Virtusan: A Lean startup approach

The Problem

Inconsistent experience, usability and interaction design problems

Virtusan is a simple app. It offers features (formerly "Journeys," now "Practices") to improve your health that you can add to form a personal routine. This was unique to us.

But users didn't understand that due to navigation issues and lack of context.

The Goal

User Retention & User expansion

• Improve user engagement and app ratings to at least 4.5/5 by addressing key pain points.
• Increase app downloads with an excellent user experience
• Increase app usage by 20% by encouraging users to explore and adopt Virtusan’s features

The User

I put together a persona based on the user insights we gathered.

User Feedback

I then gathered the feedback we got from user interviews and from the app store.

To sum up, my findings were:

• Users don’t know what they’re doing: they felt overwhelmed by all the info and the steps they were supposed to take in order to complete a task
• Poor usage: half of the users did not get any value from the app
• Users want the app to interpret their data: they wanted the app to make recommendations or give positive reinforcement
• Trust and visual appeal: Users felt the visuals lack originality, they are generic and overused, which led to a sense of frustration and disappointment. As a result, they were reluctant to even engage with the app

Designing a Solution: Less is More

Virtusan initially offered 38 practices and 10 mini apps (tools), but people were losing interest shortly after downloading.

Together with the product manager, we deep dived to find out what users were really using the app for and scaled down to 12 practices.

Helping users create their own routine

The next step was to build a system that enables users to easily customise their own routine based on their favourite practices.

I facilitated a few brainstorming sessions with the team in order to explore potential solutions.

We naturally narrowed down to a solution, so I moved on to high fidelity mockups.

Progress Tracking

In addition to revamping the routine system, I collaborated with the team on a progress tracking system that would encourage the users to stick to their routines.

The progress tab is an overview of how many practices a user completes on a daily and weekly basis.

Onboarding Flow

Initially, users were prompted to sign up before accessing the content.

But this discouraged users from signing up. We needed to build trust for users to sign up and creating an artificial exclusivity through this dark pattern was a bad idea, especially since this is a wellness app that supposedly helps their users.

So I removed the sign-up requirement on start. To encourage users to buy the full app, the PM and I brainstormed a Free-to-Premium user flow.

Finishing Touches

I addressed the visual design issues.

On the visual side, I worked closely with a team of graphic designers to create new illustrations and animations. We liked the idea of each pillar having its own colour, so we incorporated them in thumbnails and background images.

Also, I collaborated with a supporting UX designer on a new design system, which included better iconography and taxonomy.

Conclusion

Our hard work resulted in an increase in features used by 21%.

As of January 2024, conversion rate (download-to-trial & download-to-payment) went up by 60% since the app release.

We also reached 100,000 downloads in 8 months and bumped the average app rating to 4.7 (from 2).