UnDerstanding long-term behavior of Mobile app users

28-day diary study

TIMEFRAME: 3 WEEKS - MY ROLE: DESIGN RESEARCHER

CONTENTS

  • The opportunity and the problem

  • My process

  • Logistics of the study

  • Empathising with the users

  • Key findings

  • Customer journeys

  • More detailed findings

  • Next steps

The opportunity and the problem

Our self-care app introduced 28 days plans to improve users’ wellbeing in specific areas. User research told us there is an appetite for it. As the app introduced the paywall it seemed the smartest move to implement health plans to drive engagement. The problem was, we didn’t notice long term engagement after introducing this feature. To investigate the problem, I conducted a 28-day diary study.

My process

I was excited to plan this research as we had never done diary studies before for Healthily. 

In the first week I did all the preparation which included the following steps:

  • Setting up the framework for the study, deciding on platforms, payments,

  • Preparing consent with the legal and marketing team to use their responses

  • Writing opening and closing interview questions, creating weekly surveys

  • Recruiting participants, scheduling interviews

During the study my role was: 

  • Conducting opening interviews

  • Sending out weekly surveys, payments

  • Communicating with participants via WhatsApp

  • Conducting closing interviews

After the study my role was:

  • Analysing findings

  • Creating specific feedback then presenting them to the app team, stakeholders, content team, and product designer

LogisticS of the study

EmpathisIng with users

To introduce the participants I created storyboards. The cartoon-like illustrations and quotes helped my team and the stakeholders to empathise with the users, their needs, health goals and expectations. Both users started a plan which resonated with their current health goals.

Key findings

  • Users fall in love with the plan at the first sight, because of the inspirational content, availability of tracking, and the way we show progress.

  • We discovered a lot of usability issues which helped us to improve early user engagement.

  • The main pain point was the lack of clear tasks which would help users achieve behavior change

customer journeys

more detailed findings

Next steps

  • Work closely with the app squad to transfer this knowledge into their early user engagement work 

  • Share more team-specific detailed feedback to the rest of the company

  • Use this study framework to kick off a 7-day diary study to gather feedback on the mobile app

  • Ideation workshop with the product team to address usability issues