Reimagining the way people set, track, and achieve goals

OVERVIEW

Tailwind is a goal management business that seeks to help people set, track, and accomplish their long term personal goals.

MY ROLE

TIMELINE

Product Designer

6 weeks

THE PROBLEM

Current solutions for goal setting and tracking lack accountability. They’re often geared toward daily to-dos rather than long term goals. Additionally, there aren’t many constraints on the user in terms of amount of goals and time to complete those goals. 

THE GOAL

Help young, motivated individuals who struggle with self-discipline to create a personalized action plan that organizes their priorities because a lack of structure makes it easy to lose track of the end goal.

The Research Journey

Literature Review

  • Highest goal achievement comes from well-defined goals and action plans with progress reports sent to a friend.

  • Behavior during first week is vital to success, even if the goal is years away.

  • Goal tracking apps fail to notify users that their goal is too difficult and propose a revision to make it more achievable.

  • Broad brackets (e.g. Monthly Goals) minimize probability of falling short.

User Interviews

  • I conducted 6 interviews with people ranging from 23 to 54 years old. Interviewees are all college educated and work in business or engineering.

  • Participants range from having a structured routine for setting and tracking goals to no structure at all.

  • All 6 participants report that they are much more likely to achieve a goal when there’s external accountability, however, they tend not to share goals with others. Reasons I was given for not sharing include: they think the goal is embarrassing, achieving the goal becomes more “real” and failure will be public, and they simply don’t think to share it.

  • Two participants reported that it’s important to get on the right track during the first week. After that time, the behavior becomes a habit, and they feel bad if they fall of track. This is supported by a literature review finding which states that behavior during the first week after setting a new goal is vital to success, even if the goal is years away.

Competitive Analysis

  • The three competitors I analyzed were Strides, Way of Life, and Accomplish.

  • All three apps lack a meaningful way of encouraging goal setters and holding them accountable. The only attempts are to include progress bars for goal progress and push notifications.

  • There’s room for a platform that does a better job of integrating accountability and encouragement into the user experience.

User Personas

Point of View Statements

Primary POV:

  • I’d like to help young, motivated individuals who struggle with self-discipline to create a personalized action plan that organizes their priorities because a lack of structure makes it easy to lose track of the end goal.

Secondary POVs:

  • I thought people would be more open to sharing their goals with others, but after talking to people I learned that even though they accomplish their goals more often with external accountability, they tend to internalize their goals; therefore, any community involvement would require individuals to feel comfortable sharing their goals.

  • Behavior in the first week after setting a goal is vital. People who research and plan their steps toward a goal in the first week tend to achieve their goals at a higher rate. Providing a structure for how to approach the first week after setting a goal may increase goal achievement rate.

How Might We…

  • Improve self-discipline among motivated individuals with a lack of focus?

  • Create a personalized action plan that tracks individuals’ progress toward their goals?

  • Ensure that users can visualize their progress toward long-term goals at a glance?

  • Utilize a mentor network to help users achieve their goals?

  • Make long term goal tracking a part of our users’ daily routine?

  • Get users to be comfortable sharing their goals with others?

  • Set users up for success in the first week after establishing their long term goals?

  • Balance limiting the user’s choices with providing them a personalized experience?

Feature Roadmap

With a clear direction provided by research findings, personas, POV, and HMW statements, I was able to produce a thorough set of possible features for the product. Features were categorized as “P1: Must-Have,” “P2: Nice to Have,” “P3: Surprising and Delightful,” and “P4: Come Later”

Sitemap

It was important to create a sitemap for this concept to have an idea of the structure for the features listed above. This was especially important for organizing content based on if it was going to be a part of the website or the app.

After collaboration with my mentor and peers in group critiques, I came to the conclusion to create a website which would primarily be a host for resources including Articles, Success Stories, Mentorship, and Goal Templates.

The web app would be where users could create their avatar, interact with other users, and track their progress toward reaching their goal.

User & Task Flows

Behavioral Design Considerations

Implementation Intentions:

People are more likely to do something when they specify how, when, and where they will do it.

1) Provide structured, user-generated goal templates

Users, especially first timers, are encouraged to visit the templates page where they can explore a variety of goal templates, or journeys. Each template provides specific checkpoints and tasks that breakdown the goal into actionable steps. No matter which template you choose, the first checkpoint is “Organizing and Planning.” Secondary research and user interviews show that this behavior during the first week is vital to success achievement. After users decide to use a template, they can open the web app or mobile app where they can track their progress, modify checkpoints, personalize their avatar, and interact with the community.

Gamefication

Game elements are particularly effective for increasing people's engagement & motivation.

2) Make goal achievement feel like an adventure

The homepage of the website introduces users to the concept immediately. The app is where the users are immersed in the game. Goal templates can be created from scratch or duplicated from other users. One place to find inspiration is the Bay Map—a key feature to the experience that I discuss below.

Herding & Social Proof

People tend to do what others are doing.

3) Create niche communities of users on similar journeys

When new users haven’t yet selected a goal, they’re encouraged to visit the “Bay Map:” a Snap Chat-inspired map of bays grouped by interest. Once users click on a particular bay, they gain visibility on all the other ships (or users) in that bay working toward a similar goal. Users then get some information on the user and goal. The idea is that users see all these other people who are working toward their goals and their anxiety about sharing goals with others turns into a sense of optimism and encouragement.

User Testing

I tested my prototype with five users who fit my user personas. There were two scenarios and tasks I presented to each of them.

Scenario #1: You’re new to Tailwind and you visit the website after being referred by a friend. You’re somewhat interested in setting a new goal for yourself but don’t have the structure or inspiration. You go to the Templates page, click on “Making a Short Film,” Add it to your journey, create an account, then open the app.

  • Task #1: Find a template on the website and add it to their journey after creating a profile.

Scenario #2: You’ve already downloaded the app and have an account. You’re exploring the community to find inspiration for a goal journey to set for yourself. You enter “Filmmaking Bay,” click on a ship, add the template to your journey, then open it to view the first milestone now that it’s on your journey.

  • Task #2: Create a journey in-app from another user’s journey through the Bay Map feature.

Key Feedback & Iterations

#1 Make the primary CTA feel like the primary CTA.

The key CTA in the second task flow is for users to duplicate the goal template of another user and use it as their own. In each of my five user tests I received the same feedback that the button was too hard to find.

#2 Change the wording of the primary CTA.

Not only was the button hard to find, but the language was unclear. I drafted six different variations and landed on option five after sharing with my mentor and peers in group critiques.

#3 Adding a confirmation message once the user decides to use the template

Multiple users expressed confusion after they clicked the “Add to my journey” button shown above. One participant used the word “jarring” which is never a good sign. With this information, I decided to add a confirmation message between when the template is duplicated and when the user’s personal journey appears. The confirmation message includes some information to help users ease into the experience.

#4 Provide labels for the icons in the app and move the icons to the bottom of the screen.

Users expressed some confusion regarding what each icon represented. They could tell that one was a map, one maybe represented friends, and the other was a floaty of some sort. However, in the context of this particular experience, they were left in the dark, and couldn’t easily discern where each button took them. I also noticed and unnatural stretch among the two participants I was able to moderate. In the first version, the icons are clearly outside the “thumb zone” of what’s a natural and comfortable movement.

#5 Add the expected duration of each check point for the in-app experience.

In the web experience when users were browsing through templates, they saw an estimate for how long each checkpoint should take. So when they didn’t have that estimate during the in-app experience, there was some confusion.

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Allina Health