Wim Hof Method
20 Day Cold Shower Challenge
Transforming cold showers from a chore to a delight, while driving conversions to paid subscriptions.
Vertical
Team and Timeline
3 Product Design students
5 weeks
Scope of Work
Product Strategy
Copywriting
User Research
UX Design
UI Design
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Tools
Dovetail
Zoom
Loom
Figjam
Notion
Maze
Figma
Overview
Cold therapy is one of its three pillars in the Wim Hof Method and has benefits such as speeding up metabolism, reducing inflammation, and aiding in muscle recovery. The 20-Day Cold Shower Challenge provides users with a convenient and accessible way to explore cold therapy in the comfort of their own homes.
The Challenge
Wim Hof Method’s Cold Shower Challenge is a great way to introduce new users to Cold Therapy. However, users are not being supported and guided to and through the 20-Day Cold Shower challenge, and that makes them feel discouraged and unmotivated to complete the challenge. Following the exploration from our user research, our design focuses on solving the following question:
How might we best support users in successfully completing their 20-day cold shower challenge?
Why it matters?
Not only will the challenge aid users in starting a new healthy habit, but the Wim Hof Team has also identified the 20-Day Cold Shower Challenge as a opportunity to incentivize more users upgrade from a free plan to a premium subscription plan. However, a low adoption and completion rate is reflected of the current challenge experience, so I am hypothesizing that users are not receiving enough value to continue on the challenge and be motivated to subscribe.
Desired outcomes
1
Increase adoption of the 20-day Cold Shower challenge
2
Increase completion rate / decrease drop-off rate of the Cold Shower Challenge
3
Increase conversion rates from the free plan to the premium subscription plan
The Result
Supporting users in completing the 20-Day Challenge, while driving conversions to paid subscriptions.
Let’s dive in
The Process
Over the span of 5 weeks, I tackled the redesign alongside two Product Designers by adopting the Design Thinking framework. All three of us were equally involved in each phase of the design process, and allowed spaces for both individual exploration and reconvening to build on each other’s ideas.
Although we collaborated through the entire process, the final designs and working prototype featured are my own work.
Discovery
User story
To kick things off, I brainstormed user stories to better understand user’s goals and motivations. Independent of the business objectives, I wanted to know why users might even want to embark on a 20-Day Cold Shower challenge.
As someone who is new to cold shower therapy,
I want to be able to set goals, visualize my progress, and be reminded of my sessions,
so that I can stay motivated to start and maintain a healthy habit.
Usability review
Through the lens of a defined user story, I conducted a usability review on the current experience using the Usability Heuristics principles as a reference.
Wow Moments
One-week free trial before prompted to subscribe
Customize experience to the desired difficulty
Pain Points
Inconsistent visual design throughout the app
Weak visual hierarchy
Low colour contrast affecting accessibility
Inconsistent and at times, unfriendly voice and tone
Visual imagery (i.e icons) could better support the copy and content
As a new user, it is unclear how to proceed through the app and through the 20-day cold shower challenge
What are users saying?
After gaining a solid understanding of the current experience, I wanted to know what users are saying. Due to the timeframe, I took to the App and Google Play store to gather from existing data.
What we found:
Users are having trouble navigating through and to the 20 Day Cold Shower challenge because of the busy UI that is lacking in visual hierarchy and consistency, which is contributing to the lack of clarity and direction for in-app navigation.
Users are feeling frustrated during the Cold Shower experience because of the lack of user control and freedom to recover from mistakes or add sessions completed out of the app, this causes additional stress and impacts the user’s trust in the app performing as expected.
Users are feeling discouraged by the inconsistent and sometimes hostile or aggressive tone, which makes the user uncomfortable and prevents further exploration within the app.
Competitor Analysis
Once I had a holistic sense of the current user experience, I conducted an analysis of both direct and indirect competitors within the health and wellness space to better understand industry standards. This allowed me to identify opportunities for our product development in this space.
Competitors
Synthesizing the research
Lack of Support
Users are not completing the 20 day cold shower challenge because the current experience does not support them in building and maintaining a new habit. They will be less likely to continue on progressing through the challenge, as they are unclear on how to track and visualize progress.
Lack of Understanding
Users are not only not informed and educated about the premium plan structure, but will receive a *blocked* message when trying to access premium content. This may make them feel uncomfortable in continuing using the app.
Users new to WHM are not introduced to what it is and how it could benefit them, which could lead to low new user retention.
Confusion and inconsistencies
Users are stressed and confused while navigating within the app and to the shower challenge due to the inconsistent visual language and hierarchy of actions. This may lower the user’s perceived value for the app and its premium content. A lower satisfaction in their experience will also impact referral rates.
Defining the problem
Problem Space
After a thorough Discovery phase, I identified two main problem spaces to focus on for the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) -- the Onboarding and the 20-Day Cold Shower Challenge experience to best address the current user and business challenges.
How Might We
Priming for the next steps, we brainstormed “How Might We” statements. This process of divergent thinking encouraged me to explore ways in which I could improve upon the product through an intentionally expansive lens. We believed that these three best addressed the problem space, to use to frame our brainstorming as we begin ideation.
How might we best support users in successfully completing the 20-day cold shower challenge?
How might we increase knowledge of the premium subscription?
How might we provide easier access and visibility to the 20-day cold shower challenge?
Ideation
What can we add or improve?
Framed by the HMW statements, we used brainstorming and ideation tools such as Mind Map, Crazy 8s, and Brainwriting to practice divergent thinking, both by encouraging individual exploration and collaborative brainstorming.
How do we prioritize?
To reel things in, I used a High-low/Impact-Effort matrix to prioritize our ideas with a focus on a MVP that supports the identified user challenges and business goals.
Design
With all the necessary foundations, knowledge, and preparation in place, I began to redesign the interface for the Onboarding and 20-Day Cold Shower Challenge, focusing primarily on best supporting a new user in forming and maintaining a new habit.
User Flow
The previous stages helped identify crucial areas in the onboarding and cold shower challenge user flows that could be improved for the benefit of both users and the business. We spent more time refining these user flows as we believed that a smooth and intuitive user journey was crucial to the overall app experience.
Proposed User Flow
Low-fidelity wireframes
We each sketched our wireframes separately before reconvening to share and discuss our ideas, and taking all our separate ideas to collaborate on a final wireframe together. Here are my sketches.
Design System
Our focus for the UI styles was accessibility, brand coherence with Wim Hof Method, and generating feelings of cohesion and unity.
Using the Atomic Design Framework, I created the UI Components to ensure that consistency, responsiveness, and scalability were at the forefront as I proceed toward high fidelity design.
Final Recommendations
How I designed to support users in successfully completing the 20-day Cold Shower Challenge?
Personalized experience
Leveraging the endowment effect, I added a short and optional quiz during onboarding, to both create a tailored experience for users, and to help users recognize what their goals are.
By realizing that the habit might be rooted in a deeper goal, users may discover more intrinsic motivation for starting and continuing on with the challenge.
Before
Redesign
Challenge homepage
The challenge homepage has been redesigned to support users in best being able to visualize their progress and how far they have come.
All key features are accessible. Users can start their current session, add a session, review challenge details, and personalize settings all from the challenge homepage.
Manually add sessions
Previously, users felt frustrated with the inability to log sessions completed out of the app. To prevent loss of motivation and momentum, an accessible modal is added to allow users to manually add sessions.
Before
Redesign
Take control of your session
To combat lack of user control and freedom to recover from mistakes or exit session, the option to pause, restart or exit the challenge at any time is added.
The experience is also redesigned to be more immersive, and users can customize a warm-up countdown to allow for more mental and physical preparation.
Track progress and set up for success
The design aims to create a seamless and engaging user experience that supports habit-building for optimal health and wellness.
The journal prompt encourages quick reflection, the badge serves as a tangible symbol of achievement, and the notification reminder helps users set a habit trigger and stay accountable to their goals.
How I designed to increase knowledge about the premium plan, about WHM to new users, and Cold Therapy.
Before
Redesign
Premium subscription
The redesign of the subscription interface provides a more transparent and approachable explanation on the free trial and premium plan structure.
Challenge details
To best support new and returning users throughout the 20-day challenge, the challenge details and tips are presented concisely and can be easily accessed anytime.
Redesign
Before
Health disclaimer
Before entering the Cold Shower challenge flow for the first time, users are presented with a health disclaimer.
Despite being a healthy habit when practiced correctly, there are still risks associated with Cold Therapy. Users should be informed of any potential risks and determine whether it is suitable for them.
Before
Redesign
Introduction Splash Screen
To increase new user sign-up and retention, a quick and digestable series of splash screens introduce new users to what the WHM is and some core offerings prior to being prompted to sign up.
How I designed to for easier access and visibility to the 20-day Cold Shower Challenge
Entry points to 20-Day Shower Challenge
To provide easier access to the 20-day cold shower challenge, multiple entry points are added. From the homepage, the shower challenge is included in the "Featured Challenges" category.
For first-time users, a modal is added to provide a guided and direct access to the challenge.
Returning users will see a category on the homescreen for "Active Challenges" and be able to easily access the challenge and be motivated by their progress.
Redesign
Before
As one of my first end-to-end product design projects and witnessing how our ideas materialized into something tangible was an invaluable learning experience.
Frameworks for scalability and consistency - Frameworks such as the Atomic Design System made the design process much quicker and allowed for quick iterations.
Power of the MVP - Being that it was one of our first end-to-end projects, it was easy and tempting to get carried away with all our ideas. Evaluating on the impact and feasibility of the feature was an important skill we learned.
Project management - Our team worked across different time zones, which added another layer of complexity to managing time, meeting deadlines, and delegation.
Collaboration - Given our diverse backgrounds and experiences. We learned a lot from one another and learned the importance of both individual and collective idea exploration in the product design process.
