Re-designed eargym’s onboarding and homepage to increase user retention and adherence
eargym - Hearing health care APP
Role: Product Designer
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Background
I worked with eargym, as the sole Product Designer to collaborate with their cross-functional team like audiologists and game developers to design inclusive and intuitive experiences for people that want to check their hearing ability and improve their hearing by regularly training. The process at eargym is agile scrum with bi-weekly sprints.
Additionally I contributed to:
Product strategy activities to help initiate changes to meet their North Star metrics and KPIs.
Strategy and integration of prospective partnerships and created wireframes and mock-ups for pitch decks.
Supporting quality assurance testing prior to releasing updates.
Maintaining their design system and refining internal processes.
Team: CTO, Game developer and Marketing manager
Tools: Mixpanel, Notion, Miro and Figma
The CHALLENGE
APP DATA REVEALED LOW RETENTION AND ENGAGEMENT DURING ONBOARDING AND SUBSEQUENT HOMEPAGE VISIT
App data revealed that eargym’s onboarding and homepage had low engagment and user retention resulting in users leaving the app prematurely or skipping sections of the onboarding flow and not being motivated or guided to complete essential activities like setting a baseline which allows users to track their hearing progress and starts their improvement journey. This lack of guidance also impacted user adherence of the 28 day training programme and reoccuring hearing assessments.
The result
Refined the onboarding flow
Removed unwanted steps that prompted users to complete tasks such as hearing assessments, that didn’t engage users. This update improved user retention by reducing unnecessary friction and increased onboarding success rates.
RE-DESIGNED THE homepage
Designed a new homepage with a dynamic logic to guide users toward key hearing activities, give feedback on their current hearing ability and progress and offer relevant content to educate and motivate users to check, protect and train their hearing. This update aims to boost engagement, increase user adherence and lead users through eargym’s core experience.
The full story
What’s the data sayinG?
I contributed to weekly adherence meetings where team members presented findings gathered from analysing quantitive app data in Mix Panel. These findings informed future sprints and influenced product strategy and designs.
We discovered that:
Users weren’t completing the onboarding flow
The majority of users were not completing the full onboarding flow and tasks built into the onboarding flow had low engagement. Analysing the data showed that users were opting to skip tasks like short hearing checks to enter the app sooner.
Users DIDN’T engagE with the Homepage
The majority of users did not engage with activity cards on the homepage guiding them to tasks, resulting in low completion rates of some of eargym’s key hearing assessments, indicating that the homepage was ineffective and wasn’t serving its purpose of guiding and motivating users.
Identifying and prioritising opportunities
I conducted 2x 1.5 hour workshops in which we scoped out the problems and ideated solutions and the core user flow to inform product strategy.
WORKSHOP 1
During the first session, I started with an exercise to review the businesses current personas to remember who are users are and their needs.
‘How might we’ statements were created in response to the assumptions and key issues we identified. This helped by positively framing problems into opportunities, which is more effective in ideating solutions.
How might we…
motivate users to complete the first core action?
How might we…
simply communicate reasons and benefits behind completing core activities?
How might we…
include more short & long-term retention models into each app session?
Stakeholders were asked to ideate solutions to the HMW statements, which were prioritised by voting. Each stakeholder had 10 votes to allocate to the solutions they believed would be the most impactful and feasible.
WORKSHOP 2
The focus of the next workshop was mapping the core user flow of eargym to inform the solutions in particular the redesign of the homepage and identify any requirements/opportunities.
The first iteration of the new flow was focused mainly on business objectives and the result of completing each task. However, it’s important to consider the mental load of each assessment and how it impacts the user before mapping the optimal sequence of tasks.
To enhance the experience, I
added a 2-minute immersive training game between the two hearing checks to re-engage users
This small adjustment and consideration of the user’s mental load will be crucial for designing an engaging user journey that holds user retention during the first visit and adherence for subsequent visits over the 4-8 week training programme.
The solution
Refined the onboarding and increased product value to improve retention
New
Original
We removed several steps from the flow that didn’t engage users. These changes removed unnecessary friction from the flow and aims to swiftly navigate users to the app’s homepage to start eargym’s core user journey.
Stopped navigating users into branching flows
The original onboarding asked users early in the flow whether they want to start by checking or training their hearing which later sent them into one of two flows. Both these paths had low engagement, so I removed these hearing and training tasks like ‘check your hearing age’ and instead I chose to guide users into the app to be guided to prioritised tasks directly on the newly designed homepage.
Highlighted the key features of eargym
I also designed a value proposition screen that highlights eargym’s key features and the benefits users can achieve through its hearing checks and training programme. This aims to enhance user retention during the onboarding process.
Removed the sign-up and notification PROMPTS
The majority of users were opting to enter the app as a guest rather than sign up
In response to this we decided to remove the prompt to create an account and automatically enter the app as a ‘Guest’. Each user is assigned a unique Guest ID which is linked to an account at a later time when they create an account through a isolated sign-up flow.
The majority of users were not allowing eargym’s notifications
Excessive, irrelevant notifications can fatigue users and reduce engagement with new alerts. To improve notification opt-in rates, users will be prompted to enable notifications after interacting with the app, fostering trust and credibility in our check and training reminders.
designed alert banner
I designed an alert banner system to notify users of opportunities to contribute and prompt them to complete system functions such as creating an account which is served after completing their second primary task.
Re-designed the homepage to improve engagement and adherence by guiding and motivating users
I redesigned a new homepage to guide users toward key hearing activities, give feedback on their current hearing ability and progress and offer relevant content to motivate users to check, protect and train their hearing.
This update aims to boost engagement, increase user adherence and leads users through eargym’s core experience.
Original
GuidING And educating USERS
I designed a ‘today’ system and a coherent logic, which dynamically delivers activities and educational content to guide and motivate users to their next hearing task, and providing essential information and support on hearing results, such as insights on hearing loss.
Previously, education content was served in a linear format with articles being served daily. I restructured the content by categorising it and linking it to specific activities or results. This enables the today system to pull and cycle content from a growing pool that expands as users progress through their journey and achieve actionable results.
Having a holistic core user journey that guides users through both hearing checks and training activities provides eargym with the opportunity to convert users who primarily use eargym to check their hearing. The ‘next for you’ row and the ‘focus’ card both aim to motivate users to follow the full experience and train their key hearing skills like speech intelligibility.
Motivating uSERS
This focus card aims to improve user adherence by highlighting users achievements, giving feedback on their performance and subscription offers. This will support users and motivate them to complete their training programme and effectively train like focusing on a different hearing skill each week to balance their hearing and train their weakest skill.
CONNECTING uSERS
A scrolling row element was developed in response to a “How Might We” statement created in the initial workshop:
“How might we create a sense of community within the eargym app?”
The aim is to reduce feelings of isolation by showcasing stories and achievements from other users, including those with similar hearing challenges. By sharing this content, the feature seeks to inspire and motivate users to establish consistent and healthy training habits.
Additional sections of the new homepage involve sensitive and active strategic considerations, so I cannot share them publicly. However, I’d be happy to discuss these designs in a private 1-to-1 setting.
The impact
Increased user retention by 55% during eargym’s onboarding.
Most users are now completing the onboarding flow, giving their demographic data and being led to their desired task of ‘checking their training’ or ‘training their hearing’. In the future with the implementation of the new homepage, all users will land on the homepage for a combined user journey.
Increased user engagement on eargym’s homepage by ?%
The re-design project is ongoing and being delivered in stages so only some elements have been implemented to the live app, so there is no data to report any changes in engagement or user behaviour.
The next stage is to conduct usability testing with the prototype to gain qualitative insights on users behaviour and thoughts on the new design before final iterations and implementation.
Key takeaways
Working AGILE WITH design systems
The role at eargym, provided me with an opportunity to develop my UI design skills and refine a pre-made design system and its components in Figma. This included:
Developing the architecture and ways of working in eargym’s Figma files
Redesigning elements and improving the components library to increase the consistency of individual elements of the app and ensure WCAG requirements
Streamlining the way designs are reviewed and delivered to the development team and keeping all wireframes up-to-date and iterations archived
CONTEXT IS KEY FOR EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK
While going through different stages of iteration and asking for feedback, it could be difficult at times to consistently receive effective feedback when presenting designs to cross-functional stakeholders. I found it was important to give context on the designs and their current level of fidelity to be more specific to the type of feedback that I was requesting and ensure feedback was effective at a particular stage of the process. This avoids receiving feedback that is not relevant and avoids the need to make too many minor changes like to the text when placeholder text would have been sufficient while high-level decisions were still made on the designs.
