2021
Brief:
Elevate WorkAthlete's existing health and wellbeing programme by introducing a smartwatch and app to provide accurate biometric data more consistantly, and providing a better athlete experience
Lead Product Designer, 100% remote
Role:
End-to-end UX/UI (using material design), illustration (leveraging Humaaans)
Activities:
Background
WorkAthlete is a health and wellbeing programme offering a bespoke coaching service to corporate employees ('athletes') at a leadership level. Employees are nominated to take part by their companies. Run by two professional athletes, the programme provides a combination of physiological assessments, a vast library of content, one-to-one coaching sessions and a supportive community.
The problem
The programme is entering a new phase and is struggling to scale effectively. Currently, the coach role is admin heavy, and the athlete onboarding journey is a little disjointed. The physiological assessments only provide a snapshot of data, rather than consistent data over time. There is also a lack of engagement from the people on the programme - comms are mainly distributed through email, and tend to get lost in the inboxs of the athletes.
The solution
We built a mobile app that:
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simplifies the onboarding process for athletes
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automates some of the coaches admin tasks
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incorporates streamlined learning pathways to replace the bulky content platform
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visualises biometric data from the newly introduced smartwatch
User research
I began the project by speaking with a number of athletes already taking part in the WorkAthlete programme, gathering insights and understanding the pain points driving the lack of engagement and identifying areas for improvement. I also spoke with a couple of coaches to understand the journey from their side, and identified some key areas to focus on.
Some key insights to emerge were:
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athletes were keen to see content in different formats such as video
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some athletes suffered with data anxiety, as they received detailed reports of the outcome on the physiological assessments, which were difficult to interpret
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coaches felt they lacked consistent data on athletes to enable them to coach effectively
Feature prioritisation
Based on insights synthesised from the research, I translated user needs into features. I worked with the wider team to prioritise these based on viability, feasibility and desirability, which left us with version 1 of the app, and other features in the product backlog for future development.
Branding and UI
WorkAthlete already have an established brand, and I was keen to expand their illustration library. They had a lack of diverse characters in their existing library, so I incorporated Humaaans characters so that it could be built upon in future.
It was also decided that we would use Material Design to accelerate the app build, given the short time frame. I got to work updating the design system in Figma to ensure the components reflected the WorkAthlete brand.
Onboarding
I spent a lot of time working with the product owner on the onboarding section, which was fairly complex due to the number of prerequisites needed to kick off the coaching sessions. As well as the typical actions of setting up an account and creating a profile, we also needed to create a seamless journey that could generate a DIY blood test and a smartwatch to be sent out to the athlete automatically. We also required the athlete to answer a detailed lifestyle assessment without caution friction.
We managed this by added illustrations to explain why we needed certain information, opt out points so the athlete could come back later, and easy to use capture mechanisms for the lifestyle assessment.
Lifestyle assessment output
Learning pathways
Modules
Learning pathways
Working with the co-founders of WorkAthlete, we managed to simplify the learning content into 5 key pathways. They then had the content redesigned to be more concise, and recorded video snippets to improve engagements. The development team used a content management system so coaches could add new content on an adhoc basis.
Smartwatch data visualisation
The WorkAthlete founders were keen to keep the emphasis of the programme firmly on the coaching element, and only use the smartwatch as a mechanism to enhance it. We kept this approach in the front of our minds when designing app, and demonstrate this on the home page, where we display snippets of smartwatch data, alongside assigned content nudges and other notifications.
Home
I spent some time working with the co-founders to understand which metrics benefitted coaches the most in terms of input to their coaching sessions. This determined which smartwatch information needed to be extracted and piped into the app. To address data anxiety some athletes experienced, I decided to keep the data at a high level in the athlete facing app, whilst the detailed data would be sent to coaches via a backend report.
Steps
HRV
We included data visualisation for:
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Heart rate
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Heart Rate Variability
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Steps
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Sleep
What next
The pilot for the WorkAthlete app is currently in flight, and due to be expanded to a wider user group soon.
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