From Vision to Backlog: UI Design for an ambitious health tech app
Key Insights
About our Client
We collaborated with Better Wellbeing Group, a health tech start-up led by leading health and wellbeing professionals. Our role was to design prototypes for a holistic health app that had gained interest from major corporations, recognising its potential to enhance employee wellbeing.
The Challenge
After three years of research and planning, the company had designed an impressive holistic health and wellbeing assessment and was ready for the first steps of building the application.
Adopting a proof-of-concept approach, our primary objective was to create lean prototypes that effectively showcased the app's potential and feasibility for a B2B audience.
The complexity of handling healthcare data added an additional layer of consideration, requiring us to prioritise security. Incorporating a wide variety of data sets – from CDP to local recommendations – also brought its own complexities, which posed a challenge in terms of user experience.
The Solution
By prioritising UX, we tailored the app to provide personalised suggestions for improving physical and mental wellbeing.
We worked closely with product owners and healthcare professionals to understand their personas and refine use cases. Their valuable expertise and insights played a pivotal role in shaping the design and functionality. Our role was to bridge the gap between the company's research and vision – and the practical implementation.
Through a series of remote workshops, we helped the team create a detailed product backlog. This served as a roadmap, outlining the necessary steps and functionality required for successful development. It also allowed us to provide early guidance on the technical architecture required. This ensured that the functionality and development were well-defined, focused, and aligned with the company's goals, ultimately setting a clear direction for the prototype.
Considering the diverse range of data to be presented, we strongly emphasised minimising cognitive load. Our goal was to present information intuitively to keep users motivated to use the app and avoid any sense of overwhelm. We also embedded safety measures into the process to demonstrate our commitment to safeguarding sensitive healthcare data.
Through iterative two-week sprints and continuous user feedback, we refined the app's UI design, usability, and functionality.
Here's a quick look at the dashboard functionality we designed:
The Results
Although the pitch did not secure immediate funding for the client, the optimised user experience and positive feedback from healthcare professionals were valuable outcomes.
During design Sprints, healthcare professionals also showed a higher likelihood of engaging with the app over time, indicating the potential for long-term adoption.
Through iterative refinement, the client not only gained a deeper understanding of the product's complexities and costs but also leveraged this knowledge to make strategic adjustments and successfully pivot their business.
“The team have been instrumental at every stage of this journey. Right from the off it was clear that they were prepared to really take the time to understand our vision and purpose in addition to the functionality of our system. This meant their input was not simply tactical, but that they could add to our process in a way that was strategic and intuitive.”
The Challenge:
After 3 years of research and planning, the team had designed an impressive holistic health and well-being assessment system and were ready for the first steps of building the application.
At this stage, their team were principally comprised of leading health and well-being experts. The need for an equally technical and people-focused partner to drive the vision to the next stage was paramount, and through word-of-mouth, Broadlight Global was introduced as the ideal partner of choice.
How we helped:
Broadlight were successfully engaged to provide expertise on several fronts:
Vision to Backlog – Broadlight worked extensively with the Fulfillment Leadership team through a series of remote workshops, due to COVID 19. Through these sessions we guided the team through the process and enabled the production of a detailed product backlog.
Technical Architecture – Whilst working through the backlog process Broadlight prepared an early indication of technology selection and architecture approaches based on the information we had gained, the current technology landscape and the road-map for the application.
(Azure, .NetCore, DevSecOps Tooling, Microservices, AI)
Product Delivery Approach – Broadlight produced a detailed delivery approach encompassing many aspects of Broadlight’s Secure Delivery Fabric, including concepts such as Threat Modelling, CI/CD, Servant Leadership and collaborative processes.
Agile Upskilling – Throughout the duration of the initial project we introduced the concepts of Agile and upskilled the team in news ways of working including SCRUM and associated technology such as JIRA.
Results and Outputs:
Detailed Backlog that enabled Software Development Partners to provide accurate costs for the build.
Product Delivery Approach that enabled both early governance and assurance of the solution. This also enabled joint planning on the hiring strategy and team make up to ensure the project was successful.
Modern Architecture Approach which allowed the team to ensure software development partners were building code that would remain modern, reducing technical debt and improving the costs of running the service in Azure.
Integrated Security Practices through mature DevSecOps processes built into the product delivery life-cycle, our approach provided the reasonable assurance required for modern product delivery and secure scaling.
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