Health Coaching for Consumers
The primary user role of coaching on CaféWell is the end-consumer/participant. This is available to any user who is eligible to coaching and to those who are enrolled into coaching. Participants can –
The coaching dashboard is a tool, within a larger experience - CafeWell, that lets users set up and track their health goals, communicate with a designated health coach, plan and track their health goals and earn incentives.
Below is an overview of the steps a participant would go through in order to gain access to eligible health coaching services
- Sign up for coaching goals and earn rewards for completion
- Access a personalized coaching plan, through a designated health coach, giving them direction
- Manage their goals and watch the progress to stay on track
The coaching dashboard is a tool, within a larger experience - CafeWell, that lets users set up and track their health goals, communicate with a designated health coach, plan and track their health goals and earn incentives.
Below is an overview of the steps a participant would go through in order to gain access to eligible health coaching services
The Problem
By speaking to clients who use CafeWell's coaching services, we learnt about some of the concerns that their users were facing on a regular basis. Usage data and customer support tickets demonstrated the following issues that needed quick attention -
- Failure in pushing users from email(s) to the application
- Only about 30% of eligible users were able to track/ complete their coaching goals
- Drop in number of active users observed, after they had completed 2-3 goals
How can we..?
- Understand user needs specific to Cafewell’s health coaching services
- Identify key areas and reasons of frustration and/ or disruption in the users’ experience through the coaching cycle i.e. from start to finish
- Observe user behavior in completing tasks (like enrolling, creating goals, completing goals, interacting with coaches etc.) to evaluate the usability
Initial research - Stakeholder interviews & Market research
We conducted background research on health coaching in general to get an understanding of how users expect to use coaching. While this was a request from a specific client, we made sure our research and solutions could be reused for others as well - though each client and their users' needs are different, we wanted to make sure CafeWell's health coaching remained to be a consistent service.
We started with detailed round of stakeholder interviews to gather as much information about the problem. For example:
We started with detailed round of stakeholder interviews to gather as much information about the problem. For example:
- What currently blocks users from having a successful experience?
- Is everyone aligned on the objectives and expected outcome?
- What is the expected timeline?
- What do we need to know about current or future campaigns that might depend on this effort?
Getting to Know Our Users - Persona
From detailed conversations with stakeholders and from our surveys and interviews with consumers belonging to the employee class of users in the past, we decided to create a persona of the primary user group, to guide us in this effort.
Customer Journey Map
The team got back together to collaboratively sketch and whiteboard ideas and catch up on any latest findings from stakeholder conversations. While the most team worked remotely, I maintained a "wall" to demonstrate what the research has taught us so far and what our current focus is. This was also useful in brainstorming the user flow. Most of the time, the team post an end-to-end user journey from the latest prototype, share supporting quotes from users and highlight issues they’re addressing.
After several whiteboarding sessions, discussions about an ideal user flow - keeping business needs and constraints in mind - and analyzing users tasks, the designers created a high-fidelity prototype of the end-to-end consumer experience using Sketch and InVision.
Giving Life to Ideas - Wireframing
Continuing the brainstorming process, we translated the user's story into a visual journey in the form of early wireframes. These were further modified and developed into interactive prototypes that were used for next steps in usability testing by our visual designers.
Setting up the Usability Test
We decided to run a usability test using the two major profiles, therefore, the participants were split into two groups.
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Logistics for both parts of the study were managed by me. This required coordination with internal managers and other points of contact at the client company, to gather technical requirements, recruit the right participants and provide enough information to recruited participants before they joined a call with me.
I simultaneously set up the study on usertesting.com for inexperienced users to go through a set of tasks.
I simultaneously set up the study on usertesting.com for inexperienced users to go through a set of tasks.
Sample Test Script
Introduction (Open-ended)
Task-oriented
- Could you please tell me about your current role and how do you use the current application?
- What would you say are some of the major highlights and lowlights in the current experience?
Task-oriented
- Do you remember the last email you received from Cafewell about health coaching?
- After reading the email, show me how you would go about enrolling in coaching.
- How would you rate the ease of completing the enrollment process? (Scale: 1 – 5)
- How confident are you that you completed enrolling into coaching successfully? (Scale: 1 – 5)
- Without clicking on anything, tell me what would you do next and why.
- Assuming you are now enrolled, speaking out loud, show me how you would create a short-term goal.
- Show me how would you edit the goal – for example: change the time duration to 3 months.
- How do you expect communication to happen between you and your coach?
- Imagine that 3 months have passed. What do you expect to have done?
- What do you expect to see in terms of progress on your coaching goals?
- Looking at the following screen, what can you tell me about the rewards you have earned so far?
- Speaking out loud, show me how you would send a message to your coach.
Analysis and Synthesis
After completing the study, it was now time to review the collected information to find trends, facts and help drive the next steps. The data was organized in three parts -
- Detailed findings - A step-by-step documentation of each participant's response for every task, along with important quotes and video snippets. The team met to watch participant videos to perform an affinity mapping exercise where everyone wrote individual observations and categorized similar items together to find patterns relating to problems and desires of test participants
- Task insights - Task-wise summary of how every participant performed/ succeeded/ failed. This helped give a better idea of the most easy, difficult, straightforward and time-consuming tasks
- Key findings - After going through each of the findings in-depth and relating them back to the primary goals of the study, 3-5 top findings were extracted from all the data collected and presented back to the stakeholders
Sample Key Findings (With Screenshots)
Highlights -
Lowlights -
Interestingly, there was a lot of overlap between the usability issues highlighted by both groups of users.
The group of experienced users were more familiar with the application and therefore expected detailed and more complicated solutions for unique cases like - disease management, creating empathy for every patient etc.
The group of new/ inexperienced users were most drawn towards the aspect of earning rewards by speaking to a coach on a regular basis. They also struggled with understanding some of the language used across the application like - long-term coaching goals vs short-term coaching goals, activity tracking etc.
Most importantly, what every user pointed was missing was - trust in emails, direction in creating and logging goals, understanding the rewards structure in simple language
- Overall, participants found the experience simple and engaging, and the idea of coaching - motivating and inspiring
- Participants liked being told that building a coaching plan is a 5-step process, giving them a good idea about length of the process
Lowlights -
- Lack of direction in logging and tracking goals leads to confusion and frustration.
- To access goals in their various stages, participants found it overwhelming to be taken various locations on the platform - coaching plan, dashboard, itinerary etc.
- Participants did not understand how, why and what for they received rewards. For those who did not visit the Rewards Dashboard, they failed to realize that rewards existed outside coaching as well
Interestingly, there was a lot of overlap between the usability issues highlighted by both groups of users.
The group of experienced users were more familiar with the application and therefore expected detailed and more complicated solutions for unique cases like - disease management, creating empathy for every patient etc.
The group of new/ inexperienced users were most drawn towards the aspect of earning rewards by speaking to a coach on a regular basis. They also struggled with understanding some of the language used across the application like - long-term coaching goals vs short-term coaching goals, activity tracking etc.
Most importantly, what every user pointed was missing was - trust in emails, direction in creating and logging goals, understanding the rewards structure in simple language
Recommendations & Continued Design Iteration
Marketing & Campaign Management - Recommendations were provided around marketing and communication strategy to build trust and create confidence and excitement among users to proceed from their inbox to the application
Client/ Stakeholders - We went back to business architects, operations managers and qualified coaches with suggestions to create an organic user experience by changing parts of the primary user flow, giving us an opportunity to reduce the complexity and length of the process. This step involved suggestions for minor-medium changes to the coaching strategy - for example: allow participants to choose their coach instead of assigning them one and/ or assigning a coach based on their specific goals instead of being generic
Product & Design - Design iterations were made to experiment with new ideas around (a) nudges and celebration of completion, (b) visual artefacts of the coaching dashboard and, (c) rewards terminology, (d) user progress/ status updates to be clear and visible at any given time
Research efforts - Conduct iterative usability tests of varying varying fidelities to evaluate the changes and implementing a successful user flow.
Client/ Stakeholders - We went back to business architects, operations managers and qualified coaches with suggestions to create an organic user experience by changing parts of the primary user flow, giving us an opportunity to reduce the complexity and length of the process. This step involved suggestions for minor-medium changes to the coaching strategy - for example: allow participants to choose their coach instead of assigning them one and/ or assigning a coach based on their specific goals instead of being generic
Product & Design - Design iterations were made to experiment with new ideas around (a) nudges and celebration of completion, (b) visual artefacts of the coaching dashboard and, (c) rewards terminology, (d) user progress/ status updates to be clear and visible at any given time
Research efforts - Conduct iterative usability tests of varying varying fidelities to evaluate the changes and implementing a successful user flow.