Mobile platform enabling more efficient remote nutrition services
A better and easier way to find and consult experienced dieticians remotely to easily achieve health goals in various areas of nutrition
7 months
StayWell
Stand-by
-
Product Designer
Product Owner (a practitioner herself) + 1 Engineer
The Product
StayWell Nutrition is a mobile platform for people who seek professional advice and consulting from reputable nutritionists and dieticians in their specific field of need. Professionals also gain access to an all-in-one solution to manage their businesses from A to Z.
The Problem
For clients
Professional services for nutrition advice are mostly limited to local and in-person sessions without much flexibility. For those who offer remote services, the process of booking sessions is unnecessarily complicated
People always wonder if Google results are actually proven and true. Instead, they seek reliable advice from professionals to achieve their health goals, but most offerings are in-person sessions limiting people to their local offerings only. This leads to missing on more quality services that could be offered elsewhere or the advantage of getting advice remotely when it's not possible to attend in-person without missing out on the sessions. In addition, the few online offerings available have complicated processes requiring various platforms for scheduling, payment, communication, and telecommunication separately. People are looking for an easier way to connect.
For nutritionists and dieticians
Handling multiple platforms for different management needs as non-tech-savvy users is unproductive. Maintaining the ecosystem is time-consuming and there are no easy ways to offer a convenient all-in-one experience for clients outside their region of practice
Sharing the frustration with clients, professionals don’t find productive the process of handling multiple platforms for different needs. Appointment booking tools, spreadsheets for client management, financial and payment platforms, website building and maintenance, etc. Due to the nature of the non-tech-savvy demographic of professionals in the target region, it can be a heavy lift for solo-practitioners. They wish there was a simpler and easier way to manage their business all in one place while also gaining more exposure in other regions with their remote offerings.
User segments
The Clients
Need a more convenient way to attend sessions with a professional dietician when the time it's not the best for them to commute. Common reasons are exhaustion after a long day at work or looking after children at home.
The Professionals
Wants to centralize their operations by using the least amount of tools possible while providing a better service for their clients.
A two-way solution
A client-facing mobile app to search for professionals and book and attend sessions remotely
A professional-facing web app to manage schedules, sessions, client information, payments and more
Initial discovery of key pain points for professionals
Insights based on 5 in-person interviews with active nutritionists and dieticians
The ghosting problem
Clients would more than often skip sessions for "personal reasons". Which, after analysing the pattern from various clients' behaviours, it was discovered that most of these cases were related to the actual commitment to show up in person at the office. Excuses for cancellations or moving dates around at the last minute are a growing issue for professionals.
Technical issues & costs
Relying on multiple platforms to run their businesses involves a higher cost that impacts revenue (even more so for solo-practitioners), compromises time when in need of tech support, and increases the probabilities of human mistakes with client data.
Popularity of dieting & workout apps
New apps are impacting the professionals' growth. Clients are choosing the "convenient way" of achieving health goals by using these mobile apps instead. But, these apps are also impacting people's habits (for the worse) with no clear guidance on best practices resulting in what's commonly called in the industry a "bounce-back" — a client going back to a not-ideal or unhealthy state where they started from.
Initial discovery of key pain points for clients
Insights based on 7 in-person interviews with regular clients in the industry
About traditional services
Lack of flexibility
Almost all services offered by professionals here are performed in-person at their office or clinic. This means commuting every single time. But, people have lives and things can take a turn when non-planned situations happen that require some degree of flexibility. Otherwise, this translates directly to cancellations or rescheduling, which is not convenient for either side.
Confusing processes
There are still a few places that offer remote services, but the process of booking and attending sessions is definitely not ideal. There's pretty much a different tool for each step of the process living clients confused and overwhelmed.
About new diet mobile apps
Self-commitment (and the lack of it)
Most of these apps require self-commitment with manual tracking and data entry but most people almost never follow this, or they do it for the first few days and then they start to forget (or decline) to log on their meals and activity to track their progress properly. This leads to poor or no results at all at the end of the day.
No personalized human interaction
These new platforms are meant to be "automated" tools that would not require the need of human assistance to use them. The problem is that the key information and best practices about how to do things the right way are missing (or are at the minimum) and require a lot of effort from the user to find out what they need, most of the time leading to app abandonment.
Reliability on habit-building and self-control
Related to the self-commitment issue, to be able to get real results by using these new platforms, the user is required to build new habits and stick to them to see real progress. Habit-building is a big effort psychologically, specially for this user segment, which is not taken in consideration very well in these new apps. it's already assumed that the user will follow the instructions from day 1 when it's not really the case.
Lack of options fo specific use cases
A pattern we found was that these apps are targeting the general public and provide the basics to weight loss and that's pretty much it. The professionals know that there are more use cases than weight loss such as sports nutrition or child nutrition, for instance, which are nowhere to be found in the new platforms.
Discovered trends and main players in the mobile sector
The following apps started to appear on more people's mobile devices trying to replace professional services. We took a closer look at a few of them to understand what they were offering
Consolidating learnings
After finally defining what type of product we wanted to work on, we got down to business and defined the user goal at a high level, the JTBDs, and specific user stories we wanted to tackle in the MVP
Client's goal
To conveniently find and connect with professional nutritionists from anywhere
Professional's goal
To centralize operations while providing the best service by leveraging communication technologies
Client's Epic
As a client, I want to easily find trusted and experienced professionals on my mobile device and be able to connect with them seamlessly from anywhere and everywhere so that I can achieve my health goals with personalized, guided, and real-time consulting without being region-limited or commute-dependant.
Professional's Epic
As a professional, I want to take in clients online from all regions and be able to manage and track them in one single, intuitive platform so that I can expand my reach and make my client management process more efficient for higher satisfaction and faster results.
Client's task-based user stories
As a client, I want to be able to search and narrow down a list of experienced, specialized professionals so that I can quickly find the right one for my needs.
As a client, I want to see reviews from other clients and information about the professional so that I can make a good decision when choosing one that fits my needs
As a client, I want to know their availability and intuitively be able to book a session from my mobile phone so that I make sure I find a day and time that works for me and that I plan the upcoming session with anticipation.
As a client, I want to choose from various communication channels when having a session so that I have the flexibility to choose the best communication approach depending on my needs at that moment while still having a successful session.
Professional's task-based user stories
As a professional, I want to see my upcoming weekly schedule so that I can plan my sessions accordingly.
As a professional, I want to access client relevant information so that I can track progress towards their goals and provide more personalized guidance.
As a professional, I want to take in online payments and access historic data so thatI keep my books in oder and trackable in one place.
As a professional, I want to keep track of my client base so that I know how much business I’m driving and adjust my strategy accordingly.
The principles we defined to reach our goal
Convenient platform
A mobile platform where users can search and sort professionals by specialization and experience and easily book and attend 1:1 online sessions that'll help to make progress on their health goals with professional guidance from the palm of their hands
Latest comms tech at the core
Provide communication tools such as video conferencing, chat, and progress tracking to keep a real-time, more personalized experience that'll benefit both ends, professionals and their clients alike.
All-in-one place
Intuitive and frustration-free features for professionals such as session management and history, scheduling, payment processing and client data tracking for better management of their overall business needs
Narrowing down the solutions for the client-facing side
With all the features and initial requirements mapped out, we started exploring how this platform would look like for users. For clients, we broke down the main experience into four (4) stages:
Onboarding
Gathering of essential information for a personalized home screen. Form-like interaction.
Search and Filtering
Ability to see recommendations based on data provided and search functionality by experience and specialty.
Booking and Pre-Session
Ability to see the professional's information, service offerings, availability. Session scheduling and payment submission. Notifications and information about upcoming sessions.
Sessions
Direct communication with the professional through one (1) of the three (3) channels available: Video, Voice, and Chat.
Shaping the Professional-facing side
As for the nutritionists and dieticians experts, we identified five (5) key areas that'd make their life easier:
Quick overview of operations
Gathering of essential information for a personalized home screen. Form-like interaction.
Bookings and Client management
Ability to see recommendations based on data provided and search functionality by experience and specialty.
Services and Transactions management
Ability to see the professional's information, service offerings, availability. Session scheduling and payment submission. Notifications and information about upcoming sessions.
Profile creation and maintenance
Direct communication with the professional through one (1) of the three (3) channels available: Video, Voice, and Chat.
Live Sessions
Ability to see the professional's information, service offerings, availability. Session scheduling and payment submission. Notifications and information about upcoming sessions.
The results in details
We ended up with a solution that assist both user segments' needs in a rather simple yet convenient platform.
Some setbacks along the way
The platform was heading in the right direction and we (and prospects) were very happy with the current results but, unfortunately, this project couldn't be developed and shipped as expected due to a financial crisis in Argentina. It was decided to put the project on stand-by until further notice, when the investment could be more stable and predictable.
We see potential with this platform based on feedback from a few prospects from both ends which confirms the benefits we can bring to them, so we hope this project can be resurrected in the future and tested thoroughly so it can be shipped to the people who really need this.
If you're curious about the financial crisis, you can read about it here and here
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