Femometer

User Research

Who are the community participants? What motivates their interest?

To understand user needs and redesign direction, I led research on two key questions: Who are the users, and what motivates participation? I interviewed 20 frequent users and surveyed over 1000 people.

Research Takeaways

1
The 'Trying to Conceive' group comprises the majority of community users.

90% of 'Trying to Conceive' users have prior community experience, significantly higher than other groups.

2
Finding individuals with similar experience is the motivation.

Their main motivations are connecting with similar individuals for emotional support (40%) and getting conception-related questions answered (60%).

3
BBT (Basal Body Temperature) chart and pregnancy test sharing are popular community activities.

40% of users want to use the community to understand ovulation via BBT charts or get second opinions on pregnancy tests.

4
Low awareness and engagement with app community feature.

37% of users are unaware of the community feature. Those aware rarely engage beyond the 'For You' feed.

VISUALIZE TARGET USER

A user striving to conceive, seeking support from the community.

I created a persona from user research, which revealed two core user needs: connecting with others trying to conceive and getting questions answered. This insight aligned the team and guided prioritization. The redesign aims to address challenges related to the two core user needs.

Heuristic Evaluation

Assessing user experience and app usage from 3 scenarios

A product designer and I collaborated on a heuristic evaluation, focusing on three key user tasks:
1) discovering the community,
2) sharing charts and asking questions,
3) seeking emotional support from individuals with similar experiences.

Analyzing usage data and customer journeys revealed multiple challenges. A redesign is needed to address these pain points.

Challenges throughout Journey

1
Reaching the community requires too many steps.

2
Sharing BBT curves lacks flexibility to select date ranges.

3
Disorganized, broad topic categories hinder users connecting with relevant users.

4
The 'New' posts default page has low engagement, deterring deeper exploration.

Brainstorm & Prioritize

What can improve the user experience in the shortest timeframe?

Brainstorming

To address our design goals, our team (product manager, product designer and me) held brainstorming sessions focused on solutions for issues uncovered in user research and heuristic evaluations.

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Prioritization

We prioritized high impact changes like restructuring community tabs and adding chart sharing over smaller changes.

After discussion, we decided to first improve:
1. Balance popular and individual content;
2. Offer more specific categories;
3. Enable faster and more flexible curve sharing.

DESIGN CHANGES

Stimulate community browsing and sharing experience

Design Change 1: community tab structure

The redesign balances popular content and easy navigation. The new landing page highlights popular posts to showcase an active community. The top nav allows quick access to joined groups. Followed and available groups are now consolidated under one page with separate tabs, making groups more accessible.

Design Change 2: Following group structure

The redesign splits broad topics into more specific groups, like dividing #TTC into IVF Journey, long-term TTC, etc. The new navbar and categories help users quickly find relevant groups. 'Groups' reinforces connecting users with shared experiences.

Design Change 3: BBT Chart Sharing Flow

The redesign lets users better control what they share. They can select curves by cycle or date range. The preview helps them understand what will be shared. On the posting page, recommended tags are automatically selected. Users can also quickly attach multiple curves, test results, etc

Final Solution

A community redesign for better connection and sharing.

Raise Awareness, Discover Interests

The popout increases awareness without lengthy discovery. Onboarding lets users browse groups by category. The top navigation provides easy ongoing access to joined groups.

Showcase Popular Content and Facilitate Group Engagement

The default landing page now surfaces popular posts to showcase community engagement and trends. Users can easily follow interest groups, each with an introductory overview.

Flexible, Efficient BBT Curve Sharing

Users can efficiently share any part of their curve by cycle or custom date range. A preview confirms what they are sharing.

Redesign Results

We witnessed a huge increase in community participation.

With the launch of Femometer community 2.0, released in January 2022, the number of daily sharers increased by 230%. The average number of posts has increased from 161 to 550 per day. The number of daily active community members also soared to 450.

My Learning

Provide design options and back with reasons.

When I had a juicy design challenge, I used to spend time picking the best solution and filter out the rest without presenting them to my mentor or the team. But later I realized that when I presented 2-3 design options, I could always get most of the discussion. Because in most cases, team members could evaluate these options better than I did since they call out more tech/product detail, and what we had in the final was usually a combination of several options.