Reimagined content pathways

Ideations for content discovery and search utilization

Breathwrk is a mobile app with simple, easy to learn breathing exercises and classes. Featured in Forbes as “your new high-performance habit”, the focus for 2022 was to increase the subscription price.   

After my cold outreach to the CEO, I was brought on to uncover opportunities for search improvements while the company was growing in all different directions.

My Contributions

Rapid Research
Behavioral Analysis
Information Architecture
UX/UI Design

Team

Head of Product,
Lead Data Analyst, Community Manager

Project Type

Freelance

Project Timeline

Aug 2022

Overview

Content and search features are severely underutilized.

Since launching in 2019, Breathwrk has garnered over 1 million users. The Discover screen has a full catalog of 200+ breathing exercises with new content released every week. However, only 17% of Daily Active Users (DAU) are using it.

The Head of Product believed that surfacing relevant content would drive product value. I was brought on to uncover opportunities for search improvements.

Design goal: Uncover opportunities for improvement and provide UX recommendations
‍
Business goal: Increase feature engagement from current 17% to increase product value

Discover and Identify

What are users saying?

Many users were coming from social media, specifically TikTok, where Breathwrk has 3.5M followers. After reviewing TikTok and support tickets with the Community Manager, we began to see trends around content and search capabilities.

How are users using Discover?

Now that the users’ voice was taking shape, I worked with the Lead Data Analyst to review product analytics for user behaviors.

Only 3% of Daily Active Users utilize search

The search bar is prominently placed as the second element in the Discover screen. However, the data revealed a shocking 3% search utilization. I formed a hypothesis: users weren’t confident in their ability to search effectively.

Content categories are used 2x more than search

There are 5 content categories displayed below the search bar. The data revealed users utilized categories 2x more than search. This suggested that users were exploring content by interests rather than content type. I formed a hypothesis: a misalignment between how the content is organized and how users interact with it.

Ideations and Interactions

UX recommendations for search utilization and content discovery

Based on the behavioral data, I was interested in testing the information architecture for findability. However, the behavioral analysis turned out to be substantial enough to move forward. After syncing with the only developer on hand, I avoided information architecture and focused on getting creative with the existing design system.

Guided discovery paths for content

If users are not sure what to search for, providing guided discovery paths could help users find relevant content more easily. I recommended organizing content around user goals or common themes to better align with user preferences.

Breathwrk typically runs A/B tests. To get a signal on content discovery, I mocked up two variations below to test the card components with a short description against card components without.

Keyword education for search utilization

If users don't know the right keywords, educating them could be a strategy. Since we knew almost all users were not using the search bar, I mocked up recommendations to support "symptom" search queries and related scope selectors to improve search engagement.

Final Deliverable

Search by your feelings and preferences

My recommendations aimed to align content presentation with user goals and improve search engagement through improvements like symptom-based search suggestions and scope selectors.

Unfortunately, my efforts did not go to production due to shifting priorities. However, the research findings contributed to a broader initiative to refactor the product, setting the stage for future improvements in user experience and content discoverability.

Takeaways and Reflections

Breathwrk was one of my favorite apps and I was excited to work on this project. However, I quickly realized that my enthusiasm could lead to confirmation and framing bias, which could impact the quality of my work.

To avoid these biases, I made a conscious effort to collect feedback from a variety of sources, both within and outside the team. This helped me to gain a broader perspective and identify potential blind spots in my thinking.
Additionally, when working with quantitative data, I focused on framing the results in different ways to avoid narrow interpretations and consider alternative explanations.

By being mindful of my biases and taking deliberate steps to mitigate them, I was able to approach the project with a more objective and open-minded perspective, which ultimately led to better design outcomes.