Ellee
Ellee connects new and expecting parents to experts to make being a parent a little easier.
For the past 2 and a half years I’ve supported the Ellee project as lead designer. I was invited to the initial brainstorming workshop to explore ways for J&J to better connect with new and expecting parents. We’ve gone through multiple rounds of testing and iterations to the app in its current state today.
Jun 2017 - Sep 2019
Ellee began in an ideation workshop to build a product that better connects us with parents. We didn’t know going into the workshop what we were going to come out with. An interface that connected mothers to an expert that could answers questions trended the most popular by the end of the three day workshop. By the end of the workshop I was able to begin pulling together what the initial prototype would look like.
The first phase test and learn focused on whether or not expecting mothers found the concept valuable. The consumer facing app was a simple interface that allowed the user to enter a question from the home screen and get connected to an expert in a chat. From there the user could chat with the expert for as long as they needed to.
We recruited 15 expecting mothers from within J&J to participate in a 3 week testing period. The consumer facing side of the app was connected with a web interface that allowed team members from Babycenter (J&J brand) to receive the messages coming from the users.
Test & Learn
Findings from User Testing
There was a lot of positive feedback from the first phase of user testing. They found the app to be helpful and valuable for finding answers to questions they had during pregnancy. As we expected though, the app was missing a lot of auxiliary features and screens.
After a successful user testing period it was time to open the design back up and see where we could make improvements and build off what we started in phase 1. We got a lot of feedback from the users around wanting to know more about who they were talking to. We added a new section to the architecture that housed all the guru (changed expert to guru for phase 2 for legal reasons) information. We also built a feedback module into the app to try and learn as much as we could from the users during the next testing period.
We ramped up our next round of testing with a bigger group of users. We also recruited outside of J&J to remove any bias that the previous group may have had being within J&J.
Implementing Changes based on Feedback
After another successful round of user testing we felt it was time to really scale the app into something a lot closer to what it would look like being released to the market. The business wanted to rebrand to which I happily obliged (that’s the fun part). I met with the business for a week long workshop to unpack all the user testing results and begin working out what the next iteration of the app would look like.
More features with a new look. Introducing: Ellee
We wanted to keep the continue the idea of the app taking on a personality. The name was changed from “PEG” to “Ellee” with the idea that new logo would resemble an elephant. This is where I started my redesign - with the logo. Here are some of my concepts and sketches from the beginning of the redesign process.
With the new branding worked out I began working it into the UI design - injecting the new color palette into the screens. The new features we wanted to include into this iteration were based around a library that would house all the content that the experts sent over as well as paywall options to experiment with users willingness to pay for services within the app. We created multiple “fake” paywall scenarios to test on users to see if any would prevail as the favorable option.
We shifted our focus from expecting mothers to all new or expecting parents and recruited users for resting accordingly. The third round of testing included 1500 users across the US.
New Branding and Paywall Testing
After another round of testing we looked back at our findings and workshopped how we could incorporate the feedback into another iteration of the app. We heard a lot of feedback around users not knowing how to make their first interaction with the app. I designed out an onboarding experience that would walk through the steps of sending your first question and drop the user off with the option to ask their first question.
Iterating and Adding Onboarding Flow
More User Testing & Current Iteration
The app is currently in its fourth round of testing with the latest iteration. The features included are the media library, onboarding experience, and alternate paywall options. Once the feedback is processed and worked into the next iteration, the app will be ready to be launched to market.