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Habit building is hard. There have been several studies on the intricacies of human nature regarding habits, what causes people to stick to them, and what leads people to failure. WeUp, a small startup, set out to help people build habits and reach their goals with the help of gamification and some friendly competition. After years of research and development, WeUp reached out to my team for a set of fresh eyes and advised us to "blow it up" if necessary, anything to ensure the best experience for the user.
We dove into the original wireframes and company documentation to dissect the app, its game mechanics, and the company's brand identity and mission. Seeing as this app and its original design were conceptualized several years ago, we knew it was also important to analyze the current marketplace for habit building apps, particularly those with financial rewards such as Spar!. Getting a deep understanding for where the company has been and where it would like to be allowed us to create an informed research plan.
Upon initial research, it became apparent we would need to not only update the app's UI for today's phones; but that we would need to embark on a deep exploration of the app's overall design and features in order to pinpoint areas for potential improvement. While we had some initial thoughts, we knew extensive user research would give us the insights we needed to inform a new design.
My team definitely endured some constraints, such as our primary point of contact living in Africa, my team living in three different time zones, no budget, a three week time limit and a pandemic. Not to mention, I fell ill with Covid-19 halfway through our sprint, but my team and the excitement of improving an app years in the making for the client kept me going and inspired me to push through. Despite these constraints, conducting user interviews, concept testing, and two rounds of usability tests on two different prototypes allowed my team to answer WeUp's call-to-action.
To fully understand WeUp, we first had to understand the game. We used these screens from the original design to simplify WeUp's original concept:
My team suspected the app needed a UI revamp and a reassessment of the overall goal of the app and the game mechanics. However, before crafting solutions, we needed to truly get to know our user and our client. After getting to know WeUp as a brand through an in-depth review of internal documents, we felt confident diving into a competitive and comparative analysis, user interviews, and additional internet research regarding habit building and behavioral science.
After conducting an extensive C&C analysis, comparing WeUp to 8 competitors and examining over 30 factors of each app, I compiled what I felt were the most important factors when comparing WeUp to its biggest competitors. After the competitive and comparative analysis we suspected the ability for users to engage in multiple challenges at once in addition to video verification were features that should be explored in order to give WeUp a leg up when entering the app market.
While habit building can extend to several audiences, our client wanted to focus on appealing to millennial women as a result of previous research conducted regarding gamification. To ensure we were not working off of implicit bias, we did include millennial men in our research pool while keeping millennial women our target audience. Due to the pandemic, all user interviews had to be conducted via zoom, but this allowed us to interview users from all over the world keeping these research objectives in mind:
After a good eight hours straight of several affinity map iterations, our user interviews informed some pretty definitive I-statements:
"I am motivated by my friends and family"
"I benefit from accountability (and verification)"
"I am motivated by material gains"
"I like to track my progress"
Our user research inspired us to build two personas: Maya and Gabby.
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Maya, our primary user, and Gabby, our secondary user, came to WeUp with two problems:
“Maya, an educator whose routine has been uprooted, feels pressured to get in shape for her sister's wedding, but is having trouble holding herself accountable and staying motivated.”
"Gabby, a young professional that feels lonely after moving to a new city, needs a way to connect with old friends, but is having trouble finding ways to stay relevant in their lives."
To get a realistic feel for problems these users may face, we created a third proto-persona, Rachel, to help us follow these users on their journey throughout the current app and potential pain points they may have. This allowed us personify our research findings and present them to our client in a visual way.
At the onset, our users were elated to join the app. Not only did it give them the chance to work towards building new habits, but it also gave them the chance to reconnect with their friends, something our interviewees mentioned finding difficult in adulthood.
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The first couple of days are wonderful, everyone meets her walking goal, and uses the time to chat and connect with one another while walking. The app is easy to use, and Rachel has been earning extra points by beating Gabby and Maya to the WakeUp each day by hitting the sun. The competition is friendly, and by the end of the week, Maya and Rachel have each only missed one day of the challenge.
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Except, at the end of the first week, when the girls are prompted by the app to rate each other, Maya notices something odd. According to Rachel’s check-ins, she hasn’t missed any days. But that can’t be right. Maya remembers Rachel mentioning to her that she forgot to go on a walk on Thursday. If that’s true, then why did she mark it as complete?
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Maya mentions it to Gabby on the phone during her walk, but Gabby wants to give Rachel the benefit of the doubt. In her rating, Maya decided not to give Rachel full marks for the week. However, since Rachel achieved the most WakeUps by hitting the sun, she still wins the week.
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Now even though Rachel won, she notices that she didn’t receive all the points she could have in voting. Someone either didn’t believe her check-ins, or they’re intentionally trying to deny her points.
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Crafting this narrative allowed us to pinpoint three major issues with the current app:
Crafting the user journey gave us the momentum we needed to begin ideating solutions and prioritizing features:
To address the verification issue for the user, and in order for WeUp to remain on par with what we saw competitors offered in our C&C analysis, we felt video verification was essential to the app's new MVP. Users could record themselves completing the activity directly in the app (to avoid cheating by uploading old videos) and rather than the rating system, users could flag any suspicious videos for review. Video verification could also be used in conjunction with APIs such as GPS or Apple health.
While we did want to include an additional reward to add to the gamification and give users the opportunity to make up for missed check-ins, we felt the reward should be variable, rather than random. Our outside research on behavioral science told us that the reward should also be directly linked to the goal itself. So we opted to allow users to earn varying amounts of points every time they achieved a five-day streak. Not only would this aid in the "sticky factor" that keeps users coming back to the app, but it would also help them to achieve their goal AND keep money in their pockets.
We went back and fourth on the solution to this problem for hours on end, until I recalled a story the founder of WeUp told us during our first client meeting. A story where he and his friend made a pact to change their circumstances by sticking to a very strict budget. As roommates, they both had a personal interest in holding each other accountable. One day, the founder's friend went to buy a bottle of ketchup that would have put him 10 cents over budget. He talked him out of it and a few days later they were able to pay their rent by 20 cents. Recounting this story led us to our "Aha!" moment: group vs. group challenges would allow friends to work with each other to achieve a common goal.
Rather than just motivating for the sake of being a good friend, users would have more incentive to support their friends as their friend's success would be directly tied to their personal triumph. This would also give users the opportunity to compete for a much larger pot due to this solution including penalties from other groups as well.
We combined these proposed solutions to first reconstruct the game mechanics:
While we felt the new game mechanics not only better met user needs, but also the client's business goals, we didn't want to stray too far from the original app idea. However, at the end of the day, our job was to ensure the best user experience possible.
Wanting to keep both the user and the client happy, I proposed the idea of concept testing before jumping into ideating for this entirely new design. We conducted 10 concept tests, presenting participants with the overall goal of the app and the game mechanics for each concept separately (using identical language and switching the order in which they were presented each time), then asking users questions about each concept and questions regarding how they would compare the two.
10/10 users found the app with video verification more trustworthy
10/10 wanted the option to compete in multiple challenges at once
We also found that a majority of participants preferred the group vs. group concept as some wouldn't want to rate their friends badly while others said they simply wouldn't motivate their friends at the cost of winning. However, to satisfy the client needs, rather than eliminating the option to compete solo within a group of friends, we decided to provide both options to the user.
Using our concept test results combined with the MoSCoW method to identify must have, should have, could have, and will not have features, we began sketching and wireframing a solution:
Once our wireframes were finalized, an interactive prototype was created in order to conduct usability tests. I recruited users and we conducted 11 usability tests in two rounds. Our first round of testing on our original prototype gave us a lot of valuable feedback, which we used to make the following changes:
To add another layer of gamification, we initially had tribe members vote on the challenge the originator invited them to, but users found the process to be lengthy and the language confusing. So we instead opted for a one-step invitation reply with "Accept" or "Decline" as options.
We originally decided checking in, being a main feature in the user flow, should be quick and easy for the user. However, our usability tests responses caused us to reconsider. We felt to facilitate seamless feedback, the check-in button should be within each challenge. This way, users can keep better track of completed check-ins.
Our original design had tribes within the challenges tab in the navigation bar. After noticing users fumbling through the corresponding task, we decided for ease of use that not only should the "Challenges" page be at the center of the navigation bar, but that tribes should be more prominent as well.
Finally, rather than having components of the tribes and challenges on different screens, we decided to include the different challenge pages as swipe-able cards under "Challenges".
After conducting a second round of usability tests, we reached our final design. During our initial meeting, our client requested that, if time permitted, we redesign the logo and overall branding for the app. Despite it being a long three weeks with several ups and downs, we still managed to find time to fulfill the client's request and give WeUp a new face.
Not only did we give the app a new logo in addition to a UI and game mechanics overhaul, but we also added a component that speaks to something our client mentioned in our initial meeting as future business goals. We also wanted to incorporate some of the metaphors our client originally included when the app was more focused on gamification. To incorporate the tree and growth analogies, we made the streaks "s-tree-ks" and visually represented them with a chevron (which is used to denote rank) tree.
Our client eventually wanted to add a social good component to the app by collaborating with different companies and non-profits. While our current scope did not allow for this, we did incorporate the option for winners to donate some of their winnings to a charity or cause in our prototype.
While WeUp is now ready to enter the app marketplace, there are some next steps that should visited before releasing future versions such as:
As for my personal takeaways, this project confirmed to me that I truly love UX and have found my passion. Despite falling ill with Covid-19, I woke up excited to get to work, for as long as I could manage, each day. I didn't push through because I feared letting down my team or the client (they insisted I rest every day), but because working on this project and seamlessly communicating with my team genuinely brought me joy.