Case studies
Raiys - Wellbeing app
RAIYS is an online wellbeing platform that gives users a holistic approach to their overall wellness, offering various tools to set goals and track their progress, supported by a considerable media library and video chat with expert coaches.
The platform is supported through both a mobile app and a web based product created by both internal and offshore development teams.
Raiys is sold as an employee benefit via a partner program to large organisations such as HMRC and Network Rail allowing for a large user base for research purposes.
3 stories...
I've selected 3 different case studies from my time at Raiys
Restructuring the platform
The problem
We had a powerful platform with many useful tools and expert content, but research highlighted users weren't engaging with it. How could we increase user engagement with the product as a whole and encourage the frequency of returning visitors?
As part of the rebrand from PAM Life to Raiys, we looked at user engagement and retention metrics with google analytics and found users were interacting with the coaching chat functionality and some of the tools on the platform but a lot of the media content was getting missed with low overall engagement.
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
This was the initial phase in an ongoing process of continuous discovery and development.
MY ROLE
Entire product design from research to conception, visualization and testing, supporting coaches in interviews.
KEY GOAL
To increase the user engagement in different areas across the platform.
Research
A combination of website analytics and user interviews provided a clear insight to the issue.
With the goal of understanding how the users were interacting with the platform and what features and content they felt were useful to them, I tracked user engagement metrics via google analytics and utilised the 4 live chat coaches we already had on the team to ask pre-written questions to users (where appropriate) about their experiences while on the platform. This was a game changer in terms of what the user base really thought of the product.
Key insights
Nothing new to discover
Simply put, the platform didn't feel exciting or dynamic enough. Users were finding use from some of the tools but felt very little desire to log in regularly as they perceived there wasn't anything 'new' to see.
Wellness score not a priority
The assessment wheel as the single focus on the homepage was not something users wanted to see as it rarely got updated and seeing their wellness score was not a high priority for them.
Lack of awareness of content
Most of the users questioned did not know about the workout videos and meditation podcasts or exactly where to find them. The expert content was 'hidden' away within the media library and not easily accessible.
We identified 2 main issues
The homepage was too static and not showing the user useful information about the platform.
The media library was non intuitive to navigate and very content heavy proving difficult to find relevant items.
Pt I : Understanding how to present the right media to our users
With around 700 different media items contained within the 'Media' tab, user's access to relevant content was extremely difficult to find. The goal was to map out what we had and how best we could present it.
For users trying to find specific media item it was very much guesswork/trial and error, a non-intuitive navigation around a content-heavy library lacking a clear purpose and hierarchy. The happy path was only if they knew the precise location or were directed from an email deeplink.
The challenge was to understand what content the users wanted and how best for them to access it.
The solution
Grouping and moving selected content and presenting them as a standalone features (tools) was agreed as the way forward. These new features would sit within the existing tools area of the platform.
Using the feedback from the user/coach interviews we discovered, virtual gym, mind/resilience, CBT, meditation and expert podcasts were the most popular media areas to present as tools.
A regularly updating 'suggested media' section based off user's onboarding results was also added to the dashboard design which is outlined below giving users the opportunity to easily view relevant content.
Pt II : Starting a new homepage from scratch
Further research found users liked the idea of a live dashboard showing reminders, progress reports and regularly updated content.
The challenge here came from a business objective to differentiate Raiys from the rest of the market, whose primary screens tend to be an array of charts and graphs.
With the removal of the assessment wheel into a new 'Assessments' tab, the homepage was essentially a clean slate to work on. To kick things off, group ideation sessions identified a list of potential 'widgets' to include. These initial ideas were plotted on an impact/effort matrix to gauge what was technically feasible and which would likely have the biggest impact. From there, through further research we discovered which of our widgets our users felt would be most useful. Along with the initial analytics showing coaching was most used feature, this aided the visual hierarchy of the layout.
Resource constraints around the demand for increased content creation was solved via highlighting existing content eg 'Podcast of the week' regularly updated to give the dash a constantly fresh feel.
Validating early designs with remote user testing was inconclusive as the user group un-used to the platform were agnostic about different design layouts. However once we moved towards hi-fi designs with supporting visuals we found we could quickly iterate the layouts towards the final design. Once completed, a series of user interviews around the new dash confirmed the design layout giving us the confidence to move forward with the new design.
Conclusion
The initial brief to increase engagement on the platform developed into a 2 part strategy: 1 - to improve the user experience by reappropriated our existing content into more easily accessible tools and 2 - redesigning the dash to include more relevant content.
The feedback on the restructure has been positive with increased engagement in media within the new tools. Analytics indicates the dash gets much more interaction from the users and our user base doubled in the year following the change. Since this project we have increased our user base from under 200k to over 750k and the platform has been adopted by over 100+ organisations such as M&S and HMRC.
However the issue around the media library content largely not being accessed by users remains, suggesting more work is required to make it more user friendly.
Also as part of our continuous discovery process since the project we have identified that some users 'never' interact with some of the widgets, so further iterations of the platform would likely include some kind of customisation where users could re-order, hide and create a bespoke dash.
Rebranding project
The problem
The Raiys styling was inconsistent and felt dated, initially created by the marketing dept with no clearly defined style. It was time for an overhaul, but this time we would put the decisions on the branding in the hands of our user base.
Rebranding was an obvious project for me upon joining the company, (then PAM Life). It took a few months before the strategy was in place to rename the company and move away from the old style.
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
2 months for the design from research to handover
MY ROLE
Entire product design from research to conception, visualization and testing.
KEY GOAL
To have the best looking wellbeing app on the market with a unique style.
The existing design
The platform was originally conceived as an app as part of a wider group called "PAM Group" and named "PAM Life". Once it was determined the app was to be sold to the B2C market the name no longer made sense so the rebrand would include the creation of a new company, Raiys.
Click for enlarged view >>
Surveying the user base
Our initial work was around creating a user persona, alongside the marketing team we identified a female professional in her mid 30's possibly with young children. Her main focus was on a new work/life balance and finding the time to stay healthy.
As we were still in lockdown our primary focus for research was with remote unmoderated user testing websites. We initially wanted to understand what our user base felt about the competition. So we asked 100 participants to rate their preference to 9 of our competitors visual style. The results came back overwhelmingly for a light/illustrative style and the darker/photographic direction was avoided.
Here is an example of the favourite style from Wellyou, a soft illustrative style of visual brand.
Creating the Raiys brand style
After the decision on the overall visual style was validated, we then moved towards colours and fonts. A rapid mock up of a series of screens with 5 basic colour palette options and some font options we thought would be well suited to the platform, then went back to test these and were quickly able to identify the building blocks of the new brand.
Refining the style and illustrations
With the results of the survey clearly showing a strong bias towards the font choice of poppins and a blue/green colour palette, I set to defining a illustrative style based on the work of www.biscottodesign.com
From this I created the Raiys style tile and in turn define a design system based on a heavily modified version of material design, being a cross platform app I had to ensure we were inclusive of iOS users. This then began the process of methodically updating and reworking all the screens across the platform.
The final design
Conclusion
We improved the brand with a distinctive new visual identity and feel we have the best looking platform on the market. This was due in large part to taking the early design decision process to the user base giving us the confidence to quickly and successfully rebrand and restyle the platform.
The feedback on the redesign has been universally praised from users to business clients, all offering positive reactions to the visual branding of the platform.
Our initial restriction of the user persona to a female has meant the platform leans slightly too 'feminine' for some more traditionally male industry sectors. We compensated for this over time by the inclusion of a more diverse range of illustrations throughout
Adding a new feature : A coach matching tool
The problem
A business opportunity identified a gap in the workplace coaching market. Raiys wanted to allow users to book 1:1 video coaching sessions through the platform. But how could we connect the perfect coach for our users needs?
With over 40 coaches with varying backgrounds and skillsets, identifying which coach was the best match for a user's specific needs was paramount for the success of the project. We needed a easy to navigate coach matching tool with a standout UI so our users could get the best coach for them.
TIMELINE
2 months for the design from research to handover
MY ROLE
Entire product design from research to conception, visualization and testing.
KEY GOAL
To allow user's coaching needs to be easily matched with coaches with the most relevant skills.
Creating the tool
The coach matching tool was a business objective led feature and the brief was simple, create a tool that allows users to view a ranked list of coaches in the most relevant order for their skills and then easily book a coach session.
Working as a trio with the CTO and Tech Lead, we determined we needed to gather a number of variables to return a filtered coach list. These were:
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Session type (we offered 2 tiers of coaching session types)
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What user wanted coaching about
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If they wanted a coach with specific business function experience
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If they wanted a coach with specific industry experience
They went away and worked on a proof of concept and I started the user journey flows for the whole process through to booking a session.
Non - competitor analysis
Although this concept of a coaching match tool was unique in the wellbeing space, other platforms in the entertainment field commonly use similar UX onboarding to create bespoke playlists or show relevant content.
Looking at onboarding flows from the likes of Apple music and Spotify, we identified that a little friction goes a long way in getting users invested in the platform. Showing the big reveal too quickly lessens the impact and can call into question the validity of the results shown.
Apple music onboarding
Through remote user testing we compared a simple check list version against a more visually engaging piece inspired by the Apple example above. In terms ease of usability neither particularly stood out but when asked which was preferred, the selection via tapping 'bubbles' was the clear favourite.
Lo-fi mockups were then created to ensure the concept was feasible technically and met the requirements of the brief.
A quick prototype mock up was created for user testing purposes highlighting issues around the growth/mindset screen. It wasn't clear to users that this was a selection between 2 options, instead assuming it was a carousel showing 2 benefits. This was fixed using a toggle between the 2 and retested.
Hi fidelity prototypes
Confident the concept was working I moved onto the hi-fi prototype design with added animations.
Working through the final design screens, it became clear the tool would benefit from some animations both to aid the interaction design and also from a technical perspective to mask the slight delay returning the list of coaches from the API. I looked to our motion designer to create 2 instances of animation to delight the users.
Learnings on implementing a new feature
The learnings from this project were mainly around technical limitations which were missed on initial scoping.
During the development life cycle of the project, it soon became clear there were some technical pieces that made implementation extremely difficult. Testing took many weeks and fixing bugs would have knock on effects elsewhere in the tool pushing back launch dates. My initial scoping conversations with the development team were probably too high level and we should have broken elements down much further to avoid the delays in delivering the product. Further developments benefitted from this mindset and the team now spends much longer discussing work at an earlier stage.
An additional part of the user journey was not considered... how to rebook a coach? After some time of users interacting with the tool in a live environment, we ran some interviews and while the tool itself was well received, the question came up around rebooking. This was our next piece of work highlighted for us in our continuous product discovery.