TEAM
Creative Director
Micah Heiselt
Experience Lead
Angira Chokshi
Designer
Jinnie Choi
Junior Experience Designer
Jason Volinsky
Translating the Nutrisystem e-commerce experience to the NuMi app.
We were assigned with the task of converting the existing ‘NuMi App by Nutrisystem’ into an e-commerce experience, allowing users to purchase the products recommended to them via their health loss plans or to order a-la-carte items – similar to the experience they had on the NuMi website.
DISCOVERY & UX RESEARCH
This was a very complex project. NuMi already had existing iPhone, Android, iPad versions of the app and had responsive design that existed for the website. We had to incorporate the e-commerce experience across all the platforms in a short period of time.
Our approach was to make sure we don't reinvent the wheel where we didn’t have to, however we still very much acted as user advocates by innovating, where we could. For instance, we completely redesigned the checkout process.
Understanding the project with the team.
Quick sketches with the stakeholders
Quick sketches of how to portray products
CHALLENGES
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Understanding the behavioral patterns of our novice app-users: Our biggest challenge was understanding our existing customer base (middle aged men and women, not so technologically savvy Americans), and how used to they are in doing things a particular way, for eg., ordering products online.
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Novice-app users tend to drop off at the checkout process: We were challenged to transition from the existing convoluted check-out process to come up with an extremely simple and easy to understand flow and checkout process.
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Making the overall end-to-end customer journey catered to the novice app-user, while staying true to the e-commerce experience: Even after narrowing the checkout process, we spent some time honing into details about how the "add to cart" button interacts with the user and how they can update quantity etc.
Explorations around the checkout process, the "add-to-cart" button, how to update qty etc.
UX RESEARCH & STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEWS
We spent a good amount of time undergoing competitive research and understanding various e-commerce best practices for various industries. We also interviewed existing customers to understand what was the most important for them to see first, were more people inclined to reordering previous orders, were they going for the recommended products or were they simply interested in browsing and ordering a la carte?
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
We sketched out various versions of the features once the flows were narrowed down on. Wireframes for all screens were created for iPhone and functionalities that needed specification were created for Android, iPad and for the responsive design.
USER TESTING & PROTOTYPE
I wrote two scripts - one for existing NuMi users - focusing on how the experience translates from the e-commerce website; and one for new users - focusing on usability, simplicity and ease of the product. Based on this, the team created prototypes which were sent for testing. I then analyzed the data (generated by user testing) and made certain updates for the final app experience and design.
SOLUTION
A smooth shopping experience that allows users to order products (based on which health loss plan they have selected) from their journal (where users log food, water & exercise) itself, while also allowing users to browse seamlessly and order recommended products or a la carte items.
