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WELL Institute is a startup dedicated to the betterment of all women’s lives. Founded by Beth Wade, WELL hopes to provide accessible, holistic, practical, professional & educational opportunities for women via an online & mobile delivery platform.
Our team set out to validate & refine the conceptual model of the business to ensure that the development process would be user-centered. We employed several UX Research methodologies to identify areas of improvement, user pain points & needs; allowing us to better define the next phases of development as well as create new strategies to allow WELL to better meet the needs of women.
The WELL Institute initial concept was based on three key areas: Learning, Wellness & Mentorship. These three pillars formed the foundation of how the platform would work to improve users’ lives. Because these areas would work synergistically, the team decided that research focusing on just one area independently would not provide the most valuable insights. These three pillars were central in evaluating competition, the formulation of survey questions & the creation of interview guides.
The original vision for WELL Institute's main product is a fully functioning vocational education delivery platform. She planned to leverage multiple forms of tech including video, chats, AI, VR, AR & Eye-tracking wellness therapies to offer women that paid for WELL Institute monthly subscriptions that would address their learning, wellness & mentorship needs.
The development roadmap was oriented to fully develop the curriculum & delivery platform first with expansion into adjacent technologies like AI & VR to follow. The last phase of development was to establish physical community centers.
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The following are the original strategies proposed in the WELL Institute business plan for the first phase of development. We set out to evaluate if the strategies were the best methods to accomplish WELL Institute’s goals from the perspective of potential users.
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To determine the validity of the proposed product features, strategies & structure, we needed to gather data from potential users & insights from WELL Institute's competitors.
After a competitive analysis, we identified several direct & indirect competitors that WELL needs to keep in mind as it further develops to ensure that the resulting product’s value proposition appeals to women & separates it from the saturated market place.
The team created a 10-question survey that was sent to alumni members of an alternative education program. Effort was made to create questions that revealed the interaction, if any, between the three key pillars that occurred naturally in women’s lives.
A distinction was also maintained between learning & education. This is an important distinction because it prevented the responses from being skewed toward traditional educational experiences. It also allowed us to explore the sentiment women had toward learning in general in hopes to illuminate the entire scope of topics, skills & knowledge women identified.
Interviewees were recruited on the CU Denver, Metro State & Colorado Community College campus. The interview guide expanded upon the survey questions & allowed the team to further examine the role of mentorship in women’s lives & gather more details about self-care & wellness practices.
The following user insights concerning WELL's Three Pillars were gleaned after creating an affinity map & synthesizing all of our data.
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After synthesizing all of our data, we saw a pattern most women, regardless of age, education level or socioeconomic status, followed when it came to learning a new skill: Women were interrupted from the monotony of their daily lives by some sort of catalyst event that sparked their need to pursue learning. This breaking point could be a totally life altering occasion, like having a baby, or a self-realization resulting from the frustration of hitting a wall within their daily routine.
Arguably the significance of these catalyst events varied greatly from person to person but the significance to each individual woman is essentially equal & prompts her to begin researching the next steps to overcome her unique issue. Unfortunately, for most women we studied, this process was cyclical. After a catalyst event, the constraints of daily life (not enough free time, financial, etc.) combined with the information overload from online searching would eventually cause the motivation to continue the research phase to dwindle. Women would settle back in to their daily routines and the cycle would start over again.
WELL Institute can intervene to break this cycle & help provide the necessary support, guidance, information & resources for women to make it to the next steps: making a decision on what the next steps are, committing to completion of the learning process & actually improving their quality of life as a result of their efforts.
Our team recommends that WELL Institute restructures it’s development plan. Phase 1 development efforts should be focused on creating a physical community space & online resources platform. This will effectively break the cycle most women are in when it comes to learning. Through connecting women with resources that already exist, they won’t experience information overload & will have more individualized resources that meet specific lifestyle requirements. This empowers women to be able to make a decision about what their next steps should be. Additionally, establishing a physical space will naturally foster the creation of a community of like-minded individuals offering further support to women looking to better their lives.
This Phase 1 development plan will also be beneficial to the business because the resources platform will not require the creation of unique content. It will simply connect women to existing resources from community partners that best help them achieve their goals. It also will provide an opportunity to experiment with different courses which can guide the development of WELL Institute content & curriculum. This will bring the overall development costs down in the long run as content & curriculum needs will be further defined & refined in Phase 2 before being restructured for a fully online delivery platform in Phase 3.
Each phase assists & intervenes at the later stages of learning for users. As more & more women come to trust & rely on WELL Institute’s recommendations, it will be a more natural transition to then begin paying for their custom courses & content. Without creating the brand’s goodwill with users, like the original Phase 1 plan, it would be less likely that women would pay to use the service upfront as it doesn’t meet the needs we discovered in our research.
We identified a cyclical pattern that is a barrier to all women in learning. To effectively break the cycle preventing women from learning, WELL Institute needs to be able to provide women with highly individualized resources.
This will prevent the information overload that overwhelms & confuses women while also providing them the direction they need to begin taking steps to meet their goals.
We propose that WELL Institute can intervene not only to break this cycle, but also help provide the necessary support, guidance, information & resources for women to make it to the next steps: making a decision on what the next steps are, committing to completion of the learning process & actually improving their quality of life as a result of their efforts.
WELL Institute needs to provide women with highly individualized resources to effectively break the cycle that prevents most women from successfully learning new things.
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We found that after a catalyst event, women begin a research phase. The sheer volume of information & resources online overwhelms & confuses women. They are left frustrated & lack the information to confidently pursue any course of action.
An online resource platform can pare down search results & provide personalized resources that fit in to each individual woman's lifestyle needs. This will prevent the information overload & provide women with a clearer direction so they can being taking steps to meet their specific goals.
Our design solutions need to be able to accommodate a wide range of women both demographically & psychographically. The platform must be usable & meaningful to women at all stages of life & be able to expand to encompass a nearly endless variety of skills, topics, options & interests.
The resources offered & featured on the platform will organically evolve over time, so the design must account for this. The resources must also fit each user's unique lifestyle requirements like cost, time commitment, time availability, format & location.
Created content sections to encourage browsing & exploring. Users are exposed to new product categories & sources of information, so they can passively learn more about Rosehouse's core product offerings. Two related product galleries were also created to showcase the connection between the plants grown & sold at Rosehouse with the wellness products & botanical treatments made from them.
Rosehouse customers identified the staff & owner's extensive plant & botanical knowledge as the main source of the brand's value. Hands-on highly personalized advice and knowing that Rosehouse has a horticulturalist on staff led to higher consumer confidence ultimately resulting in purchases. The cumulative long term effect created a strong Rosehouse brand loyalty.
This knowledge & personalized advice should be incorporated into the site. This was accomplished through creating a gallery of the owner's frequent livestream videos where she answers questions & provides other advice. A content block with a link to the gallery is featured on all product listing pages as well as product display pages.
Additionally, product display pages were expanded from the original two sites. They now feature an extended & more detailed product explanation. There are also quick visual guides instructing users on product attributes & providing practical information at a glance.
