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project. PranaWellness

date. 2019

city. Los Angeles

client. Stephanie Erazo, Founder of Prana Wellness

Brief:

Our group was tasked with developing the most effective product to not only help Stephanie target corporate clients, but also grow her business and engage individual users through her wellness programming.

Client:

Prana Wellness is a company founded by Yoga, Spin and Pilates instructor Stephanie Erazo. After leaving the corporate world to begin her own journey of mindfulness, she quickly realized that companies often didn’t take into consideration their employee’s mental well-being. Once, after experiencing a panic attack while on the job, she became determined to focus her efforts on helping others in a similar situation find peace, stress relief, and a mindful escape, both while at work and after hours.

Roles:

UX/UI Design

iOs

UX/UI Team:

Developer:

Platform:

Responsive Web

Natasha Lyons

Eric Smith

Whiteboard, Sharpie, Post-It, Copic, Miro, Otter,  Figma, 

Invision, Photoshop, Google Suite, Trello, Slack

Tools:

Tools:

Levi Eiko

Define and Discover

  • 01 Intro & Research

Challenges

Initially, the brief we received from our client requested an app for her first business Travel Slay– a company focused primarily on fitness retreats and personal training, but when we sat to discuss the scope, she informed us that she’d actually like a digital platform that will assist her newly established company, Prana Wellness, a similar enterprise geared towards corporate wellness through yoga, meditation and breathing.

We determined a responsive website would reach the widest audience and most appropriate for attracting first-time corporate clients.

Our research began by finding competitive wellness providers that had an aspect of corporate wellness as a service. This included competitors that the client already identified, as well as others we found that operated regionally and nationally.

  • Call outs to keep in mind:

    • Evaluating inquiry forms led us to the idea of a more robust “custom quote” feature that was both engaging and provided a lot more depth than the typical version we saw on competitors sites​
       

    • We noticed a lack of transparency in other companies' websites when it came down to pricing and thought of evaluating this in our interviews. Ultimately, we felt it only made sense to eliminate the step for employers needing to call or contact for pricing- this is a lengthy process that employers often do not have time for.

We dug a little deeper into the numbers of the wellness market, as well as looked at how growing apps like Headspace, Calm and Aura were affecting the industry.

*Via Forbes & HRDive

Considering an increase in new apps on the market and rising interest among users, we took it that more people seek mindfulness altogether. To prove this hypothesis, we asked users about their general experiences regarding mindfulness.

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In addition, we determined that in order to help our client grow Prana in the corporate space, we had to speak with the individuals responsible for implementing wellness programming at their companies to truly understand what is it that companies want and need when looking for a provider.

We identified the various demographics and interviewed 12 users:

• HR professionals with experience facilitating wellness programs

• Employees who have experienced wellness programs at work

• General users engaged in fitness/wellness routines

• Individuals familiar with Stephanie’s classes and teaching style

  • 02 Analysis & Synthesis

Identify the User

We analyzed our findings through three rounds of affinity mapping, confirming several notable takeaways:

• While most users understood the importance of practicing mindfulness, few actually took time to do so

• Two users we spoke to had extremely uplifting experiences using Headspace

• Price, convenience, and schedule were the biggest factors when deciding what classes to take

• Most employees now expect their employer to implement some sort of wellness programming, but wanted that programming to be more meaningful than the typical wellness fairs they had experiences

• Most HR managers utilized their company’s insurance broker to find wellness providers

Based on the users we interviewed and the initial project scope to target corporate clients, it was clear that we would be building a site with two sets of users in mind.

First, the corporate employer. Our research revealed that most large companies tend to have hefty insurance plans and brokers to facilitate programming for their employees. With that in mind, we determined the best target for our site would be smaller, more boutique businesses. Cases where perhaps an office manager took on the role of HR and were in charge of finding and implementing a wellness program themselves.

 

We developed Cindy to reflect this potential user:

Scenario

Recently, there has been a top-down initiative from the CEO at Cindy’s small web development agency to start implementing a wellness program. The workforce is predominantly millennial and is interested in varied wellness practices. As Cindy begins this process of searching for local providers, she uses Google to pull up a few websites to compare services and prices.

Problem Statement

Cindy feels overwhelmed about implementing a wellness program and needs a way to ensure the program can be tailored to her company’s unique culture, but faces the challenge of finding a provider that fits her budget and engages her employees.

The second persona was the individual user, either one that’s new to Prana’s services or who’s already a fan of Stephanie’s and looking to refer Prana to their company. This user might want to engage in yoga and meditation practice on their own time but also needs help with de-stressing on the job. Thus, we developed Justin.

Scenario

Justin just attended his first yoga class after his friend convinced him to take a break from his busy schedule and give something new a try. He enjoyed it so much, he spoke to the instructor, Stephanie Erazo, after class to learn more about her teaching style and other classes she offers. She mentioned that in addition to fitness classes like Spin, Yoga and Pilates, she also offers corporate wellness. Excited to learn more, Justin asks Stephanie for her business contact to get additional information.

Problem Statement

Justin feels disappointed that his new company doesn’t provide a wellness program, and wants to refer them to Prana Wellness but is unsure of how to share relevant and actionable information with HR.

Although we had two personas in mind when building this site, we sought to achieve a common goal by collectively solving the problem for users with a variety of needs and objectives.

How might we...

help Cindy find and inquire about custom solutions for her company’s wellness program, while helping Justin share Prana’s corporate wellness offerings with his employer?

Develop and Deliver

  • 03 Ideation & Prototyping

After establishing our users, we utilized the MoSCoW method and turned our attention to the site’s features. Our team discerned the most crucial components that would help both users achieve their goals. The most impactful set of features, was a robust custom-quote form for Cindy and a referral form for Justin.

In the initial outline of the site’s IA, we split it into two very distinct sections, based on each of our user personas. However, we asked our client about the site’s content and had her perform an open card sort so that we could validate whether our preliminary thoughts were justified. This exercise proved very useful as she made us realize that much of the wellness content actually crossed over to both user types.

Our curated sitemap assisted ideation for other relevant pages of different content segments to reside. Additionally, the structure not only provides users an easy path to other areas of the site and content they wish to explore, but also allows for the continuous cycle back to corporate referral regardless of the bifurcation between personal user and employer.

With the IA set, we engaged in design studio and developed straightforward user flows for each persona to quickly and easily achieve their goals.

For Cindy, the ability to complete a custom quote based on her company’s unique needs was crucial in helping Prana stand out amongst the competition.

For Justin, while he could opt for a subscription plan that would unlock wellness content, including workout videos, the most valuable path for him would be to refer Prana to his employer and have them implement a wellness program so that he could also take advantage of free services.

We tested these flows on users to see if they made sense, were easy to complete, and helpful in informing their decisions to go with Prana Wellness as their provider. Starting the design process with low-fidelity sketches on the whiteboard, we then translated them into low-fidelity wireframes and printed them out for paper prototyping. We tested these design iterations on four users and did two revisions.

We performed four usability tests with mid-fidelity clickable prototypes. While most users understood that Prana offered two directions of focus, the CTA language and some placement of the information was a bit confusing to them. So, we rearranged content, edited descriptions, removed some redundant elements.

Our client didn’t have a brand set up yet for Prana Wellness, although she did share with us her thoughts for a beta site and logo/color scheme that she lightly put together. With our corporate clientele in mind, we decided that some of her initial direction could be incorporated, but it would require a more polished, corporate aesthetic.

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We landed on the following set of style guides for our site’s design, largely focusing on a split-screen lotus element that would drive the color scheme and some of the site’s layout.

For our final design, my teammate Natasha, took the lead in stylizing web in hi-fidelity before we tackled its responsive nature altogether.

  • To achieve a vibrant mix of corporate wellness and peaceful serenity, we used a combination of Stephanie’s photography from past wellness programs and yoga events, as well as stock photography to supplement the “at-work” imagery she lacked. 

  • Considering each user on a responsive site, we accounted for Cindy’s search for a wellness provider while at work on her desktop computer or laptop. As for Justin’s experience on a mobile device, we designed his visit to Prana’s site as though he wanted to immediately send a referral form to his employer after meeting and speaking with Stephanie at one of her classes.

  • 04 Process Complete

Final Solutions

This fully-responsive site enables employers to quickly evaluate how Prana’s services could be the best fit for their company, as well as allows individual users to refer Prana’s services to their employers while personally engaging in useful yoga, meditation and breathing exercises on their own. New users of all types will also benefit from the wellness information and can easily incorporate mindfulness into their lives on a daily basis

Next Steps

Once corporate clientele has boosted…

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  1. Live Chat

  2. Shop Merchandise

  3. Push Notifications and Reminders

  4. Like and Share Functionality

  5. Calendar and Schedule

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