WW’s App Guest Experience
WW’s App Guest Experience
As part of Weight Watchers’ rebrand to becoming WW, the company decided to enhance it’s app by adding an immersive guest experience. This helps prospect or lapsed members to learn what the program pillars are, what’s new or how the plans work. See the full experience in the video below or download the app for a first-hand view.
Behind the project
Over the past year of working on WW’s Guest Experience, referred to as ‘GXP’ in most instances, I had the pleasure to work amongst some of the strongest talent within the company. Before the launch of the MVP in December 2018, WW’s App had nothing but a login and sign-up form staring back at the person opening the app for the first time. Thus the product launching from scratch, leadership formed the GXP crew accordingly.
The project-ship set sail in June 2018 and MVP release was scheduled for December 2018. The decision to launch the product so promptly was driven by ‘Dieting Season"‘ starting right around the holidays, right after the bespoke company re-brand. This left the team with only 4 Months of production time before being submitted for release approval from the app-stores.
Research & UX Architecture
Due to the project launching from scratch, the team couldn’t take advantage of previous analytics or any type of testing results which allowed us to get resources for extensive research practices. While running the tests, we’ve used three different tactics to gather findings;
Paper Prototype Testing
Polished Prototype Testing
Guerrilla Testing
Although the company has existing ‘Persona Types’ to cast, the team decided to test the product on a broad such as diverse audience with mixed backgrounds. Split evenly between never-before-members (‘Nevers’) and lapsed members.
After completion of the various tests, we’ve (UX, UI & XR) processed the data and gathered our findings to start the UX-Flow process and first design concepts, as shown below.
UI & Visual
After countless iterations using research results and existing WW branding patterns, GXP MVP/V2 took it’s full form. Breaking traditional design corporate patterns, I was able to work with the UX designer throughout the UX process and influence visual related design preferences (Like image real estate, interactions. micro animations etc.).
Bright colors and fun interactions like a Parallax welcoming image proved themselves very positively in testing and have become visual highlights of the experience.
Hurdles
Tight deadline that can’t be moved or missed.
Strict resources on engineering.
Internationalization and launch of in all markets with different offerings.
Excessive content placement requests with minimal real estate.
Outcome
Delivered before deadline
Increased sign-ups, 7% up from the previous year (Dieting season only).
Built fundamental grounds for future iterations of the app.
Featured in iTunes/Top Apps by Apple (No paid advertising).
Future
With a gold-mine of research findings and analytics data collected, the team is now able proceed with a building much stronger version of the product. This would be supporting WW’s recruiting efforts due to the improved clarity of the brand messaging and program details in the product.