert, 2 developers, and 2 designers. We went through the assessment, the questions, the logic, and the technical limitations.
I think built a product roadmap to work from. We met weekly to discuss blockers, exchange ideas, and make sure the project was staying on track.
The nutrition team and claims advisor went through the logic and built a first draft, ensuring we were not compromising our recommendations. There were several items to consider here.
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Were the recommendations provided taking in to account the user channel?
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Were the recommendations provided taking in to account drug-nutrient interactions?
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Were we accounting for users going backwards in the logic?
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Were the recommendations provided the same number / price point as those being recommended today? We did not want to jeopardize conversions, AOV, and / or LTV.
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Was the new proposed logic combining questions that were similar? In other words grouping questions by "diet", "lifestyle", "medications", etc.
Next, our copywriters went through the spreadsheet to add a conversational tone to the questions and answers. We have several different tracks in the VAQ so this is a big undertaking.
I provided final review of the document, giving feedback and sending back through the above process a couple times. There were questions I asked be reworked, some I requested to be combined, and others I requested be removed all together. For example the height and weight questions were not impacting the logic. They did in the past but since they are no longer I suggested we remove them for two reasons:
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Never collect data from users you don't need. It is a privacy issue and if the information isn't being used we should not gather it.
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The VAQ is already long, let's remove any unnecessary questions to improve the customer experience.
DESIGN
Below are some of the prototype screen shots, complete with handoff notes to dev, from the redesigned assessment. You can view the VAQ in its entirety here.
Check
There is still work to be done in the VAQ but compared to where we started I'm very happy with this. We increased completion rates of the VAQ by 15%, and according to user testing we have found an optimal balance between thoroughness and too long.