What we know
- We have a goal, to increase % DAU (daily active users) for the Apple Health App.
- We have just 7 days to complete and present the work from this sprint.
- We know the app’s core proposition — aggregate and present my health data.
Process
- We can apply a process to this work by starting in discovery.
- If we’re not already, we first familiarise ourself with the architecture of the app.
- We ask questions, gather data, do research — and so define the problem.
Information Architecture
The architecture of the app and data presentation. In short, it’s a pretty simple presentation consisting of two primary views; ‘Summary’ and ‘Browse’.
‘Summary’ has a number of sections, the most prominent being Favourites’, ‘Highlights’ and ‘Get more from Health’.
Data in ‘Browse’ is presented as a list of ‘Health Categories’ which contains various data presentations of nested ‘Data types‘ as well as nested ‘Get more from Health’ stories.
Research Questions
- Is the existing ‘Summary’ fit for purpose?
- Can the data presentations be improved?
- Are there any emerging or popular ‘Health Categories’ not in the app?
Questions 1 & 2.
We looked at a number of Apple Interface Guidelines (and Developer Documentation) and found much of the health app was presenting data inline with their own guidelines — in a widely accessible, easy to understand way.
Short answer — yes it is fit for purpose. Might it be improved? Yes. But we can’t know to what extent it’ll move %DAU.
One related idea I had involved utilising the ‘Highlights’ section to tell more impactful stories. That we might prioritise the most popular health categories and provide users with more visually engaging, animated or insightful ‘Get more from Health’ stories. Focussing on a user’s most popular data types. Extending the presentation beyond simple one-line insights.
However, without knowing the distribution of the most used categories and how much their ‘Get more from Health’ stories contribute to %DAU (data we’d obviously dig to get).
I felt given the time frame, this idea presented a higher risk over other opportunities and ideas that had come out of this discovery.
It meant prioritising this particular lever to increase %DAU may risk demanding higher effort for ultimately lower impact.
Question 3.
‘Are there any emerging or popular ‘Health Categories’ not in the app?’
Yes. Looking at the iOS App Store rankings on Similar Web I focussed on the largest and most profitable countries for the iOS App Store (Fig 1).
It is clear (Fig 2) that the majority of Apps in this list under the ‘Health & Fitness’ app store category relate to existing Health App ‘Health Categories’. However, there are two exceptions among these high ranking apps.
The two most underrepresented categories seem to be for ‘Pregnancy’ and ‘Motivational Quotes’ (highlighted in pink).
It was clear that ‘Pregnancy’ as a ‘Health Category’ had huge potential in the Health App. A quick check confirmed that ‘Pregnancy’ was only represented as a small ‘Factor’ of a period data type within the ‘Cycle Tracking — Health Category’. Yet it is a category that represents the number 1 paid App in two of the App Store’s highest spending regions — a big missed opportunity.
Lastly, while checking app store rankings, I also looked at the ‘Medical’ category. The apps in the category were diverse and seemed to be very region specific. The top 10 in each region seemed to be related to the ‘Health System’ in that region. However, they were largely skewed to enabling users to manage their ‘prescriptions’. I thought there may be potential here for a generic ‘prescription / medications’ manager, but a deeper app dive revealed that it already existed.
Hypothesis
Time is limited for this work so with enough due diligence in mind, let’s commit to a problem statement and build a Hypothesis.
Problem Statement As a user… ‘I want to aggregate and view my Pregnancy related health data in the Health App.’
We know… In the highest spending regions, pregnancy related apps account for a large number of app store downloads in the health & fitness category. Yet it is poorly represented in the Health App at the moment.
We believe… By serving this use case. Adding the ‘Pregnancy’ health category and solving this problem for an audience that’s either pregnant or planning to be pregnant. We’ll be able serve the most amount of users in the most amount of regions and substantially lever %DAU.
Links
Design Notes
The prototype shows a demo and MVP of the new ‘Pregnancy — Health Category’. Set up with a basic display of ‘Summary > Favourites‘, ‘Summary > Highlights‘ for Pregnancy.
You can see in the Figma working file the related science on pregnancy on the ‘Research’ page. As well as a deep dive into ‘Pregnancy+‘ a popular pregnancy tracking app under the ‘Reference screens’ page.
The natural next step would be to user test this prototype with the appropriate archetypal users. Perhaps unmoderated through usertesting.com to start with, and later (as the design is refined) moderated testing with an appropriate cohort.
Further, we’d need to do an appropriate amount of due diligence — demo and seek advice from medical professionals on the right and safe ways to present the data. To ensure we’re not giving inaccurate advice or distorting the information in any way.