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Steps with Balance Rewards
Steps with Balance Rewards is a community platform to encourage users to engage in regular fitness activity, rewarding them with Balance Reward points for each mile logged. With over 1.1 million active users and 56 million miles logged, the Steps with Balance Rewards program continues to grow and evolve, and has rewarded users with almost 1 bilion Balance Rewards points (redeemable at any Walgreens store or at Walgreens.com). Further, the Steps community supports over 2,200 unique, user-generated groups, where members engage in conversations, challenges, and share tips for staying active and healthy. A rich supply of health content adds additional resources to help users set and achieve their goals. |
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Original Steps Experience
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Early engagement and tools for success
A number of factors have contributed to the success of Steps with Balance Rewards, not the least of which has been the balance of multiple engagement principles. These include:
Creating a Health & Wellness platform As the use of connected wellness devices has continued to expand, and greater adoption of health tracking outside of weight and fitness has become more widespread, the need arose to expand the Steps platform to become a more comprehensive health and wellness platform. In addition to the market growth of fitness wearables, some already supported by Steps, a large number of targeted health trackers, such as blood glucometers and blood pressure meters, have begun to be utilized by a wider swath of users. For users with chronic conditions, 70% are likely to track a health indicator. Further, many of these users who track chronic conditions are more likely to also track their fitness activities as part of a comprehensive wellness strategy. Additionally, community support is often integral to a successful program of treatment and management. |
Understanding the new space
Extending the value proposition of Steps required an understanding of this new subset of users. Primary and secondary research opportunities revelead much about how patients with chronic conditions track their progress, and revealed the fundamental differences between the needs of these patients versus fitness and lifestyle trackers, the core Steps audience to this point.
Research was used to develop personas to help drive the design conversation, each reflecting the disparate needs (and overlaps) of each user type. These personas helped differentiate the unique needs of each user, and formed the backbone of an engagement strategy for Steps users moving forward.
Extending the value proposition of Steps required an understanding of this new subset of users. Primary and secondary research opportunities revelead much about how patients with chronic conditions track their progress, and revealed the fundamental differences between the needs of these patients versus fitness and lifestyle trackers, the core Steps audience to this point.
Research was used to develop personas to help drive the design conversation, each reflecting the disparate needs (and overlaps) of each user type. These personas helped differentiate the unique needs of each user, and formed the backbone of an engagement strategy for Steps users moving forward.
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Data visualization and adaptive widget
One of the perceived shortcomings of the production Steps experience was a lack of rich data visualizations. Data visualization tools, in the form of interactive charts and graphics, provide users with a quick snapshot of their progress, enabling them to rapidly assess progress towards a fitness or health goal. Additionally, and paramount for users with chronic conditions tracking major health indicators such as diabetes, these visualizations help establish baselines and patterns, highlighting outliers or potential causes for concern (such as spikes in blood sugar or abnormal heart rates). As part of the broader strategy across Walgreens.com, the visualization tools for the Steps platform would utilize an adaptive widget to serve both the mobile and tablet-optimized desktop experience. The major design challenge was creating an effective and compelling tool that would focus key functionality for users on different devices. Extensive competitive analysis into fitness and health platforms (both app-centric mobile pieces and desktop browser formats) were examined to determine a set of features and visual priorities that would give the Steps platform parity with the broader market. |
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Design Sprint and Rapid Iterative Design
A multi-day design sprint activity launched the design phase of the new Steps platform. Pulling in key stakeholders from business, design, and development, the sprint consisted of several ideation and sketching activities design to exhaust as many concepts as possible in a short amount of time. Using paper sketches to craft storyboards enabled us to hone in on an approach more quickly, and as a group, soliciting immediate buy-in from all parties and enabling us to move into a design phase, where designs where constantly refreshed, reviewed, and evaluated. RITE user testing of an Axure-based prototype provided insights that informed the final design.
A multi-day design sprint activity launched the design phase of the new Steps platform. Pulling in key stakeholders from business, design, and development, the sprint consisted of several ideation and sketching activities design to exhaust as many concepts as possible in a short amount of time. Using paper sketches to craft storyboards enabled us to hone in on an approach more quickly, and as a group, soliciting immediate buy-in from all parties and enabling us to move into a design phase, where designs where constantly refreshed, reviewed, and evaluated. RITE user testing of an Axure-based prototype provided insights that informed the final design.
Sketching and Storyboarding
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Prototyping
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Final Design
Desktop
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Mobile
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