Case Study
Doctor-level accuracy plus smart device convenience
Client
Northwestern Mutual
Role
Senior UX Designer
Contribution
IA, UX, Design System, Data Visualization, Email Design
Worked in tandem with Northwestern Mutual's innovation lab to launch an app that combines wearable data with at-home health test kits in less than 3 months.
Pulse Plus connects your fitness, sleep, and overall health data with lab results from at-home test kits
The Product
Northwestern Mutual asked us to build an app that provided their customers with data from Wearables and blood tests
Working hand-in-hand with the innovation lab at Northwestern Mutual as part of the Venture Lab team, we were tasked with ideating and then bringing to life several different projects, including a health and wellness app that eventually became Pulse Plus.
Teaming up with the folks at Vital, we implemented their Lab Test API with our own custom code for pulling data from several wearable devices and health apps including Apple Watch, Fitbit, Peloton, and Whoop. We seamlessly combined this data into a mobile and desktop application that was capable of presenting customers with up-to-date health, sleep, and fitness information combined with lab test results from quarterly test kits shipped directly to their homes.
The Problem
How do we combine biology with technology to provide a holistic view of one's health in 3 months time?
Starting from nothing but an idea, our team had just 1 quarter to deliver a fully functional app with 100 users, which was no small feat. To pull this off, we'd have to ruthlessly prioritize everything and work directly with our development team to make sure the features we needed were possible in the short amount of time we had.
The User Journey for Pulse Plus Customers was fairly simple
Considering the amount of work involved, reasonable trade-offs had to be made and work was done in tandem to get to the finish line in time. That included building a single mobile-first web application that would be given an iOS and Android wrapper to reach their respective app stores later. User flows were simplified and marketing efforts were consolidated to further optimize the process.
Research
Without Competitors to Analyze, The focus was on feedback from our first 100 customers
Pulse Plus was ahead of its time, and as such, not a lot of products offered anything even remotely similar to what we were building. So instead of worrying about comparing ourselves to others, we iterated quickly in order to get our changes in front of our early adopters as much as possible.
Seamless onboarding was key
One of our goals early on was to keep the signup and onboarding processes simple in order to get to 100 customers as fast as possible. We convinced Northwestern Mutual to cover the expense of the product, including at-home test kits, for each of our early adopters for their first 6 months. And we narrowed our marketing efforts on bringing in health conscious folks who were using technology to help stay fit to ensure we had the right group of people to provide us feedback.
The Pulse PLus signup form provided to early adopters
The feedback loop
In keeping with our simplified approach to customers and feedback, we implemented both an email campaign for customers and an in-app feature that allowed them to provide bug reports, recommendations, and otherwise get help on any issues they ran up against. All of this data ran through a shared Google Sheet and one person was assigned the task of responding to each customer in a timely manner.
From 0 to 1
Marketing, Product, and Engineering all moving at the same pace
When we started this project, there was no name, brand, or design system to start from. Never mind dashboard mockups or wearable data storage. Because of this, our team had to work closely across all aspects of this product in order to deliver a seamless, functional experience.
Name the thing, then build a brand
Since we were creating something more than what your average health app provided, "Pulse Plus" came to life and another designer and I were responsible for working through the branding effort. From plusses to crosses to heartbeats, we eventually landed on an innovative brand styleguide for both the Marketing and Product teams to continue with.
A style guide for Pulse Plus featuring a new brand, colors, and typography
How do we reach the right audience?
In order for our feedback loop to be most helpful, we needed to find the best 100 early adopters available. So while our Marketing team reached out to influencers in the health & wellness space, I led the effort to create a landing page and social posts using our design system to get their attention.
Pulse Plus social posts using our new style guide
App Design
Charts and graphs alone don't tell the story – Pulse Plus turns data into direction
Going into this project, our team understood that our goal was not only to combine health data from blood tests and wearable devices, but also to show users what that data meant and how to act on it.
Intuitive health insights at a glance
I knew from the start that our biggest priority was going to be the dashboard and the data cards it was composed of, so the design team and I began working on those right away. To simplify things for ourselves and the developers who would be building the app, we made a decision to make everything a card. To introduce a bit of flexibility with only 2 different card sizes, I proposed that each card could open in a modal to allow for better reading and to show more information as needed.
The Pulse Plus dashboard features numerous card components with all of your data
Smart assessments with actionable advice
Data is only half the story when it comes to Pulse Plus. Our team wanted this service to be able to augment the yearly doctor visit by giving users recommendations on how to improve their health now and showing progress towards those goals.
Pivot Point
Perfecting the experience beyond the dashboard was a job in itself
The application dashboard and signup process looked great and our marketing efforts were paying off, but a missed opportunity to elevate the customer experience had to be addressed. While the packaging, shipment, and lab work of the test kits were handled by a third party, we hadn't extended our design and UX to that piece of the product.
Even though we weren't sending out the test kits ourselves, Vital provided the option to customize the packaging as well. And our customers obviously needed something better than a boring brown box. The only thing missing was an instruction insert I put together in less than a day to ensure everyone knew exactly what to do once their kit arrived at their door.
Even the Pulse Plus test kit packaging was on brand
Extending the brand to our messaging
Not only was the test kit's physical box customizable, but our team was also able to make our mark on the tracking emails. This allowed me the opportunity to improve our communication with customers and earn their trust by letting them know where their blood test was throughout the process through beautifully simple HTML emails I created using our design system.
Finding the right design and tone for the Pulse Plus tracking emails
Outcome
An entirely unique collection of health insights got the attention of corporate leaders and gym rats alike
We knew we had something when our early adopters started telling their followers about Pulse Plus, but it wasn't until the higher ups at Northwestern Mutual took notice that our team saw the potential. Within almost no time at all we went from an idea to a full-service product with 100 customers.
Having never worked with Vital's at-home test kits before, we weren't sure what we would have to show by the end of the quarter. But our small group came together and did everything from build a brand from scratch to submit Pulse Plus to the App Store in less than 90 days.
100 customers to start, 1000+ app downloads in a month
Though 100 people doesn't sound like a lot, convincing that many fitness enthusiasts to try an app that no one has ever heard of that tracks all their health data and requires a blood sample every quarter was no small feat. And within 30 days from launch, 10x people downloaded the Pulse Plus app thanks to our marketing efforts.
The word of our fancy health & wellness app spread through Northwestern Mutual after launch, and even those involved with the innovation team were impressed with our ability to bring this project to life so quickly. So impressed that they greenlit additional innovation work with our team, and we went on to launch several other projects.
Retrospective
We didn't know what we didn't know, but shipped it regardless
Looking back on a project like this is mostly thinking, "I wish we knew that before we launched!" But innovation requires trial and error, so none of us were surprised to get to the finish line with a lot more answers than we had at the start.
The corollary to Parkinson's Law
As Mark Horstman once wrote, "Work contracts to fit in the time we give it." While a 90 day window to create and launch a functional health & wellness app might sound unattainable, our team stayed hyper focused on the goal and was ruthless in our prioritization to get to an MVP.
Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.
Putting on our developer hats
With a compressed timeline from the start, we made the decision early to build a web application and worry about publishing to the app stores later. None of us knew the roadblocks we'd encounter at the time, including the Engineering team, but we certainly could've done a better job of doing quick research on how best to add an app wrapper, sync with HealthKit, and access data on Android devices ahead of the development so we were more prepared and could ask for more resources.
Pulse Plus helps you continuously monitor all aspects of your health & Wellness
TLDR;
Brought a Health & Wellness app concept to life in less than 90 days And Won over Northwestern Mutual brass
As a UX Designer on a small team building Pulse Plus, I was able to:
Collaborate with other designers on creating a brand, style guide, and a design system from scratch in just a few weeks
Apply the Pulse Plus brand to social posts, marketing pages, the app dashboard, and even the test kit's physical packaging
Advocate for a succinct data visualization experience that could be applied to any wearable or lab result numbers received by the app and was easily built by the development team
Craft beautifully designed emails with brand aligned messaging to ensure that customers would always know where their at-home test kit was
Reach our goal of 100 active customers by the time we launched the app to the public