Betterspace
Increasing user engagement with a corporate wellbeing app and resource marketplace.
Team of 4 // Jan 2022 // 3 weeks // Client Project // Wellbeing
Role: UX Designer & Researcher
Tools & Methods: Double-Diamond Method, Figma, Maze, Google Forms, Zoom, Slack, Kanban, Pitch, Pen & Paper!
— Client
Betterspace is a wellbeing app and resources marketplace.
It enables corporate organisations to purchase subscriptions for their employees which allows them to create goals across the six categories of wellbeing (Sleep, Nutrition, Exercise, Community, Stress Management and Meaningful Activity) and complete in-app purchases for products and resources using the budget set by the employer on a monthly basis (must be used up at the end of the month, does not accumulate).
Betterspace is not just a marketplace, it’s also a tool. The more users engage with the Betterspace pillar rating system and provide (self-assessed) data on their well-being (on weekly basis ideally), the more they will get out of the solution:
→ They will gain greater self-awareness of their well-being and be recommended products, services and advice that will assist them in achieving their wellbeing goals in more effective ways.
— Brief
The problem that Betterspace faced was a lack of user engagement with the weekly well-being pillar rating system and a desire to make users’ data more actionable. Users primarily used the marketplace functionality of the app.
The overall goal was to encourage users, on the employee side (there is also an employer facing part of the tool, where employers can monitor their teams aggregated and anonymised pillar ratings), to make a habit of engaging with the Betterspace methodology in order to improve their overall wellbeing.
We were to carry out this project in accordance with Betterspace’s design principles:
— Engaging
— Structured
— Manageable
— Measurable
— Process
01/ Understand the user
Compared the features of 5 competitors to identify opportunities we could exploit in order to remain competitive and stand out.
Conducted interviews with users to understand their needs, behaviours and attitudes around wellbeing apps.
Conducted interviews with Betterspace employees to better understand the pain points of their users.
02/ Identify the problem
Created a persona (Izzy) based on our user research to help empathise with the user.
Created a user journey to highlight the pain points we needed to resolve in order to help Izzy, in line with the brief.
Defined a problem scenario based on getting Izzy engaged with the app in order to create sustainable habits that will foster her wellbeing:
Problem: “Izzy needs to be incentivised to be more engaged with Betterspace so that she can improve her mental wellbeing.”
➡️ How might we use Izzy’s willingness to improve her wellbeing to get more engaged with Betterspace?
03/ Ideate Solutions & Test
We used the Hook Model by Nir Eyal as a basis for ideation (read about it here). This model demonstrates 4 actionable steps to take in order to create a sustainable habit: Trigger - Action - Reward - Investment. We decided to review our brief, user and competitive research through the lens of this model and tackle the brief in a strategic way in order to increase user engagement with Betterspace’s check-in/self-assessment system:
Trigger: develop Notifications to provoke the user to engage with the app.
Action: improve the check-in/self-assessment process so as to make it more intuitive within the app and outside the app (Slack App integration).
Reward: reward the user for their Investment (time and effort) with an element of gamification (streaks for successfully doing their check-ins on a weekly basis) and the ability to visualise their wellbeing data in actionable ways.
— Outcome
We designed several solutions to improve overall User Engagement:
Notifications
Improved ‘check-in’ (wellbeing pillar & goal self-assessment) flow
Data dashboard
Gamification (streak system)
Slack app concept
The client was extremely complimentary of our proposed solutions and is now exploring which solution they might begin to implement.
Client Feedback:
“Thanks guys, so many interesting points in there. And a very well delivered presentation. Am intrigued by seeing what Alfredo chooses to run with..” — Jim Woods, CEO
“Fantastic work guys again. Thank you very much.” — Alfredo Belfiori, CTO
— View the Demo
— Conclusion
Key Learnings
Wellbeing apps are a hot, but sensitive topic and should be approached with care and an extra amount of empathy for the user.
UX Copy is a challenging, but crucial discipline. It is key to creating an engaging experience within an app.
Freedom to ideate = confidence to design.
Next Steps
Identify opportunities to optimise personalisation within the app.
Further develop budget reminders: UX Copy, timing, personalisation, etc.
Carry on optimising the check-in process - test on current Betterspace users.
Continue exploring how to effectively integrate Betterspace into Slack.