Human KPIs & Other Stories of How we Created a UX Research Culture at Withings.
--
In my 6+ years at Withings, the Product Design team and I have championed the many ways in which design can correlate growth with customer health goals.
Withings is an engineer-founded and hardware-driven company. Engineers and designers being fact-based, there is little room for BS in our product development process. This was a great breeding ground for the Product Design team I lead.
Most Withingers were already using quantitative ways of measuring their decisions and very much aware of the dangers of intuition.
We set on a course to complete that quantitative mindset with qualitative research key to a strong design process. Here are 3 examples:
📉 Project 1: Human KPIs
How might we quantify good design of a health-tracking app?
One of the main questions on the app team is that of which KPI would best represent the impact of our work on our users. Engagement and time spent in app weren’t precise enough as we considered that we would still be doing a good job if a user were to reach their weight goal stepping on the scale only without ever opening the app. We also wanted to create an experience that’s as mindful as possible of people’s attention and doesn’t allow obsessive behaviors towards health.
The solution should allow designers & PMs to monitor the evolution of a number before/after a new feature is released.
Brainstorm
We organized a series of workshops with key members of the product and design teams. We also interviewed a variety of clinical specialists to get their input. Everyone was engaged in the process and conscious that the right KPI should lead to a design process that’s inclusive of all health goals and user profiles.
Solution
Withings being around since 2008, we decided to build upon our rich quantitative knowledge or our customers.
Human KPIs allows Withingers to compare people’s health before/after a new feature is released in our consumer app Health Mate.
To ensure we represented everyone, most of our indicators were percentages of people’s individualities: for instance one of the weight KPIs we tried was the average percentage of weight lost among users on a time period instead of the average number of kilograms.
To avoid seasonal bias, the first iteration of the tool calculated trends from the same month a year before. This way a cold winter month’s steps number couldn’t be compared with warmer Spring (of course this was before Covid-19 lockdowns🙃).
Building the UI
I worked with then Data Analyst Paul Jouhaud to build the tool. He provided decisive help on the choice of KPIs and did all of the database querying. I used JavaScript to parse a JSON of the dataset he provided me into graphs. Although a very basic task for a developer, as a designer this really helped me understand better the work I do on customer-facing data visualization designs in Health Mate (weight graphs, heart rate graphs, etc).
Visual Design
Using our Remedy Design System, it was very quick to build a working prototype that fit into the Withings ecosystem. Since most of our other internal tools were bootstrapped, the visual quality of Human KPIs helped us differentiate ourselves and gain interest from our co-workers.
Learnings
It worked! Although we ourselves didn’t use engagement with Human KPIs as a sole indicator that our mission was accomplished, we noticed that most PMs and Executives changed their vision of what a successful feature release should look like.
A dedicated Data Analyst has since been hired and is currently working on the next iteration of the project.
What’s Next?
Having more qualitative internal tools means the health tracking experience on the consumer side should become more qualitative too. Most of what you track in Health Mate today is quantitative measurements automatically sync’d from your devices. Allowing users to add context to these measurements will help us create solutions that help them reach their health goals.
🛠 Project 2: Building a UX Research Practice from the Ground Up
During my tenure as a Lead Product Designer at Withings, I contributed to changing the product development culture by championing UX Research processes and getting approval for the hiring of a dedicated researcher.
How might we create a new expertise before getting approval to hire experts?
Laying Foundations for a Growing Team
The Withings product design team started out as a duo. Most of our process and techniques were covert and undocumented.
In late 2019 I was promoted to team manager with the goal of tripling headcount without reducing our I.C output in the process. I decided to document and write down what we’d always been doing in Wikis.
All of this work allowed the fast scale-up of the team to go swimmingly! I also re-learned and improved methods I thought I already knew.
Trying the Foundations on a Pilot Project
Before the new hires arrived, we got the opportunity to try the processes I documented on a pilot research project around insomnia. The team was composed of 2 product managers, 1 product marketer and myself.
This was a good way to see if the new processes could help others grow their UX Research skills.
The project also allowed us to advertise UXR through several org chart branches (design, product, marketing).
Learnings
Most Product Managers who previously didn’t know how to conduct user research are now able to lead their own UXR from beginning to end. Those who’re not yet versed in it have heard of their teammates loving it and come to the design team for help.
My leadership was convinced by the methodology they once saw as slowing down projects and we got approval to hire a full-time UX Researcher (Lise Carrillo, check her out she is brilliant).
We are now made of 4 Product Designers (+2 open positions), 1 UX Researcher and 1 UX Writer.
📓 Project 3: Defining Principles & Guidelines for Human-Centric Design
How might we hold ourselves ethically accountable for designing health-impacting UX?
Why now?
As the design team tripled in size, it was important to agree on foundational safeguards to ensure everyone had in mind the challenges of designing in health. Our Remedy design system was the operational framework, and principles were the philosophical/ethical one.
Output 1: The Withings Product Design Principles
We defined our principles during a workshop with the Product Design (Lucas Guarneri, Aurélien Marrast, Roshan Zavery, Marine Royet, Lise Carrillo, Hugo Chapelain) and Apps teams (Romain Dahan).
We used designer Matthew Ström’s 1-hour design principles workshop methodology.
Empowering, Human, Non-Invasive, Trustworthy, Fun & Warm, Scaleable.
What’s always low-key felt to me like a list of pompous empty words ended up helping us make countless calls on projects, answer impossible choices and ease political debates.
Output 2: Advanced Guidelines on how to best announce health changes without creating panic reactions
In 2020 I led research work with our psychologist Myriam Paperman to define a set of principles to use when announcing health changes to our users. The interfaces we design, from visual choices to information hierarchy and messages, can have a major impact on how the user/patient will react/act and the next steps they will take/not take. This is particularly important as Withings becomes the messenger of important news — from AFib to Sleep Apnea detection — and the warrant of health professionals on MED Pro Care.
Thanks for reading this far! 👋
I would love to take you through a more detailed case study deck
of one of these projects. Get in touch at ciao@lucasguarneri.com.
