Wellness by Alpa
Explore & Design ways to help Wellness by Alpa flourish and gain more clients willing to commit to long term 1 to 1 coaching.
Freelance team project tasked with developing ways to help the business gain more clients. The company's target customers are women aged 35 - 55 facing health challenges: Resistant weight loss, Pre-diabetic, Diabetic & metabolic issues.
Summary
User research | Service Design
February 2023 – April 2023
Freelance team project (hybrid) – Meha Hindocha & Julia Joó
Outcome
Having successfully completed the Alpha discovery phase we are currently developing a prototype of the service and testing it with users.
How we tackled the project
Framework: Design Thinking modified by Design Ethically
We created a Miro board for the project, this enabled the team to collaborate remotely and share work with the client. The Miro board was also used to facilitate workshops for and with the client during ideation and prototyping phases.
Overview
Below I've summarised the goals of the project, challenges we faced when developing a deeper understanding of the business, difficulties the team faced in defining and understanding the business and understanding why users wouldn't commit without interviewing them. The project would have gained valuable information had we been able to conduct diary studies with participants. However due to a lack of budget and timing this was not feasible. Another difficulty we faced was defining the service as it felt like it was still evolving and this is reflected in the service blueprint and the impact and risk matrix.
Steps
We used the Design thinking framework modified by Design Ethically as this included a step to evaluate our findings and ensure we took into account any negative consequences as we designed the service. This is important in a coaching service where users can be vulnerable and may become dependent on coaches. I've shown our steps and tools for the project.
Empathise
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Desktop research: Competitor analysis & web analytics
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Semi structured user interviews (in person and remote)
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Service Blueprint
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Customer journey map
Define & Evaluate
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Downloading interviews by focusing on: needs, pains, insights and patterns
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Synthesis
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User Personas
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HMW
Evaluate: -
Ethical considerations
Ideate
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Crazy 8s, ideation session with client
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Impact & effort matrix
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Impact & Risk matrix
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List of recommendations with prioritisation
Prototype & Test
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Sketching
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Figma
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User Testing
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Iteration
Actions
Due to limited access to existing or previous clients we interviewed users of other coaching services developing user personas based on their frustrations, goals and key points in their journey. I have provide an image below for this, along with an image of our service blueprint and a workshop run with the client to determine what elements of the service Alpa wanted to proceed with and why.
User Persona example
Prototype development
Following the workshop we worked with Alpa to design a service based on 3 key packages. The packages included 4 key elements: Getting to the root cause, education, empowerment and behaviour change. We explored ways in which the user's journey through the packages could be displayed on the website and I have provided some prototypes below.
Development of a prototype
Impact & Reflection
Impact
This project is focused on the discovery and alpha phase of development.
Deliverables to date: Prioritisation list defined by impact & effort and impact & risk to business growth matrix.
Work in progress: Development of prototype and redesigning the website.
My Role
• I analysed Wellness by Alpa's social media, website and analytics of traffic sources, competitor websites to better understand patterns that appeared in their digital offerings including websites and social media.
• Development of questions focused on service process for interviews
• Conducted user interviews, downloaded and synthesised interviews
• Development of user personas
• Reaching out to experts including a web developer for a technical perspective, business analyst and service designers
• Working with the client on ideation and developing of concepts
Reflection
Personal reflection
One of my primary goals for this project was to apply and cement my learnings from my MA in Digital Experience Design. This project was done methodically and more time was taken at each step of the design process then I would normally have allocated. We sought the help of a mentor: Urška Tičar a service designer at Methods to provide feedback.
My biggest learnings were learning how to use a service blueprint, whilst it isn't the first time I've designed a service the blueprint helped us develop as step by step process and focus on the different areas we needed to consider. We were able to simplify focus areas in to: marketing, backstage and the service and further breakdown key challenges.
Project reflection
Our initial research was very broad and a learning I would take forward with me is to focus more on users during the discovery phase. Wellness by Alpa's initial focus was on improving the digital experience however when we dug deeper into the business challenges we discovered there was a need to create a clearly defined service and better manage the processes backstage. Some of our research could have been conducted once we had selected an area to focus on during prototyping or during a beta phase.
Another useful tool we used was the adapted the risk matrix to focus on what could cause the business to stagnate this proved to be particularly useful in assisting us with developing a prioritisation list. The work also enabled the client to gain more clarity about the service she offer, how to shape the service and making the website clearer.