Juno, work better. A UX Case study.

Transforming a perk company into a wellness platform.

Summary

Our client, Juno, is as a marketplace for employee benefits. Juno offers a diverse range of activities, connecting brands with employees so you can personalise your wellness experience.

For our last project at General Assembly, me and three other team members took over the task of redesigning the company’s website utilising the whole UX process. Including interviews, Competitive analysis, Design studios, User testing and a lot of research on wellness, we focused our efforts in polishing Juno’s core concept as well as increasing engagement with the platform.

The results showed a strong improvement in employer interactions with the site, as well as a much clearer understanding of how the company worked.

Beware, this is a long one… If you just want to skip to the final prototype, click here!

The Brief

With the company being in late stages of development, and having many competitors on the market, it was crucial for Juno to create a differentiation factor that would separate them from others, as well as creating incentives for people to bookmark the site.

With this, we needed to focus on three main aspects: creating a loyal user base, being able to create an impact on users and increasing credibility.

I acted as a facilitator with the client during this sprint, meaning that I was first port of call for client communications.

Sprint length: 2.5 weeks.

Skills required: Project Canvasing, User Interviews, Empathy Mapping, User Flows, Design Studio, Experience Mapping, Sketching, Prototyping, Usability Testing, Visual Design.

My Role

Each team member participated in every stage of the UX design process, however I focused on sketching prototypes, generating a structure and layout, managing the design of the presentation as well as the storyline of the project.

Research

We followed the Double Diamond approach in order to correctly identify all of our users needs and frustrations before passing to the design and prototyping phase. This was key to understanding our main problem, defining what wellness was and how it affected our users.

Interviewing process

We conducted 26 screener surveys in order to narrow our possible interviewees. Out of those, 12 agreed to an in-depth interview. It has to be noted that 80% of those interviewed were aged 26 to 35, part of the millenial generation (and as you will see this will affect our findings quite substantially).

The main topics covered in the questionnaire were:

• What is wellness? How does it affect your day to day?
• What is the difference between wellness and perks?
• What kind of rewards would you actually use?

Affinity mapping

We classified all of our answers in an affinity map (below), that helped us look at the big picture. We were able to establish some trends and long term goals:

• Wellbeing is a 24h experience. It doesn’t happen just when you are working.
• Users view perks as short term rewards, whereas wellbeing is a long term goal.
• Wellbeing has a huge social aspect. Users feel more engaged and encouraged to use wellbeing services when they are connected to their colleagues.

Our Persona

From our findings, we were also able to create our persona. Maura is a representation of our target users, and will help us remember who to target. She is in her late 20s and works in a creative agency, which reflected the majority of our interviewees.

The conclusion of our interview findings could be summed up in this problem statement:

Maura needs a way to easily find tailored experiences which will improve her wellbeing because she struggles to find a work life balance in a highly demanding job.

Website walkthrough

Our next step was to let our users walk through the existing website. We set two goals for them:

• We tested new users on how long they took to figure out what they thought Juno was and how it worked, based on their existing website.
• We asked them to log in to a demo account provided by the client and book a wellness experience.

Findings

1. Homepage:

• New users took an average of 1 min 20 sec to understand what Juno was and how it worked.
• They were really confused about how the point system worked, did not clearly understand how to buy them, and who was paying for it

“I feel like they rely too much on the FAQ. No-one has the time to read that.”

• They considered the wording to be very vague, the animation confusing and the explanations seemed to repeat themselves.

“The description is too brief and there’s too many buzzwords — I don’t understand.”

2. Experience page:

• Users liked the concept and the freedom it gave, and being able to choose their own wellness path. However, they found the categories extremely broad and confusing.

“Love the services and range of options. I like the concept of being able to try new stuff.”

“Life is a very broad term”

• Our findings show that users didn’t find the interface appealing or engaging, as well as hard to navigate.

“Looks like the yellow pages…”

“Were is the account button, how do i go back home?”

3. Product page.

• In this step, our users were confused because of the lack of key functionalities within the page.

“How do i check how far it is?”

“I need exact times to put in my own calendar — not morning/afternoon/evening.”

“Too much text not readable, and clustered”

• They were also worried about the lack of reviews. They wanted to be able to organise more social events with people at work.

“How do I know this experience is good?”

“This sounds fun but I can’t see how to share it with people. Can I actually invite people from work?”

4. Checkout pages.

• When they went to the checkout process, individuals thought it feels like an e-commerce experience.
• And still wasn’t sure how the point systems were working.

“Am I earning points or spending them? I feel like I am earning them, but why?”

• The worst part came when users realised they were not instantly booking the experience, but having to wait up to 24h in order to confirm it.

“Wait, what?”

“Hmmm, why go through all that hassle if I am just checking availability?”

Experience mapping

Using our user insight we created a journey map to check what Maura does at each step, and how she feels at each point. We figured she will be most unhappy at the confirmation page, as this was when users realised that their experiences were not immediately booked, and they had to wait 24 hours for confirmation. This was something they were not aware of from the beginning and came to most as a shock.

Key findings

From the proposed walkthrough we dissected our problem statement in smaller, manageable needs.

• Onboarding: Maura needs a way to quickly understand what Juno is and how it works.
• Selection: Maura needs a way to filter and browse through the experiences to make an informed decision.
• Engagement: Maura needs a way to interact with her colleagues within the site.
• Checkout: Maura needs a way to feel that she is not making a purchase but claiming a reward.

Defining our goals and possibilities.

Once we had finished our initial research (but definitely not our last), it was time to start solving those issues one by one.

Onboarding — Analysing our competition

The first issue we faced, and arguably the most important one was the fact that our users did not know what the website sold, what was the differentiating factor between them and their competitors as well as how the Juno system actually worked.

So we decided to have a look at what our competitors were doing.

By doing so, we detected a trend of having a step by step guide to explain the onboarding process. This section is always placed in a high priority area of the app/website, right after the welcome page.

Some apps, such as Headspace would get you to answer a quick questionnaire to filter your selection and needs.

Selection — Classifying our offer

One of the biggest issues our testers faced was the lack of a common thread in the offer of experiences, as well as difficulties understanding the categories.

Our client insisted that Juno’s differentiating factor was that it had a 360 degree take on wellness, and was trying to avoid perks at all costs. But the offer did not read as wellness for all our customers.

We conducted a series of card sorting exercises in order to identify the products that wouldn’t fit in our client’s idea, as well as a way to figure out how to classify all those products:

First, we did a closed card sorting with Juno’s current categories.

Users were mostly confused about “Life” and “Packs”.

“What are packs?”

“Life is too generic.”

“I don’t know where Uber goes.”

It was clear that the current system did not read “wellness” and that some of the current offering was not fitting any of the categories.

We the decided to let them classify the offer out with an open card sorting:

The answers were very different but they allow to establish some patterns:

1. Mental Health. (Mind, wellness)
2. Physical Health. (Sport, Body, Beauty,…)
3. Nutrition. (Food, Health,…)
4. Services. (Services, Transport, perks.)

So we decided to investigate further into wellbeing and how it could be separated. We found out that there are many theories around what experts call the “four pillars of wellness”. These vary from article to article but they can be summed up into these four categories:

The four pillars of wellness.

For our final card sorting exercise, we proposed these four categories: The results were finally positive:

“Some of them can fit in more than one categories.”

“It makes sense.”

“Good to have more socials.”

Even though none of the experiences were placed in the “Social” category, our users were extremely active suggesting new experiences and functionalities for the site. Finally, they were engaging with Juno.

Proposed site map.

With the categories clear, we had our site map. But all the brainstorming that happened once we open the social category had us on the edge of our feet. We had our users engaged, now we needed to know more.

Engagement — Brainstorming new functionalities.

It was time to call our clients and run a design studio.

Gathering all our findings from our research, pen, paper and a lot of candy, we had a very solid starting point to brainstorm ideas with our clients.

We set them a series of “How may we” statements in order to decide what direction to take with all our new functions. It was also a great point to find out what their expectations were.

1. How may we help Maura interact with people at work and with the platform?

It led us to one of the most important points of our brief: Engagement.

We decided to look for social features: Book in groups, Gift an experience, Birthday Pitch, Who else’s going?, Adding Reviews, and Adding more social experiences were the most popular options.

2. How may we help Maura make an informed decision?

Our goal was to make Maura aware of what wellness was, how it had a different shape for everyone, making her understand Juno’s 360 take on wellness. The main ideas were, as we saw on our competitive analysis to create a initial quiz and an interactive wellness tracker.

We had a lot of features but only two weeks. We had to set priorities and develop the features with the highest impact and requiringthe lowest amount of time.

Feature prioritisation.

Prototyping. Iterations and testing.

For the second part of the sprint, we focused on developing several low, mid and hi fidelity prototypes.

We focused on adding the following functionalities to the website:

1. Onboarding:

• Creating a step by step guide for Juno.
• Eliminating redundant elements and creating a hierarchy in the homepage.
• Rewriting and testing all texts in the homepage.

2. Experiences:

• Classifying experiences in the new categories.
• Developing a wellness chart.
• Drafting a wellness quiz.

3. Checkout:

• Managing how the booking confirmation happens.
• Designing a confirmation email.
• Redefining and testing how the point system worked.

We gave our testers a scenario, tasks and their choice of coffee and started out iterating process.

You can check the low fidelity prototype here, and the mid fidelity prototype here. For this case study, we will focus on four different aspects and iterations.

1. Homepage

Taking the existing as a base we started by simplifying the website and removing redundancies:

• Moving the employer information and pricing to a different page.
• Reorganising the information to follow a “what”, “why”, “how” structure.

“ I am still unsure how Juno works. Do I need to earn points?”

“How do I go to my account?”

For our mid fidelity prototype, we had to choose how to represent our experiences. Logos or images. Even though our client was very reluctant to use images, our testing with logos was very unsatisfactory:

“ What type of experiences are these? I don’t know these brands.”

We finally iterated the wording of the homepage in order to make sure people understood how the site worked and what to expect from it.

2. Point system.

The point system was difficult to understand from the very beginning. Most users pointed out that even though the system was clear, the wording was extremely confusing. We had to revisit the term, and test with different words.

We first came with the idea to create a Juno currency. Junos, raindrops, Junocoins or Junopoints. The name did not matter, the concept was wrong.

“I still feel like I am spending money, except now I don’t know how much anything costs.”

“How do I earn the points? Is it based on my work performance?”

“I need to feel like I am being rewarded for my job, not spending money in my wellbeing.”

Juno is a reward system. So we called them simply, rewards. Not based on performance, not based on currency. A gift from your employer for your hard work.

3. Wellness Chart.

Initially developed during our design studio, we tested our low fidelity prototype with a plant/avatar that would “grow with you”. But testers were not understanding, or on board with the idea.

“How does this relate to wellness?”

“Does it actually die if i stop watering it?”

We had to take a different approach to the problem.

Focusing on the four pillars of wellness, we wanted to give indications on how the wellness tracker would We did a gorilla testing to check what kind of graph our user would respond more positively to. We took a process of elimination to get to our final one.

“Wellness is not a percentage. You can’t just finish it, its an ever growing process.”

“I would like to have something organic. Most feel like a stock exchange…”

The ones that passed out testings were the ones on the right, with the top one getting more praise due to being more organic and feeling more “interactive”.

Final wellness chart.

4. Booking process.

For our final set of iterations, we focused on the checkout page. We had several goals:

• Making the user understand they are not booking the activity straight away, and not being frustrated by that fact.

“Hang on, have I booked it or not? This is so confusing!”

We tested the right wording by asking users what their expectations were: Reserve, Book…

Users felt that they Check availability (to enter date and time details) then Request slot (as the final check out button) were not misleading in their meaning, and expected their booking not to be completed by the end of the process.

Additionally, we started having a progress bar during the checkout process

“Why is there a progress bar? I don’t care what happens in the background. I just want to be notified when they’ve booked my slot.”

We eventually removed the progress bar and focused on developing a confirmation email with additional information that would complete the process.

• Unifying all the booking experiences into one single interface.

The original site had an issue with every experience having a different checkout format. We studied all of them and unified the process in one single page for all of them, having a desired date, time and location.

Final checkout page.

• Adding social and sharing features.

Although most of our social features were just hinted and we still have to develop those flows, we wanted to propose and start studying how a delicate topic such as wellness would be “shareable”. Our users had been testing social features and responded really well to them, but we were testing on activities such as wine tasting or sushi classes.

How to be able to create all these features when some of these activities involved therapy or some other more “personal” experiences?

We found the answer in our last confirmation email. By setting the activities by default on private, and asking the user if they would like to share their attendance or not, we would be able to have social features without having unwanted privacy issues.

Final confirmation email with Share option.

The final social features we added were:

• Gift an experience.
• Who else is going?
• Customer reviews.

Clickable prototype

Try the final InVision prototype here!

Results

Even though our feedback was positive, there was an important part that really resonated with us. Due to the user poll we had tested with, most of our interactions were with a highly social generation, one that does not value privacy and shares content. Even though all of our sharing features were optional due to the fact that wellness can be a delicate topic (maybe you want to share a yoga class, but not therapy or housekeeping…), how would an older generation react to having those possibilities?

Next steps

Even though we achieved a lot in the two-week sprint, there were still many more things that came up in user interviews that we were unable to implement due to the time limit:

Employer path.

Part of our brief was to focus on how the employee interacts with Juno, but we still have to figure out how the employer would actually get Juno on board of their company.

More social experiences.

Even though it was an important feature for our testers, the ability to gift an experience was only hinted in our prototype. We need to develop how to actually book an experience for someone else, pitch in for a birthday gift or go with your friends.

Manage my bookings / Account page

How do employees modify or cancel bookings within the system, or how do they review, check their history were aspects that still need further development.

Thanks for reading! If you’re interested in UX, remember to follow me on Medium and check my website (tomasmaicas.com) for more!