Laughing In The Face of Failure
ORGANIZATION: WeightWatchers
SCOPE: Lead the design and implementation a new member service
CHALLENGE: Find the right problem for an existing solution
TEAM: Me - Project Lead + Service Designer, Sophie Ness - Execution Strategy, Rebecca Johal - Project Manager, Jacqui Zaydel - Product Manager, Karen Gahm - Operations
Context:
In an ideal world, new product and service offerings are developed from a place of insight or need. Not every project is ideal. But, some of the fun of design is finding resonance and direction in messy spaces.
Member-to-member chat had been developed as an in-app feature with the hope of fostering new connections among existing WW members. Three different use-case pilots had failed to gain traction. Due to organizational changes, the new chat feature was about to be shelved. Executive leadership turned to the in-person End-to-End experience team for a bit of a hail Mary.
Approach
Upon assuming leadership of the project, the executive team was creating a lot of pressure to just immediately launch the feature to all Workshop members as soon as possible. I laid out a strategy and timeline to accomplish a number of key goals:
Build on learnings and research to design a cohesive experience for both the audience and Coaches
Pilot the new design in smaller markets before refining and scaling
Develop a training and change management approach since the feature would have a very significant and lasting place in the WeightWatchers ecosystem
Implement a learning plan to measure impact for ongoing improvements and development
Starting with the experience itself, we leveraged the insights from the previous Chat pilots and existing research on the Workshop member community to identify key opportunity areas:
Workshop attendance had still not recovered from Covid. Lack of community connection was one of the prominent reasons cited by members
Workshops were receiving a bit of a makeover as part of a parallel workstream. Combined with Chat, there existed an opportunity for new interest and attention
Members within workshops know each other, mitigating the stranger danger pain point from previous pilots
Workshop members are devoted to “Their Coach.” Coaches are the personality keystones who set the tone for their micro-communities
Members reported they are initially attracted to workshops for the Coach, but over time return for the community
In partnership with Sophie Ness, we knew we needed to design a two-sided Chat experience structured around Coaches, WWs most defining differentiators. Members would be grouped by the Coach they most frequent. The Coach-organized models created multiple layers of commonality, building on the micro-communities coaches create. Since most Coaches ran multiple workshops in a geographic area, this afforded a critical mass to chat group size to account for active, inactive, and lurking participants to keep content flowing. The mix of Workshops also created a productive mix of familiar and new members, balancing comfort and discovery.
Refinement
After running two pilots in two different markets, we gathered some key insights that challenged some initial assumptions, namely the role of the Coach. While the groups were Coach-organized, they didn’t need to be Coach-led. The most engaged chat groups benefited from Coaches who participated as enthusiastic members rather than as ‘coaches.’
The new perspective on the role of the Coach had huge implications. We were able to optimize coach time in Chat without compromising the Member experience, ultimately saving over a million dollars in staff hours. Working with our partners in Field Operations, we crafted a Coach playbook and training to help coaches develop their own voice while identifying new opportunities to incorporate Chat into their Workshops.
Excerpt from the Chat playbook for Coaches
Launch + Scale
Once the new design system was implemented for the WW app, we immediately scaled the Chat feature across the U.S. market.
Reach
>1,200 Coach-organized chat groups created
~202K Premium and/or Lifetime Members were assigned to a coach group
Week 1
71% have viewed the opt-in screen
62% have visited the chat inbox
57% have visited their chat group
Daily Access to Chat Group: Consistently steady at 18-25%
18% have posted at least once in their chat group since launch
11% have reacted at least once in their chat group since launch
Week 6
84% have viewed the opt-in screen
78% have visited the chat inbox
73% have visited their chat group
Daily Access to Chat Group: on average at 17%
22% have posted at least once in their chat group since launch
16% have reacted at least once in their chat group since launch
After 4 months, daily active participation (sending messages or pics, reacting, replying, etc.) has sustained at 1-2%.
“This chat is SO cool! I haven’t been to a meeting or tracked in weeks - feeling the hopeless emotions that can creep up on us along this journey. I am dedicating to attending the meeting on Saturday because you all inspire me and remind me I’m not alone.”
Impact
Chat’s business impact won’t be fully realized for at least a year. Early indicators in our pilot locations were pointing to a correlation between both Workshop attendance and app engagement with Chat group activity. At the time of my departure from the company, formal experiments to determine causation between Chat and KPIs were being developed.
Anecdotally, Coaches continue to share stories of unexpected ripple effects from the new feature.
