Evaluating a Health Product Recommendation Tool

Evaluating a Health Product Recommendation Tool

ROLE: USER RESEARCH

TIME: 3 WEEKS

The Challenge

The Healthline Reviews team identified a health product recommendation tool as a potential design solution to help users overwhelmed by too many choices to narrow their options down by providing personalized guidance. Since many of our users have multiple health conditions, the tool would give holistic recommendations for the most common health challenges Healthline users face: chronic pain, sleep disorders, and weight management. I collaborated with the product designer and content designer to test a prototype of the product recommendation tool with users to identify usability issues and get early user feedback on the design, content, and concept.

The Prototype

The prototype had three main sections we wanted to test:

A toast that appeared as users read an article prompting them to interact with the product recommendation tool called the “Product Matcher”.
An assessment that asked users a series of questions about their pain and sleep problems to personalize their recommendations.
A results page that provided users with “best matches” for products that may help them and relevant articles with tips and strategies to help them with their sleep and pain.

User Testing

I recruited and tested the Figma prototype with 5 participants using UserTesting.com to quickly and cost-efficiently identify usability issues and opportunities to improve the design.

I screened participants for the following criteria:

Experiencing back pain and insomnia in the last two weeks (The Figma prototype included static recommendations for back pain and insomnia).
Interest in holistic health treatments
Aged 21-65
Income of over $40K
Located in our target countries (USA, UK, India, and Australia)

Participant 1

Age: 62
Occupation: Guitar teacher
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Participant 2

Age: 58
Occupation: Water regulation
Location: Bloomington, IN
Participant 3

Age: 36
Occupation: Writer
Location: London, UK
Participant 4

Age: 25
Occupation: Electrician
Location: Bristol, UK
Participant 5

Age: 33
Occupation: Sales representative
Location: Baton Rouge, LA

Tasks

To assess the usability of the three sections of the tool, I designed the study protocol to include the following tasks:

Task 1: The participant sees the entry toast (to assess design visibility).
Task 2: The participant interacts with the entry toast (unprompted).
Task 3: The participant understands what to expect from the “Product Matcher” tool before engaging with it.
Task 4: The participant completes the assessment.
Task 5: The participant finds a relevant product or article on the results page.

Key Findings

Overall, participants found the experience to be valuable.

After interacting with the prototype, I asked participants what stood out to them either positively or negatively to give Healthline early qualitative feedback on the feature. 5/5 participants found the experience to be valuable for the following reasons:

It provided integrated and holistic recommendations (P1)
It narrowed down the options and didn’t overwhelm with choice (P2)
Answering the questions in the assessment helped her think more constructively about her health problems (P3)
It’s an additional resource of potentially useful treatment information (P4)
It eliminated the need to do more research and simplified the information into one place (P5)

While the sample size is too small to conclude whether or not users will find the feature valuable, early positive feedback indicated Healthline should continue to design and test this feature iteratively.

“I like it because you don't necessarily always think of it yourself as everything being integrated. So if I really did come here for back pain, you can almost feel yourself relax a little bit because you've got something you can take, you've got the heating pad if you need it […] and you've got something to calm your mind. [...] So it does feel a lot more holistic and hopeful.”

Participant 1
“I didn't know this was there and I’ll probably use it now. It narrowed it down to a few things and didn’t overwhelm me with, you know, 10 or 20 different things I could choose from.”

Participant 2
“It's simplifying matters for me. It eliminated having to do a lot of research and having it just simplified into one place. Especially when you're looking up health matters, you're usually in a little bit of an anxious state. […] So to simplify things for you when you're in that state is very helpful.”

Participant 5

The entry toast design was disruptive and unclear, preventing participants from wanting to engage.

4/5 participants found the entry toast disruptive to their primary goal of reading the article. I recommended redesigning the entry to the product recommendation tool to complement the reading experience.
3/5 participants did not understand what to expect from the “Product Matcher” before they tapped “Continue”. I recommended giving users a clear expectation of what outcome to expect before they engage with the tool (e.g., “Take the quiz and get personalized health recommendations”).
3/5 participants did not understand that they could select multiple health conditions in the toast design. I recommended telling the user to “select all that apply” on multiple-choice questions.
The name “Product Matcher” made participants think they would only see product recommendations, but the participants most appreciated the relevant articles, tips, and strategies in the results. I recommended brainstorming new names for the experience encompassing the health educational content.

“Just showing up as I was trying to read an article and find out information about insomnia, it looks like it’s gonna take me in a different direction that I didn’t intend to go and that wouldn’t make me want to come back to Healthline.”

Participant 2
“It’s stopping me from […] being able to look at the information that I actually came here for. […] And I feel like if I start interacting with the pop-up, I will get distracted from what I came onto the page for and be taken away from it.”

Participant 3
“Well, I'm thinking I wanna get back to read what’s underneath here, but we got this thing covering it.”

Participant 5

Impact

User testing quickly identified that while participants may find the product recommendation tool valuable, they would not interact with it because the entry toast design was disruptive to their reading experience. We redesigned the entry of the design to be embedded in the mid-point of the article and added more information on what to expect. This redesign resulted in 5X more user engagement when compared to similar drivers on Healthline.