Designing a personalized wellness app

Two screens from Vitality One app that show Activities and Rewards tabs

Date 2019 - 2020

Client Vitality

Background

Backed by behavioral, clinical and actuarial science, Vitality offers a unique wellness program to reward healthy behaviors and inspire lifelong and sustainable habit changes for better health. Over the past decade, Vitality has worked with life insurers, health insurers, pharmacies, gyms and employer groups to bring the program to their customers and employees as both a web and mobile platform.

Jump to app visuals

The Challenge

Create a comprehensive mobile app that leverages a new algorithm focused on completing personalized weekly goals and taking achievable steps toward better health in order to foster lifelong behavior change.

My role

I was one of 3 of UX/UI designers who worked on this product and I focused on iOS journeys. We split up features and journeys but collaborated closely as well.

My responsibilities included:

Leading brainstorms and design exercises
Low-fidelity sketches and wireframes
High-fidelity prototypes
Collaborating with cross-functional teams
Conducting usability testing
Developing and maintaining design system for iOS
Contributing to backlog maintenance and prioritization

Image of whiteboard with color coded sticky notes journey map

Process

Getting started

With the recognition that wellness goes beyond instant gratification and requires a comprehensive approach, Vitality created a new back-end algorithm that focused on personalized goals, habit tracking and key intervention points. We needed a digital, app-first front-end and experience to put this technology in the hands of our users and it became the Vitality One product.

Target audience

Working with an outside consultancy and through focus groups and research, we identified a primary target audience for this app.

30-60 years old
Gender neutral
Middle to upper-middle class
Full-time employees
Interested in improving their health
Open to learning and exploring new technology
Different states of health and experience on health journey

There are so many apps and resources out there to help me, but I have no time to navigate it. Just let me know what I should be doing. Make it a no brainer, help me easily and quickly get to my health goals.

Collage of wireframe screens from mobile iOS app

Sprint process

As the product owners provided requirements, we worked through our typical 5 day sprint process and powered through the different features and journeys for this product. During the sprints, we collaborated with other stakeholders, created wireframes, iterated designs, created prototypes, and tested with users when possible.

Graphic for 5 day sprint: Day 1 (understand the problem), Day 2 (sketch and wireframe), Day 3 (decide and iterate), Day 4 (design and prototype), Day 5 (test and refine)

Product definition and requirements

Even from the beginning, the requirements for Vitality One were a moving target because of changing deadlines, development partners and business decisions. Requirements were created and evolved in an ongoing and agile manner, meaning that we had to ensure our designs and design process could be flexible.

Throughout this process, I focused my questions, feedback and efforts on:

Use cases
The evolving experience and perception of the program through time
Happy vs. unhappy paths
Customer journey touch points

The product also needed to be customizable and configurable for clients who wished to tie in their existing wellness efforts and employee programs with the platform.