Cysterhood
🎨 My Role
UX Designer, User Researcher
UX Designer (2), UI Designer, Business Analyst, Project Manager, Client (2)
🤽♀️ My Team
Concept Ideation, Wire Framing, Prototyping, User Research, Discovery Workshop Leader, Monetization Strategist
🕺 My Contributions
🔧 My Tools
Figma, Jira
🕓 Timeline
2 month design sprint
The #1 Community of PCOS Cysters
Client Intro
The founder of Cysterhood, Tallene, is a registered dietitian and a strong believer that you don’t just have to live with PCOS; you can thrive.
Diagnosed at age 18, she has studied PCOS and developed a program for happier healthier living.
Sirak is a Personal Trainer and a strong supporter of women struggling with PCOS.
Polycystic ovary syndrome
What is PCOS?
a hormone problem for women of childbearing age, causing irregular menstrual periods, infertility, weight gain, and acne.
Is there a cure?
No. There is no cure for a PCOS diagnosis. The treatment to reduce symptoms is diet improvements and increased physical activity.
Inquiry
Transform an influencer into a product. Build a lifestyle planning tool for mobile - an app that helps community sisters build healthy diet and exercise habits.
Brand profiles are limited to the 9-box frameworks of Instagram/TikTok. Bound by chronologic filing, past content is buried beneath new posts making it difficult for users to re-discovery desired content.
Content Organization
The limits of social media platforms
Engagement
Like and share are the only tools at the users disposal on social platforms. Participation is limited to milliseconds, rather than the requisite time to consider completing a workout or preparing a meal.
Documentation
Users aren’t able to track their behavior or document their progress. It’s difficult to form habits without accountability tools.
Building habits that stick
A life long illness requires a lifelong solution. There is no “quick fix.” Happy living with PCOS requires learning new behaviors and sustaining healthy habits.
Fitness and diet programs promote a my way or the highway methodology - conform or bounce. This mentality is effective for rapid results, but treatment of PCOS requires practical solutions that an individual can sustain for life. The path to building healthy habits must be flexible.
Understanding Gretchen Smith
What are the drawbacks of other fitness tools?
Many community members, like Gretchen, interact mostly with Cysterhood on social platforms. The current ecosystem does not entice curiosity for that which is beyond the paywall. Users are satisfied with the content currently published for free.
What are the limitations of the Cysterhood ecosystem?
To understand these drawbacks we researched the roots of bounce rate for similar lifestyle products. We defined the cluster negative user sentiment cluster as “rigid achievements/expectations”. Users recounted feeling as though there existed only one, strict, path to success. If unattainable/undesirable, users lacked inspiration & bounce was inevitable.
Driven by this insight we sought the whiteboard. What makes a tool feel personalized?
Affirmation, users desire some indication that they are using the tool correctly. As developers, let’s effort to make them feel supported on this journey.
Micro-Achievements, it was important to design a tool filled with little endorphin-laten good job’s. Success can take many shapes on this journey so we wanted to reward users for doing their best (however that may be defined). We instituted realistic goal setting so that each user could define success, and be rewarded on a rubric they helped define. Our design intention: deter helplessness, redefine success, engage, build healthy habits.
Insight #1
Desire for customization
The survey population made it clear, a one-size-fits-all approach has not worked for them. Women struggling with PCOS have a wide variety of dietary restrictions, rigid meal plans are a non-starter. They also struggle with motivation and self-confidence which can deter adherence to strict workout regimens.
First ideation: Allow users the freedom to customize every aspect of their journey. A blank slate for users to leverage as they see fit. User selects the meals and workouts they want, to be completed when they want.
Result: My PCOS Plan - the realistic routine building tool. A program pre-populated with recommendations, plus the user is empowered to make changes. Definitive yet flexible.
Insight #2
Desire to learn
Any diagnosis can be paralyzing, a patient can feel overwhelmed and alone, especially one without a cure nor clear medical treatment. The subjects of our survey desire an active role in their health journey rather than subscribing as a blind passenger.
First ideation: Client decided to require completion of the learn modules during onboarding.
Result: 5 Steps to PCOS Remission. Instead of mandating new user education, I wove each of the 5 learning components throughout the user journey. While still mandatory, they are no longer an inhibitor to conversion.
Ideation: Desire for customization
V 0.0: A fixed 4-week plan
The original scope of work was to create an application that was more or less a copy of their existing program - new skin same bones. The bones in question: a 4 week health and fitness library to kickstart healthy habits.
The minimum viability of a product is to deliver value. This solution did not deliver. I touted the business consultant cap and recommended a reimagining. In our user discovery we concluded that rigidity, like a defined 4-week plan for meals and workouts, is not viable for our users. The burnout experienced in the existing web-based program will persist on mobile if we do nothing differently.
Does this deliver value or rigidity?
Change #1
Our first ideation provides a blank template and enables the user to customize every aspect of their journey. We conceptualized a tool that empowered the user to plan their routine and commitment exactly to their preferences. Only choose the meals they desire, curate a workout cadence that fit their schedule.
Complete customization
Change #2
We helped the client realize the capabilities of bespoke technology to deliver value. Progress tracking is important to the viability of the MVP to promote perseverance, physical results may not be immediate so we implemented these wigets to visualize habit improvements. I recommended a shopping list to fashion this tool for reality.
Tool suite upgrades
V 1.0: First ideation
Does this deliver freedom or is total customization a burden?
My first iteration was an overcorrection. We had to rediscovering the original motive for users seeking this program: guidance. Complete customization didn’t deliver freedom, it delivered a burden. Our users are not professionally trained dietitians and fitness experts, that is the piece of the puzzle that Cysterhood has promised to deliver.
V 2.0: My PCOS plan
Introducing My PCOS Plan the hybridized approach to habit building and user retention. The best of both worlds. Many Cysters come to our platform skeptical. This is why we provide structure at onboarding. My PCOS delivers a pre-populated plan proven to kickstart healthy habits. As user comfort increases, Cysters are empowered to customize their experience by swapping in meals and workouts which they love. This is how our tool is built to self-suffice, re-engage users, and scale.
V 0.0: Rely on social distribution
Ideation: Desire to learn
When we first met with Taleene and Sirak their passion to educate was palpable. They had gained so much knowledge that proved effective for them and they wanted to share it with the world.
V0.0: The path to sharing anything with the world is well paved, of late. Flock to social media. In just 1 year Cysterhood amassed 81M likes on TikTok… mission accomplished…?
Cysterhood cited two problem statements with their whopping internet outreach:
1. We have conquered impressions, but not attention
2. We lack the mechanism to measure impact
V 1.0: Force learn at onboarding
Users can progress at their own pace, navigating discovery on their own terms. We built a tool that is compatible with real life. Results may not be instant, but a life-long disease demands a sustainable solution.
The flaws of this iteration:
1. Completion is required to proceed with onboarding, which supplies undue pressure to bounce.
2. It imposes learning, a heavy mental load task, upon a user that may arrive skeptical and unwilling to participate.
Based upon this feedback I headed back to the drawing board. My goal was to weave the educational component into the user journey so that it was present and encouraged, but not immediately requisite.
V 2.0: Learn as you go
Our user research was clear - users desire to learn and participate in their health journey. I was able to recommend a solution that encouraged learning, rather than requiring it. A single path to success is affective in a vacuum, but in the the real world, attention is not always available and forced paths can introduce unnecessary rigidity. With this in mind, I crafted a multi-instance learning net that triggered an educational suggestion at different lull points in the user journey. First encounter: if you have some time, check this out; if not, at least you will be more familiar next request.
Fitness, now native to your Cysterhood mobile library
A pinnacle of successful PCOS treatment is improved physical health. Maintaining fitness habits is difficult for anyone, but Cysters often struggle with lack of motivation, depression, and other health conditions that effect desire to get active. That’s why it was important to design a fitness experience that boasted both low barriers to entry, and incentive to persist.
Tracking and Gamification
Building healthy habits is hard, but with the Cysterhood mobile app users don’t have to do it alone. Our interface is designed with empathy to support user goals and push them forward. We designed this foundation for gamification and plan to roll out a robust feature set to promote healthy competition and knowledge sharing for our cysters to continue to derive greater value from their subscription and community.
600+
Conclusion
Recipes & workouts uploaded to the library
1300
Cysters onboarded in 2 months
4x
Live content streaming most days of the week
+20%
Conversion rate at onboarding vs. last year
Since launching Cysterhood we have received glowing feedback from our users. They are excited that their favorite tool has matured from the website they once fell in love with. We were inspired by the Cysterhood community. We harnessed the passion of their early adopters to launch with a suite of tool upgrades and the foundation to scale.
1
What’s next?
Month of observation
2
Phase
3
Month sprint: user research, design upgrades
We launched a MLP (minimum lovable product) with the expectation of imperfection. Hypotheses can’t be tested in the safety of stealth mode. Our aggressive launch plan is supported by a strong roadmap for maintenance and upgrades. From the beginning, we have maintained a log of features desired for phase 2. These, teamed with real-time insights, provided by MixPanel, will our goals for re-engagement and expansion.
What’s I learned?
More than anything I learned the value of common goals. During the course of this project, I was able to serve as a mediator for many strategic decisions. Always advocating on behalf of the user, my contribution was a unifying force because I spoke from a source everyone could understand. I developed as a liaison across the course of this project because I prioritized garnering buy-in from all stakeholders above the day-to-day objectives on my plate. The result is a long-term partnership, extending our engagement into the fun stuff, iteration and scalability.
