Apple Health: Case Study
Year
2021
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My Role
End-end Design Process
Scope of work
Research, Design Strategy, UX, UI Design
The Brief
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To reposition or redesign features of the Apple Health app to be a strong key product in the apple eco-system by introduce new features or redesigning the whole experience to drive overall DAU.
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Duration
5 working days
The Solution
Apple Health app is mainly doing health data aggregation, however, that is not enough in users perspective according to qualitative research done within this project. The users expect Apple Health to be a tool, which it is often comparable to other fitness app in the market.
In order to drive overall DAU, the prototype demonstrates how the app can first direct existing iPhone users to re-engage Apple Health app as an assistant to improve health, starts from daily small habits.
The Story
It was all begin with user research, and the user persona summarise the attitude towards Health, and by understanding how users think, feel, does, and say. This help to scope my focus for this challenge.
Research​
Qualitative and quantitative research was carried out to validate the design hypothesis that health and daily habits are correlated and people agreed to have nudge and motivation to achieve goals.
The Problem​
People find hard to stay healthy. Image below is word cloud from 24 respondents, 2 major challenges and pain that the users suggested are time poor, and laziness
Insights & Facts finding
The research was designed to focus on users' attitude, behaviour towards health; and on products - perspective about Apple Health, and expectation of a health related app.
100%
Agreed that a healthy lifestyle is formed by daily good habits.​
85% believed they are better when reminders, prompt, motivations are available in achieving set goals
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7 / 12
USERS​
of those who think they are hard to stay healthy / active wants to improve daily routine. e.g. sleep, eat, water intake etc.


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+
feel lazy, but know what is best for their lifestyles
10 / 11
USERS
Use alarm / clock features on their mobile phone on daily basis
+
an opportunity
MOTIVATION:
PROGRESS
Users generally are motivated by seeing progress of their goals.
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align with helping users to overcome laziness
Synthesise with secondary research
In order to overcome laziness and poor time - it was rather an "excuse" for laziness. To overcome laziness, secondary research was carried out to find experts advises, that generally suggest:
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Make goals manageable - Avoid overloading by setting smaller, attainable goals
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Don’t expect to be perfect
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Reward yourself
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Recognise accomplishments along the way
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Get a partner - to go to gym etc.
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Connecting the dots
Design Solutions
From insights and primary research, and supported by secondary research, ideas are to design user experience integrating daily habits into Apple Health, which can intelligently suggest users to:
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Down-size their goals, allow to take a break from goals, "too easy that you can't say no"
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Reward users for being consistent, e.g. app to recommend cheat days
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Track progress by streaking off days - allow to set streak duration, instead of never-ending streaks to achieve
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Share progress with friends - encourage partnering and social connection
Design Direction
To make maintaining health less like a chore, the proposed to anchor on the "Tagline" of this project.
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User Story
To define the key deliverables for the challenge, the user flow is confined to discovering the new features on iPhone again, as daily alarm clock users, and start integrating the users life with Apple Health. Consequently, a user flow was design accordingly.​
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As an iPhone user, I’d like to see how Apple Health help me to improve my overall wellbeing. So that, I would use Apple Health as a tool to build my daily good habits.
Features Prioritisation Recommendations
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With the effort-impact mapping, I found the top must have to makeover the Apple Health app to gain DAU.
Definition of Impact
To better align with XFN teams, it is important to agree on these prioritisation from different perspectives. Product design leader could advise on how much effort should split on the must-haves, should-haves and could-haves, and identify the won't-haves.
The impact for this case study will be the objective, to increase daily active users, while the effort of and schedule for the top selected features are in this order:
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Must-haves
60%
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Goal Setting & Progress: both has to go hand-in-hand
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Improve alarm experience:to lead users back to using the app on daily basis
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Share progress:low effort feature that would impact on getting people notice about the app (again).
Effort
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Widgets integration
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Reminders integration
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Weather suggestion
Could-haves
10%
Effort
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Decluttering Apple Health in-app information & data
Should-haves
30%
Effort
Conclusion
Key Takeaways
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A design process is as important as story-telling of a case study, other than to craft the final solution, the planning for presenting a case study is equally critical
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For skilled product designer to look further is to equip with product thinking skills, that will enable designers to prioritise features not only it is desirable for users, but also the feasibility and viability of features. Designing the right features for the right users, and clarity on what is must-haves, should-haves, could-haves, and won't-haves.
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Applying case study to real life practices - it is always good to propose multiple scenarios to consider which features matter to outcome to users, as well as the goal of the product update.
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In order to evaluate the successfulness of the outcome, should start with looking at what in the brief was given to the challenge. Including business problem, e.g. business objectives, constraints, etc. would help in many decisions making in the design process.