Onboarding for Wellness Wearable Device App
Apollo is a wearable device that calms the nervous system. It's the first wearable device for adults that focuses on output rather than input.
A new and unique device has a learning curve associated with it. I set out to improve on the current app onboarding.
Client
Apollo Neuro
Date
2021-2022
Services
Strategy, UX, UI
Team
Jonathan Carson (Director of Design)
Erin Keefe (Product Design Lead)
01 Context
What is Apollo?
The Apollo is a wearable device founded by Dr. Dave, a neuroscientist and clinical psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Depression, Anxiety Disorders and Substance Use Disorders.
He worked with therapy-resistant PTSD patients and sought ways to help them gain control of their stress response. Through research conducted with the University of Pittsburgh, he discovered he could leverage our body’s natural response to touch to restore balance to the nervous system.
He did this by creating a novel wearable device, the Apollo. Apollo uses vibrations to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, calming the body down passively, giving similar effects to deep breathing or meditation. Apollo is advertised as "a hug for your nervous system".
How does it work and what do people use Apollo for?
Apollo calms down the nervous system by improving heart rate variability (HRV). HRV is the variability of time between consecutive heartbeats. This variability is a positive indicator. It means the body is more adaptable to stressors.
People with high HRV rates tend to be less stressed, happier, and at lower risk of conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety, depression, heart arrhythmia, and asthma.
People use Apollo to improve sleep, focus, stress, and recovery by increasing their HRV rates. Apollo serves a wide range of users from retirees who have trouble sleeping, children with ADHD who need help focusing, professionals handling stress during important presentations, to athletes looking to improve their recovery time.
Clinical research shows that users receive best results when using Apollo for 3 or more hours a day, 5 or more days a week. Therefore it's important for people to use Apollo often and consistently.
02 Discovery
At the end of 2021, we were working on a major release - version 3 of the Apollo app, where we were looking to improve existing features as well as implement a few more. I led the redesign of onboarding.
Research Test Plan
Heuristic analysis of current onboarding
Survey data
400+ survey responses
Open-ended survey question “What other helpful information do you think we can provide to help you use your Apollo better?”
Goal is to obtain qualitative data to provide context
I started with assessing the current onboarding process and found several issues. Besides the signup and connection flows, onboarding was essentially a device manual. Turns out, this is identical to the actual paper manual people receive in the box. The information is vague and the manual offers no guidance on how to even use the device for its purposes.
Onboarding Heuristic Analysis
A holistic view of the user onboarding journey
After your Apollo device is shipped you receive an email with simple setup and basic usage instructions. After registering on the app you receive more detailed tips such as the all important intensity setting as well as use cases for different modes. The information is a great starting point, although many people don't read emails, especially long text-heavy emails.
Overall, there are three touch points for onboarding — email, physical device manual, and in-app onboarding. I wanted to keep the entire user journey in mind, not just the app experience. How can we improve the app in ways that complement the overall onboarding experience?
Survey data revealed common pain points
Due to time constraints, I chose to validate my assumptions by analyzing a recent survey sent out to Apollo users. The questions were all answered using Likert Scales, which is useful for learning what problems people were having, as well as how common and how severe they were. But it didn't tell us WHY.
Luckily there was an open-ended question asking “What other helpful information do you think we can provide to help you use your Apollo better?” And people went off! Some even wrote entire essays. This qualitative data was revealed context to user problems.
I combined through the responses and quickly sorted them into categories, distilling them into 13 major points. I worked with my team to prioritize them. We realized there were 4 user pains we could address during onboarding. This also confirmed my assumptions from earlier.
Prioritization matrix
Research Insights
Users experienced 13 major pain points. We prioritized them by order of importance for us to work on, based on perceived effort and stakeholder values. Four of these occur during onboarding.
Major pain points users experience during onboarding (from most to least common):
Users have to hunt for information, which takes effort or is too difficult to find
Users feel lost and seek guidance, especially when first using the product
Users are unclear on how to best wear the device
Users are experiencing discomfort and skin irritation from wearing the Apollo
Our Goal
Improve the onboarding process so that first time users can get the most benefit and avoid negative effects
Our goal is to improve the onboarding process so that first time users can get the most benefit and avoid negative effects. Time and consistent use is necessary to see benefits from Apollo, so we help our users best utilize the device for their needs.
Because the Apollo is a novel device, providing an excellent onboarding experience is essential for setting up our users to succeed. Users who use Apollo effectively are more likely receive benefits from Apollo, increasing customer satisfaction and retention.
03 Ideate
Our current focus is simply the first stage of onboarding and setting up the user for success down the line.
It seems users generally have difficulty because they cannot find the information they need. How can we increase findability of relevant information in order to decrease user burden? There are three requirements for this release to address current user pains.
1. Hardware how-to’s – Users must be able to have a clear idea of how they can wear the Apollo safely and comfortably, as well as maintain it properly.
2. Initial usage guidance – Users must be able to have a clear idea on how they will be using Apollo for the first weeks
3. Access to further information – Users will have easy access to further information at any point of onboarding and beyond.
Proposed solution lo-fi wireflow for new onboarding
04 Solution
We addressed these requirements without changing the main flow of onboarding as it still made sense to keep. First, we address how to wear your Apollo, then we address how to use your Apollo.
How to wear your Apollo
How to wear your Apollo
Key changes
Changed imagery from static illustrations to realistic animations to be closer to reality
Removed ability to skip onboarding, making onboarding mandatory
Added link to related help desk articles and customer service contact
User pains addressed
Users have to hunt for information, which takes effort or is too difficult to find
Users are unclear on how to best wear the device
Users are experiencing discomfort and skin irritation from wearing the Apollo
How to use your Apollo
How to use your Apollo
Key changes
Replace single page manual into separate steps, with associated animation. Less information per screen is easier to digest.
Added intensity adjustment tips, which is important for both device effectiveness and user comfort
User pains addressed
Users feel lost and seek guidance, especially when first using the product
Users are experiencing discomfort and skin irritation from wearing the Apollo
Proposed solution hi-fi screens for new onboarding (new user, basic)
Two different entry points for onboarding
With the impending addition of subscription user type ("premium"), we added a personalized sleep component, which required a survey. The screens below are what a non-subscription ("basic") user would see during onboarding. Premium users would move through the same flow, with the addition of personalization survey at the end.
Constraints
There were several constraints to work with including the implementation of a new design system the Lead product designer was working on. Additionally the company that created the animations stopped responding so we could not get different resolutions or orientations. Workarounds were necessary to make them look visually appealing on various phone screen sizes.
New design system to implement, including dark mode
Adding clip
Going from Modes to Vibes vs. Flows
Could not make changes to animations
Introducing premium user tier
Handling bluetooth connection vs app connection
05 Results
In only 3 months we saw some positive results, proving we’re on the right track
So what was the result of the new onboarding? After only 3 months, we saw some positive results. An increase in device retention and increased user satisfaction, as evidenced by the decrease in onboarding-related customer service calls. This proves we are on the right track.
Did we address our users' needs during onboarding?
The numbers look good, but did we really address our users' needs during onboarding?
Updated onboarding successfully addressed how to wear the device and avoid irritation. We did this by improving instructions on how to wear Apollo to be more clear, sequential, and visually realistic. By adding a guide for adjusting intensity, people can avoid skin irritation which is commonly caused by having your intensity set too high.
Regarding information and guidance, we’re on the right track! Adding Helpdesk links provide further information and prevent dead ends. But users still are still not taught how to use Apollo besides what the buttons do. Due to time constraints we didn't get to building that part yet. That's coming up next!
06 Next Steps
Now that people know how to safely wear the device and access further information, we can address how to use the device functions. Where we left off with onboarding, users are dropped into the home screen and are left alone. If you've never used Apollo before you may be wondering "what now?"
Home screen
Guide users through their first time using Apollo’s functions
We can show them step by step, how to use Apollo, while sprinkling in useful information at the appropriate times.
This will give users baseline knowledge of how to use Apollo so they're not so lost. It's proven that people learn better by doing rather than reading a wall of text.
We can address these previously identified user pains:
Users are confused and lost because instructions for modes, frequency, and intensity are vague
Users don’t know what settings to use for what situations
Planned features
Interactive step-by-step walkthrough
Helpful contextual tips and information
Guided intensity calibration
Next up: Play a Vibe
What I learned
The most difficult part about working on this was the ambiguity and lack of resources.
Although clinical research was highly valued, UX research was not. We know a lot about how Apollo fares in the lab. It was difficult for me to find a breadth and depth of information about Apollo in the wild.
I was able to find value in a single survey question, but more resources would have definitely helped in understanding the problem space.
Additionally, I was not included in discussions until it was time to design, which is much too late. In hindsight I should have spoken up and pushed to be involved in the product decision making process, and also convince people of the importance of user testing.
In the end, I learned I need to better advocate for myself as a designer in order to best advocate for users. Going forward, I became much more outspoken about these things.