(Competitive Analysis, Diary Study, and IDIs)
Problem Statement
A top three fitness tracker was concerned about low user satisfaction with their readiness score. Stakeholders had very little data to support why users were reporting low satisfaction and what features needed improvement.
Role
I was brought in as a contractor through Answer Lab to lead research for this project. I designed the methodology, put together the study plan, and analyzed and presented the results.
Method and justification
I proposed a three-tiered study to help bring pain points and bright spots to light.
- Competitive analysis to understand pain points and bright posts in competitors’ readiness scores.
- A Diary Study to observe users’ interactions with the readiness score in real-time.
- Follow up In-Depth Interviews to glean additional details from the diary study and clarify any interesting findings.
Key Questions
- Which Daily Readiness Score elements are meeting users’ needs and which are not?
- Understand how users use the Daily Readiness Score and how it impacts users’ workout and routine
Challenges
- Tight Timelines: There was about a month to move through each phase of the study.
- Recruiting was done in dscout in order to leverage their pool and quick recruiting turnarounds.
- Lack of user knowledge of the feature: During recruiting, some users thought they were using the Daily Readiness Score, but struggled to describe what it was.
- Participants were asked to upload a screenshot of their Daily Readiness Score so that I could verify they were actually using it.
Insights
- Participants didn’t know how they got their score or what to do to improve it. They faced a 3 prong struggle when trying to parse their score:
- What does it mean? Is this good or bad?
- What do I do? Should I change my routine?
- Can I trust it? Is this accurate? Why isn’t it changing the way I expect it to?
- The audience for the feature was unclear. Participants brand new to working out needed significantly more guidance than could be found within the app. Athletes on strict training regimens ignored the feature in favor of sticking to training schedules and goals.
Memes participants used to describe their experience after interacting with the Daily Readiness Score for 5 days.
Impact
This study provided the team with actionable issues to address and foundational understanding of pain points and bright spots from which they could conduct additional research.
Eden Jackson 