CASE STUDY:
A design strategy to help users engage with the brand’s full ecosystem.
Contributions: This was a team project and I was responsible for product design and content strategy.
The Context
Founded in 2015, HabitAware helps individuals manage subconscious body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) like hair pulling, nail biting, and skin picking.
Its flagship product, the Keen2 smart bracelet, detects specific gestures and provides haptic reminders. Paired with a mobile app, Keen2 empowers users to regain control of these habits. HabitAware has expanded to include an Apple Watch app, online community, educational resources, and peer coaching. Their work has earned recognition, including Time magazine's 2018 Invention of the Year and multiple National Institute of Mental Health grants.
The Problem
However, many users mistakenly see the Keen2 bracelet as a quick fix, leading to frustration when behaviors don’t immediately stop. This misunderstanding overlooks the bracelet's role within HabitAware’s broader behavior change methodology. HabitAware seeks a design strategy that clearly communicates its full range of offerings and their role in BFRB recovery.
The Goal
Our goal was to research, strategize, and design a strategy that clearly articulates HabitAware’s full ecosystem and their role in BFRB recovery. The goal is to guide users—especially those with BFRBs and their parents—through condition education, gesture awareness, mindset shifts, and community support. Our strategy focused on designing a system to help users understand how to engage with HabitAware’s full ecosystem for lasting results.
We broke the project down into three (3) key phases that included the following: empathize, conceptualize, and design.
Discover
At the start of the project, we
lacked a clear understanding of the user group and their specific needs, wants, and expectations.
We Aimed to Answer Three Key Questions:
What are their current frustrations and pain points?
What do they truly think of the Keen2?
How do they understand the Keen2’s role within their BFRB treatment protocol?
An Intensive External Secondary Research Sprint
We jumped into an intensive research sprint, but with restricted access to primary user data, we were unable to delve deeply into user behaviors and had to rely solely on secondary external research. This presented challenges in ensuring accuracy and relevance to our target audience. As a result, we focused on understanding evidence-based treatments, particularly the Comprehensive Behavioral (ComB) model, and how the Keen2 bracelet fits within this BFRB treatment framework. Our research included studying scientific literature on evidence-based treatments, reviewing expert analyses on BFRB treatments, and conducting a competitor analysis. These constraints ultimately shaped our findings and recommendations.
Our Research into Evidence-based Treatments Revealed Interesting Insights That Included:
Finding 1
ComB is the gold-standard in BFRB treatments and there are four phases to this treatment protocol.
Finding 2
Patients must first identify their triggers and target their interventions before a device like Keen2 can be effective.
Finding 3
BFRB treatment plans must begin with a psychological evaluation by a professional.
We Studied Expert Analyses of Evidence-based Treatments and we Learned:
Finding 4
Organizations like The TLC Foundation for BFRB share a list of medical and therapeutic providers but not awareness devices (like Keen 2).
Finding 5
AWhen someone swaps one bad habit for another and the underlying cause of a behavior isn't addressed, the individual may replace one unhealthy behavior with another but the root emotional or psychological issue remains unresolved.
Finding 6
The Keen2 bracelet is most effectively used during phase three of the treatment protocol. In order for treatment to be successful, users must move into Phase four and find a sensory substitution.
After completing our initial research and gathering all the data, we shifted focus to the project’s conceptualization. Our next step was to synthesize the information, allowing us to distill key insights and gain a clear understanding of the findings.
Define
We jumped into additional secondary research to form our design strategy and experience.
Reviewed brand touchpoints: We evaluated all brand touchpoints to identify opportunities for improving the user experience, addressing pain points, and ensuring consistency in messaging and design across channels.
Our User Experience Mapping Process Reveal Interesting Insights that Included:
Keen 2 is too difficult for some users to train and should have a simpler smoother path to setup. A training call may be required to complete the Keen2 setup.
We learned that users have deep shame and want privacy and discretion.
Feelings of shame may play a role in a users willingness to do a setup call and follow through which may result in abandonment, returns, or bad reviews.
We Conducted Further Research to Begin Developing our Design Strategy and User Experience.
We Approached This in Three Key Ways:
Created an experience map: We developed a high-level experience map to visualize the steps users take when interacting with our product. This helped us highlight user needs, emotions, and pain points throughout their journey.
Analyzed content across all channels: We examined the tone and messaging of content across various platforms, asking key questions such as: What emotions does this content evoke? How does it resonate with visitors? Who is the target audience?
We Discovered Interesting insights After Reviewing the Brand Messaging and Content which Included:
Brand messaging is primarily focused on selling product bundles rather than establishing rapport with site visitors who often feel a sense of shame and sensitivity around the topic of BFRBs, which turns them off.
The brand does not clearly articulate the phase in which a user should integrate Keen2 into their treatment protocol, leading to confusion about what the product can and cannot do.
Messaging is tech focused, not human-centric, leading to a misalignment in how the brand sees themselves versus how they are perceived.
Having completed our data gathering and analysis, we categorized and prioritized the findings, which gave us a wealth of insights. With this foundation, we moved into the design phase.
Develop
As we entered phase three of our project we were under a very tight deadline.
Our team had less than 24-hours to turn our research findings into a design strategy and present it to our stakeholders.
At This Phase We Asked Ourselves Three Questions:
Should we take a desktop or mobile first approach?
Did we need a new design system right now?
What was the tone and messaging going to look like?
Now, if you recall, we did not have any primary user research, so we lacked data to support our approach and decided to focus on both. We needed to understand efficiency and ensure that any changes were made correctly from the beginning. Since this was an existing brand, we knew they would want any recommendations to integrate with their current design system. Based on our secondary research, we discovered a misalignment between perception and reality that could be addressed with a new content strategy. This indicated an opportunity for us to transition seamlessly from tech-focused messaging to a human-centric approach across all channels. Once those questions were answered, we jumped straight into the design phase.
We moved forward with a focus on connecting mobile and desktop experiences to our design strategy. We revised the homepage messaging to explore a softer, more inviting entry into the website journey by incorporating illustrations into the homepage design, moving away from product imagery upon first arrival. The content strategy included a more personal tone, and our research indicated that sharing user stories would help visitors connect with and build rapport with the brand.
Key Focus Areas:
Mobile and desktop experiences: We emphasized connecting these two platforms in our design strategy.
Storytelling over product imagery: We shifted the homepage messaging from product-focused imagery to a storytelling approach.
Personalized content strategy: The content strategy featured a more personal tone and included sharing user stories.
Here is a glimpse into our design strategy, with three key takeaways that stood out as we developed it.
Deliver
There are several key design features and flows worth highlighting:
Our homepage strategy acknowledges the difficulties associated with BFRBs. We name the condition so that newcomers to the topic can understand it, and we provide users with choices on how they want to proceed: read more, find professionals, join the community, or explore purchasing options.
The About Us page focuses on sharing user stories, starting with the founder of HabitAware. Our design includes a photograph and signature, presenting vulnerable stories meant to build rapport and establish brand trust.
The Partners page now features an image of a doctor to align with users' mental models of a health device company, and we emphasize testimonials from healthcare professionals to enhance the site's credibility.
Outcomes
