Onboarding, but
clinically therapeutic.
for Real
series A mental wellness start-up in nyc
series A mental wellness start-up in nyc
Timeframe
> 6 months
Role
Strategy partner
Solo designer
Methods
Product strategy
MVP scoping
Rapid iteration
Parallel UX/UI/Dev work
Tech stack
FigJam
Figma
Auth0
Retool
Project team
VP of Product (Jeremy P.)
Director of Product (Hanna T.)
Senior Project Manager (Naveen N.)
Engineering Lead (Sam D.)
where it started
Therapy is broken – in more ways than one.
Really, take your pick.
01 / Scale
If every USA resident decided to start therapy today, there would only be 1 therapist available for every 7 people.
02 / Economic barriers
In most of the US, one can expect to pay $100-$200 per session. In addition, many of us have jobs that prohibit the time commitment therapy requires on a weekday.
03 / Cultural stigma
Stigma and distrust of mental health institutions has existed within the community for generations. There can also be a lot of shame and sweeping under the rug.
04 / Institutional bias
The gatekeepers of mental health institutions are largely middle-aged white professionals (Data USA, 2020) with their own views on society and how it should function.
So, armed with a squad of therapists and technologists, Real created “Pathways”.
GREAT IDEA, BUT...
This linear, one-topic-at-a-time approach was neither profitable, nor sustainable.
01 / Long + costly production
Each pathway took more than 8 weeks to produce and was extremely resource intensive.
02 / High cost of acquision
We spent a ton of money on ads. And on top of that...
03 / Low retention
The members we did acquire were not sticking around.
THE PLOT...THICKENED
One icy day of December ‘22, all employees received an ominous meeting invite.
Our founder announced that we were doing a 180, effective immediately. We were throwing away everything we’d built, from the product concept to the codebase, and starting fresh with:
1
Concept
0
Designs
0
Style guide
0
Codebase
the NEW concept
We were becoming a full-on content company. The new product’s concept was simple (not to be confused with “easy”):
01 / Bite-sized audio content
Each pathway took more than 8 weeks to produce and was extremely resource intensive.
02 / Therapist-created content
We spent a ton of money on ads. And on top of that...
03 / Everything on-demand
The members we did acquire were not sticking around.
We kicked off cross-functional, blue-sky exploration – while pretending to be in Criminal Minds.
We were pivoting, (hard) – effective immediately – throwing away everything we’d built, from the product concept to the codebase, and starting fresh. As a company, we were just starting to flesh out the mechanics behind the new concept, when...
PIVOT #1
Surprise announcement from leadership:
we were now to design, build, and successfully launch the new app on both app stores in 5 f%&(&@ months.
Leadership set the launch date to align with Mental Health Awareness Month (which starts May 1st), with the hope to give the launch extra visibility.
Under the new timeline, there was no time for blue-sky. We had to scale back our full-concept vision into a realistic MVP that could be built in a matter of months. So we started scoping a feature set *just* robust enough to form a solid proof of concept.
See the scoping file here.
Under the new timeline, there was no time for blue-sky. We had to scale back our full-concept vision into a realistic MVP that could be built in a matter of months. So we started scoping a feature set *just* robust enough to form a solid proof of concept.
See the scoping file here.
MY FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS
As a series a start-up launching a brand new concept, onboarding was a make or break point of our flow. Yet, our legacy onboarding (from Real 1.0) was objectively broken.
01 / Length + lack of clinical support
In addition to account creation, members also had to take the GAD-7 and PHQ-9 to create a baseline for clinical efficacy.
02 / People were confused by the model
Some members expected: a free membership option and/or the ability to meet with our therapists 1:1
03 / High drop-off rate
Especially at paywall and when switching from web to app.
...so the new onboarding had to –
ROADBLOCK AND TEARS
I was on my merry way, baking this new onboarding from scratch, when something scary came up. We called it Applegate (for real, it became official company lingo).
A lot was riding on the new sign-up flow.
On top of driving acquisition and activation – our concept was unknown, our onboarding was going to be long (for clinical efficacy, we had to include lengthy standardized tests and extensive questioning), and we knew our 23.99$ a month price-point could be a significant deterrent. So we had to make that sign-up process as butter-smooth as humanly possible.
So, imagine our faces when we learned Apple’s policy of: “If you allow people to sign-up in-app, we’ll take a large portion of the profit for our troubles. If you want to keep that profit, only existing users can use the app. And if you try some funny business, we’ll just ban your app from the app store”.
On top of driving acquisition and activation – our concept was unknown, our onboarding was going to be long (for clinical efficacy, we had to include lengthy standardized tests and extensive questioning), and we knew our 23.99$ a month price-point could be a significant deterrent. So we had to make that sign-up process as butter-smooth as humanly possible.
So, imagine our faces when we learned Apple’s policy of: “If you allow people to sign-up in-app, we’ll take a large portion of the profit for our troubles. If you want to keep that profit, only existing users can use the app. And if you try some funny business, we’ll just ban your app from the app store”.
ON ONE HAND
Supporting sign-up inside the app meant handing a hefty sum of money to Apple each month.
ROCK
HARD PLACE
ON THE OTHER
Not supporting sign-up inside the app crippled our acquisition and activation flow, especially since Apple wouldn’t let us direct members to web.
We came up with a plan to get the best of both.
PIVOT #3
We were all wiping our collective brow post-Applegate, when we realized that in order to hit onboarding goal #3 (deliver care from the get-go), we had to pull a full feature from the backlog and into the MVP.
The feature? Escalation: the flow we take a new user on when their intake results indicate they might be in a state of crisis.
This meant adding a feature to the scope that we had no precedent for. No previous version, no research, no design explorations. Nbdnbdnbdnbd 😬
This meant adding a feature to the scope that we had no precedent for. No previous version, no research, no design explorations. Nbdnbdnbdnbd 😬
THE OUTCOME
Despite the trecherous timeline, the trials + tribulations, and the occasional flirt with burnout – we made it.
Not only did we build this in incredible pressure, the baby actually turned out dope. I’m a proud co-parent, but don’t take my word for it – take these numbas.
+29%
in first-time user
engagement
engagement
+12%
in revenue
3 weeks after “soft” launch
3 weeks after “soft” launch
We also received a spontaneous review in Very Well mind praising the thoughtfullness of the app. This meant the world to me because despite the ultra-short timeline, our team took our responsibility of caring for people’s tender parts responsibly very seriously. That is not something we wanted to half-ass or take wobbly shortcuts on. So seeing that it came through in the product felt extra-special.
.avif)
OVER TO YOU
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