ASICS Runkeeper

Understanding and improving the onboarding process to increase first week retention

OVERVIEW

Our challenge was ASICS Runkeeper was looking to increase their first week retention to get new users to complete their first run within 7 days of downloading the app.

On a team of four we worked through user research focusing on new and existing runners to better understand their goals and motivations behind running. In parallel we reviewed competitors apps and secondary research to view how the world of running and fitness can influence goals.

From our interviews, we pulled out new insights to inform our decision to change the onboarding process of Runkeeper from two simple questions and potential paths to 6 dynamic paths based on what goal our user has. These questions would inform the app what type of runner the user is, when, and how we can remind them to accomplish their goals.

Problem: The idea of going for a run or starting to run can be overwhelming

Goal: To get users motivated and excited to go for their first run with the app

Persona: New and Fitness Runners

Success: Getting our new user to go for their first 1 mile run within the first week

TIMELINE

3 weeks

TOOLS

Sketch, Invision

ROLE

Team Lead on team of 4 designers

View Clickable Prototype

TEAM PLAN & COMMUNICATION

As a team - we used Trello and slack to communicate daily with each other and our client.

Our team Trello board held our weekly tasks and goals. Throughout the process, we could adjust the labels, assign team members and mark items as complete!

We created a new Slack channel to communicate with our client - we sent daily updates to him. We went onsite to ASICS Digital several times throughout the 3 weeks to meet with our client and several other product designers working on the Runkeeper app.

USER RESEARCH

We knew we wanted to interview runners, not specifically Runkeeper users so we branched out using a google screener we connected with local running groups, family and friends to find our users.

We created two separate scripts for both new and existing runners we would interview in order to learn the most from our interviews.

I conducted 7 of the 21 interviews the team had for the project. I was also able to see a few running apps in action through contextual inquiries - I had two of my users show me how they use their apps (Runkeeper and Strava). From these interviews I was able to see what they use on the apps and what features they like best and what could be adjusted for them.

Screen Shot 2018-12-03 at 12.29.24 PM.pn

APP MAP

I created our app map in order to see what else there was for users. The app map is robust and highlighted the different ways we could help gather more information initially.

This app map would also lend us a hand when we were looking to create the goal paths for our users to increase their engagement on the app.

SYNTHESIS

After a few days and completing our interviews , as a team we affinity mapped with 300+ post-it notes. We did several rounds to get past the surface to understand what our users were telling us.

Our key findings from this mapping:

3 personas: New, Existing, and Rusty runners
Runners compare themselves no matter what
- They compare to past selves, other runners, as well as to their future self
What defines a runner?
- When interviewing we asked our runners to to talk about their running career. To call oneself a runner can mean a variety of things: how often are you running, what distances are you running
- From one user, during their training for a marathon they said, “I’m not a serious runner,” when their partner said ‘you are training for a marathon, you are a runner.”
Users run for mental clarity
- Many runners discussed that running brings a sense of calm to them. It allows them to feel centered and reduce the stress from their lives.
There is a celebration of running
- Several users focused on celebrating their run, it’s not a punishment from indulging but a way to feel alive.

The running community is highly valuable for runners for accountability and social aspects
- Through affinity mapping we saw the importance of community and accountability rise to the top from all our users. This community provides support when they need it as well as the fun community feeling.

We digitized our Affinity Map in order to easily share it with the client and be able to rework it as needed on Trello.

PERSONAS

From our findings, we discovered we had a third Persona to solve for: the Rusty Runner!

ASICS Digital provided their user persona's that we were inspired by during our research phase so we dove in to understand all three on a deeper level to express their frustrations and goals.

Our Personas are:

New Runner Nate

Nate just signed up for a 5k with friends and excited. He already works out but doesn't consider himself a runner
He is anxious to get started running and unsure how to get ready for the 5k

Existing Runner Elsa

Elsa has been a runner for years and loves to workout. She isn't always sure if she's improving or progresses with her goals
Her goal is to challenge herself and avoid injury to prevent any setbacks

Rusty Runner Rachel

Rachel is getting started again with running, she feels guilty over her current ability
Her goals are to run more consistently, be content with her progress, and incorporated running into her busy schedule

DESIGN & SKETCHING

I focused on whiteboarding the current onboarding path of the users. The app as it was, only showed 1 of 2 outcomes for all users no matter their level. Based off our findings of the new persona - we knew we had to better solve for all 3 personas.

When users initially come to the app they have 5 options to select from that informs the app what their main goal is. Based off the research findings we felt it would be better to ask a few extra questions to learn more about our user’s goals at the onset of their journey with the app in order to create a better experience and keep them engaged. These questions we decided to use were pulled from the other areas within the app goal page that I had previously mapped out. These questions were: Current fitness level, longest run without stopping, what days of the week would they like to run.

Goals were very important to every runner (new, rusty, or existing) that we spoke with. With this knowledge I continued to push our team to keep asking questions so we could create better engagements with the app.

After whiteboarding for several hours, we realized we wanted a singular question that would enable us to identify the New, Existing, or Rusty Runner. This question was coined as our unicorn question.

‘Do you have a running routine?’

Routine was a term heard from all our users so we knew it would be easily understood by any new user to the app and would be universally understood. We also had each answer option directly correlate to which persona the user was.

USABILITY TESTING & ITERATIONS

I conducted 3 usability tests during the 3 rounds of usability testing in order to learn the most from our users. In our tests we elected to maintain the same style as the existing app and just adjust the questions asked to stay true to the voice and branding of ASICS Runkeeper.

In the current onboarding - there are 2 questions asked to learn about the user. During research, we created new questions to ask the user to best understand their goals. This led to creating 6 new flows from the initial goal question asked in the onboarding process.

We tested with 6 potential flows and 5-7 questions per flow to learn the most which would then create a more engaging experience and inform the app when and how to remind the user to run.

What Brings You to Runkeeper?

This was the original screen that provided 5 answer options to users for why they are about to begin using Runkeeper. During white boarding, we chose to adjust the answer options to fit the goals we were hearing from users:

Image 1: Current Question with:

Lose Weight, Get in Shape, Run more often, Run a race, and Something Else

Image 2: Updated with adjusted answer options:

Challenge Myself, Get in Shape, Run More Often, Run a Race, Run to De-stress, and Something Else

Image 3: Final Iteration with 4 answer options

Challenge Myself, Run a Race, Run to Destress, Something Else

During the testing, we found that users were overwhelmed by the choices and wanted to option to select more than 1 goal for using the app. After several rounds, we merged Run more Often and Get in Shape to be under the umbrella of 'Challenge Myself'.

Also to note, the term 'Run to Destress' did elect some funny responses as users thought it said 'distress' so we have another potential iteration to adjust the language to say 'Run to Reduce Stress'.

Suggested Workout & Run Reminders

From the kick off - we knew that we wanted to address how to remind the users to get their first run in within 1 week of downloading the app. We added in two questions in the flow to find out what days the user would like to run so we knew when to remind them. We also felt that not all users downloading the app will be ready to go for a run right then in that moment.

We added in a few final screens in the onboarding for the user to decide if they'll run NOW or LATER. Once they select this - it would lead them to a suggested workout page or enable them

Image 1 - 2

Iterations of the Suggested workouts Page

Image 3

Based off feedback, we pulled out the Run now or Later question to its own screen

Image 4-5

Iterations of the reminder screens - where from the answers the user provided to us in the flow - we would customize the time and day of the reminder to help them accomplish their first run.

During the testing - we elected to change the colors to be the Runkeeper Blue to further differentiate that these screens are not part of the question but a new section of the app.

Start Page

In our first round of testing, we kept the existing start screen to best understand what our users thought about it. During the research phase, we wanted to better visualize the goals of the runners and felt that we could potential have it exist on the start page and remove the excess items to make it a cleaner and more effective page.

Image 1

Existing Start Page

Image 2-3

This was our first round of adjusting the start page to show the goal visualization and progression of pre-run to post run accomplishments

The feedback was tremendous - our users loved being able to see it but felt that we could make adjustments

Image 4-5

We updated the images to reduce the real estate so it didn't overtake the page. We added a border for the next up goals rather than writing it in

Feedback was great but we knew we could improve it again!

Runkeeper Go Page

During our tests, we kept in this Runkeeper Go upsell page that exists in the current onbaording. We wanted to get user feedback.

Our users certainly did NOT hold back. Some had visceral reactions that caused them to pause and question if they wanted to proceed using the app.

It was unclear to users:

what, if any, was the added value of the subscription
If the app was free or not
If they could opt out of paying (the tiny white X wasn't noticed until further investigation)

DELIVERY & PROTOTYPE

I created our final pitch deck pulling in assets to tell our story. We presented to our client and their teammates twice in order to bring in more product managers and designers into the findings.

The findings and new screens were well received and the client is eager to pull our screens and begin testing what we designed for him.