Boosting User Engagement: Connecting devices to keep users hooked on health

A redesign of the health tracking feature in the Well app

Challenge

Imagine this: You’re trying to build better health habits—tracking your sleep, stress, and activity—but every day, you have to manually log everything. It’s frustrating, tedious, and after a while, you just stop. That’s the reality our users faced with Well’s Check-ins feature.

Tools

Figma, Figjam, LookBack, Miro

Timeline

January - October 2024

My Role

Design Lead: UX/UI

Team

Solo designer, 2 project managers, 4 engineers, 2 delivery


Understanding the problem

Context

Well is a personalized health platform that rewards users for making healthier choices. Its Check-ins feature, launched in early 2023, let users track habits like sleep and stress—but only through manual entry.

🚨 What users struggled with:

"Manual data entry is tedious and inefficient."
Users didn’t want to enter their health data by hand.

"I can’t see all my health data in one place."
There was no centralized dashboard for tracking progress.

💼 What the business needed:

  • Higher engagement and retention—users weren’t consistently using Check-ins.

  • More integrations to support Well’s corporate health initiatives.

Discover and Research

~30% | 100 million

of Americans use a wearable device (including smart watches)⌚️

220+ million

Americans already track steps and sleep via Apple Health / Google Fit 🔗

Most competitors in the Wellness market boast support for many device integrations

Competitive landscape

📝 User study: current state evaluation

To get a deeper understanding of the friction points within the Check-ins MVP I conducted a moderated usability study. I recruited 10 participants from a range of ages and backgrounds who, prior to the study, had no familiarity with the brand or platform.

Format

Moderated user test. Participants navigated the live Well production app, performing tasks provided by the test moderator.

🧩 Affinity mapping

I brought my notes and user quotes from the study to an affinity mapping workshop with the rest of the design team. This process helped me uncover common patterns that led to key insights and opportunities.

Tedious data entry: Users found manual data entry cumbersome, especially when compared to automated systems like wearables.

🤔

Dashboard confusion: Users expected to see all entries on the dashboard but were confused by its current structure, where only the most recent entry was visible.

🏆

Craving emotional rewards: Users need emotional rewards & recognition to stay motivated; without them, they lose interest.

Key insights and opportunities

📊

Seeking progress beyond numbers: A majority of users expressed interest in seeing trends, patterns, and actionable insights from their data.

Defining the solution

With these insights, I then collaborated with stakeholders across the company, including client representatives, to align user needs with business goals.

Ideation

Now that the user needs were aligned with the company KPIs (Key performance indicators) I framed key questions to guide the rest of my design process.

💡 How might we. . .

. . . automate health data collection while keeping users in control?

. . . provide actionable insights beyond just numbers?

. . . encourage long-term engagement with motivational features?

Wireframes

Design

Component UI updates

At the time of this project, the company went through a rebrand. Optimizing Check-ins now involved updating the outdated components and colors and renaming the feature to “MyHealth”

High-fidelity designs

User problem: tedious manual logging

Seamless device integration

Redesigned dashboard and navigation to simplify device connection

  • A redesigned Apps & Devices screen clearly shows connection status.

  • Emphasis on syncing first, with manual tracking as a secondary option.

User need: progress beyond numbers

A smarter health dashboard

Visualizing progress, growth and success

  • Personalized insights visualize trends in sleep, stress, and activity.

  • Users receive Instant interventions and guidance to other app offerings based on their data.

Gamification

User need: emotional rewards for motivation

5-daily entries reward

  • Streak system & reward points encourage daily tracking.

  • Users are incentivized to enter at least five categories per day.

  • Tracks like mood and stress are manual (despite device connection) and require the user to actively engage

Test

We conducted moderated testing of MyHealth before moving forward to development. We aimed to uncover friction and gauge interest in the updated tracking dashboard.

  • How seamlessly are people able to integrate apps/devices? Are they eager to sync (and if not, why)?

  • Do users find the dashboard aligns with their specific health tracking needs?

  • Are users eager to enter their “5-entries-per-day” for rewards? How motivating does this seem?

  • Can users tell that manual tracking is available (along with syncing from other apps/devices)?

🧩 Affinity mapping

After the interviews I held a workshop where we grouped the user quotes to highlight themes and opportunities.

💙 What worked well

  • Users acclimated to the dashboard right away: It was easy to gather context for what MyHealth is + how it can be used

  • Positive interest in the dashboard as a single view for recent data: “I like how it’s all put together here” - user quote

  • Most testers noted appreciation for mental and physical wellness in the same view: This felt different from other products they’ve tried

Opportunities

🚨MVP / tactical

  • Address “banner blindness” (connect cta / integration flow)

  • Shuffle terminology in the activity health focus area (especially “fitness”)

  • Explore options to orient users around 5-entry bonus points goal

💡 Longer term / strategic

  • As “tracking against goals” came up most frequently in testers, consider follow-up research around goal-setting and/or explore goal-setting flows next

  • Revisit mood/stress, explore consolidating

Outcomes & conclusion

On 7/29/2024 we launched integrated tracking and the MyHealth dashboard with six of Well’s major clients and the data speaks for itself…

🔮 Looking ahead

📈 Increased engagement—More users were actively tracking their health.


🔗 Higher adoption of integrations—Wearable syncing became a core feature.


💡 Positive user feedback—Users found MyHealth easier to use and more motivating.

This project was a defining moment in my career as a product designer. Being the sole designer on a complex, high-impact feature set pushed me to:

  • Take ownership of both UX/UI decisions and roadmap planning.

  • Advocate for user needs while balancing business priorities.

  • Collaborate cross-functionally with engineers, PMs, and stakeholders.

Heading into 2025, I’m excited to explore:

  • Experience strategy—defining a stronger vision for MyHealth.

  • Enhanced goal-setting features—giving users more ways to track progress.

  • Deeper integration with Well’s ecosystem, ensuring a truly connected experience.

There’s so much potential to make MyHealth even better, and I can’t wait to see how it evolves.

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Consumer web