Bingo
A scalable in-app mini-game that ties together disparate parts of the WW apps, guides members towards behaviors that lead to success and rewards positive action to grow with them throughout their tenure. The game decreased cancellations by 9% and increased tracking by over 4%.
Role: Research, UX Design, Visual Design
Year: April 2021
Client: Weight Watchers
Platform: iOS/Android
Defining the problem
Problem #1
Members were overwhelmed with things to do.
On the main landing page of the Weight Watchers App, within the first 2 scrolls which you can see here, they were being asked to take at least 10 different actions. Features and content were competing for their attention, leading to decision fatigue.
Problem #2
WW received a lot of negative app reviews due to clutter and feature overload.
Members were not sure what actions to take to be successful on the program. In research sessions they expressed a desire for more explicit direction.
Problem #3
Gamification experiences were siloed.
There were several initiatives across teams to address motivation and accountability, but many had been created in a vacuum to accomplish crew-specific KPI’s. Essentially, we had multiple teams pushing out features without thinking about how things worked systematically.
Problem #4
Most Newbies become Strugglers.
At the end of their first 28 days over 70% of members become strugglers - meaning they are still not logging food consistently or losing weight.
If we could convert more new members to builders and thrivers (aka those who are logging food consistently and losing weight) instead of seeing them become strugglers, we could increase member success, retention rates, and life-time value to the business.
Insights & Goals
Member Insights
Tracking every day is difficult and boring.
The program is complex and adds a lot of cognitive load.
Members aren’t sure what behaviors they need to do both in the WW app and outside of the app to achieve success on the program
Product Goals
Be our members’ cheer squad, keeping them excited and motivated to build and maintain healthy habits
Unify disparate gamification elements
Adjust to our members level of mastery as it changes through their journey
Establish routines and reinforce behaviors to aid in habit formation
Inject fun and delight into the program
How might we
Guide members towards behaviors that lead to success, while keeping them motivated to build and maintain healthy habits?
Ideation
Our first step was to hold a brainstorming session. We used Crazy 8’s to come up with a breadth of concepts to test.
We partnered with:
Design
Product
Behavioral science
Engineering
Leadership
After synthesizing ideas, the main concepts that began to emerge were meta-games which could tie together our gamification ecosystem system, while guiding members towards success.
Most fell under two major themes…A traditional game concept and a metaphor. Using a dot voting exercise, we narrowed it down to the top three concepts. Design began sketching, wireframing and fleshing out the concepts to put in front of members.
Metaphor
Traditional game
Concept Testing
Using dot voting, we narrowed it down to the top three concepts to put in front of members.
Concept 1
A weekly Bingo board that becomes more advanced as you progress.
Hypothesis:
If members master tracking easy behaviors first, then they will be more motivated to track difficult behaviors that also contribute to weight loss (activity, sleep).
Feedback:
👍🏻 The majority of participants were excited by and interested in Bingo.
🚫 Most participants did not initially view this as bingo, indicating its language and UI need to be clearer.
🚫 Participants were confused by the key at the bottom.
🚫 Participants were confused by the inclusion of both weekly and daily ways to earn.
💭 “Right now, I don't touch the Wins part of the app at all. This makes it feel a lot more fun and friendly. I know what I need to do to get the points now; this would be fun.”
Concept 2
A weekly puzzle that unveils a quote, tip, or bonus Wins.
Hypothesis:
If we hide a variable reward each week (quote, tip) unlocked via different behaviors, members will feel motivated to gradually unveil it and will engage with WW more frequently.
Feedback:
🚫 The majority of participants were confused by the mystery puzzle.
👍🏻 The locks were intriguing, and members were curious as to what was underneath.
🤷🏼♀️ Most participants were not interested in unlocking quotes. Members were interested in bonus Wins, badges, or tips instead.
💭 “You can google quotes and read thousands of them. Tips would be special to WW, especially if you can only get them if you finish the puzzle.”
Concept 3
Members’ tracking behaviors control the weather. Tracking consistently leads to a sunny day, forget a meal and the clouds roll in.
Hypothesis:
By introducing an engaging fictional narrative, tracking will feel less like work, and members will feel motivated to continue.
Feedback:
👍🏻 However, the majority of members thought it was “cute” or “fun”, and liked the friendly greeting in the header.
🚫 Most participants were confused by the weather metaphor.
🚫 Members didn’t know how this was connected to Wins.
🚫 Some members felt the clouds could be demotivating
💭 “This reminds me of a tamagotchi, and it seems like a lot of work- ‘Oh my gosh, I have to do this. Another chore.’”
Key Findings: Concept Testing
Members need to know all of the behaviors necessary for success on WW upfront.
Members use Wins as a benchmark of their progress on WW.
Members are interested in a variety of different rewards, including random Wins, bonus recipes, and tips from members/science.
Members are intrigued by mystery components…when mixed with clear, actionable concepts.
Bingo-like experience is appealing because it lays out all of the necessary behaviors for the week.
Usability Testing Bingo
After the first round of testing, Bingo was the clear winner. To further validate the concept we conducted another round of XR testing using higher fidelity designs.
Key questions to answer
Participants walked us through their Bingo experience thus far. They were then shown tip and badge rewards to gather reactions and feedback.
How do members feel about Bingo tile behaviors and numbering?
How do members feel about earning non-monetary (tip/badge) rewards?
What behaviors would members be interested in earning badges for?
Key Findings: Usability Testing
Bingo creates a reason to return to the app each week.
Members expressed excitement about seeing their board each Monday. The variable nature of the board created a sense of anticipation.
We found that Bingo functioned as a fun, straight-forward to-do list which members felt they needed.
It gave positive, in the moment feedback after tracking through progress indicators, which encouraged members to keep going.
Bingo should be more difficult for behaviors essential to program success, like meal tracking. Many ppts reported already doing this more regularly than the 3-4 times that Bingo requires.
Members desire and expect to earn Wins for achievements, including completing Bingo and earning badges. Members expressed confusion and disappointment as to why they weren’t earning Wins for Bingo.
Refining Bingo
Developing 12 weeks of Bingo boards.
Incorporating IRL behaviors
For MVP, we could only include 6 measurable in-app behaviors, so we needed to get creative. We decided to incorporate out of app behaviors such as defining your “why”, pre-portioning snacks and meal planning your week.
Aligning with engagement data
To determine difficulty, we looked at app engagement data and saw that there was a significant drop off in tracking after Week 3 on WW. So Bingo starts off relatively difficult, gets easier when drop-off is high and gets tougher again after week 5.
Matches onboarding cirriculum
Each week we had a theme that aligns with the curriculum our onboarding team was working on, to ensure members were getting progressive learning across all touchpoints.
Visual Explorations
We determined circles were best, as individual tile progress was most clear and readable.
However, one of the tradeoffs we had to make with this decision was that there would be less room for text in each tile, which could be an issue in other languages such as German. We solved for this by working with content to keep the text as short as possible, truncating if necessary. Though truncation is not ideal, when members tap a tile they are taken to a detail page that has the full title as well as a description of that action making all of the information easily available.
Launching Bingo
Final Solution
A mix of in-app and IRL behaviors
12 weeks of Bingo boards adding new behaviors and varying in difficulty over time
12 different tips and quotes as a reward from members, coaches and science, ww connect members and even Oprah
Inclusion of Streaks (an existing gamification mechanic) in Bingo board
Animations
Scalable design and back-end architecture which allowed Bingo to be leveraged by other parts of the app to promote new features by adding them as behaviors in the boards.
Tells members what to focus on each week to achieve success on the program
Final Designs
Micro-animations
Since Bingo is a game, I wanted to make sure it was fun and delightful. I worked closely with an animator to develop micro- animations that acted as visual cues for actions.
This included a wordmark animation each time an individual tile was completed, board animations such as 3 in a row and an animation when you completed a board and unlocked a prize.
Tips as a reward
Each week members received a different tip for completing the Bingo board. To keep them varied and interesting, the tips came from a mix of WW Ambassadors, members, coaches and the science team. Topics spanned WW’s core pillars of food, activity, sleep and mindset. Tips could be collected each week and shared via various social media platforms.
Looking to the future….
We want to give members the ability to save tips to a collection so they could reflect back on them throughout their journey. Though members in qual testing had expressed tips were not as motivating as Wins, they had been used to receiving Wins for every action in this tab. Our goal was to retrain them to think of the WellnessWins tab not just as Wins and rewards, but also challenges and motivation. Wins were costing the business millions of dollars a year and we were curious if Bingo alone would be a compelling enough experience, knowing we could always add Wins post MVP.
Results
Bingo proved that members will respond to challenges that did not offer monetary prizes.
9.3%
less cancellations within the first month of tenure
144%
more visits to WellnessWins in Week 1, holding at 30% through Week 12
4.4%
more meals tracked compared to control
Test Group Follow-Up
We followed up with members from the test group to learn to continue to iterate.
We found that…
We found that members were using Bingo as a planning tool on Mondays to help map out their week.
They thought of Bingo as a holistic wellness tool because it included actions around food, activity, sleep and mindset.
But we also learned that it was disappointing that they were not earning in-game currency for the completion of Bingo.
Key Learnings
Doing more is better for new members 👶
Members might be more motivated if Wins were a reward 💰
There are creative ways to work around engineering constraints 🚀
Next Steps
The Bingo MVP was a one-size fit-all solution.
The next step is to personalize Bingo so that the board behaviors adapt to a members level of mastery, adjusting to their strengths and weaknesses.
What’s Next?:
Incorporating Challenges & Badges into the Bingo board.
Using Bingo to promote new features developed by other crews (ex: Coach Lives).
Run Bingo on a quarterly cadence.
Test variable Wins as a reward.
Explore a multiple-week Bingo Challenge that rewards members with a larger prize upon completion or a multiplier for multiple weeks/row.
Eventually incorporate more specific, automated in-app behaviors, like commenting on Connect posts or using the water tracker, creating more accountability.