WeChat, as the most popular social media, is always the bridge that connects businesses and consumers in China. Similarly, LemonBox’s WeChat account was primarily used to facilitate customer services and advertisements.

LemonBox WeChat Design

 

Role

Project leader, UX researcher, UX Designer

Duration

3 months

Team

Wenxin Wang, Yicheng Yuan, Siyuan Lin, Yuke Ding

Skills

Prototyping, Semi-structured Interview, Persona, Affinity Mapping

Context

Lemonbox is a Chinese e-commerce startup that provides personalized daily vitamin packs for Chinese consumers, along with dietary advice from U.S registered dietitians. All products are made in the U.S. and shipped to customers within 7-10 days based on a monthly subscription model.

The Challenge

How can LemonBox maintain a stable relationship with its customers?

My team was responsible for determining what customer services should be provided based on their WeChat account. For this project, our client wanted us to focus on the current user experience of LemonBox, which allowed us to explore the opportunities of the WeChat account outside the previous scope of customer services and advertisements.

We scoped our project around the understanding of the motivation for buying nutritional products. LemonBox had difficulties in keeping customer retention, but the whole market of nutritional products is prosperous. We wanted to address the issue of increasing customer retention rate through the WeChat account.

 

I. Research

01.  Research problem

What services and how do people acquire them after purchasing vitamins and supplements?

 

03. Affinity Map

We utilized Affinity Map to discover the differences, similarities, and connections among all 12 interviews through three runs and group discussions.

02. User Interviews

To gain an in-depth understanding of user experience and perceptions of health management, we conducted twelve interviews where 1-2 supplements goods users from distinctive age ranges are randomly selected. We investigated the context of and their motivations for buying such products in their daily lives. We also asked about their mindsets and approaches to health care management, including their health condition and lifestyle.

A: “So I did not hold very high expectations for these products. I don't think they are medicines or actual treatments, they might be just some kind of comfort. ”

B: “I think it is because my diet is relatively unbalanced and I rarely consume vegetables. I can't improve my diet, so I thought it might be a good idea to take some vitamin supplements.”

C: “It’s not like taking medicine when you are sick, but the benefit is it made me feel that I...I treat myself kindly…”

04. Personas

We made comparisons to synthesize and analyze 12 interviews to identify users' pain points and needs. Based on the analysis, we created two personas for further investigation and design.

 

Insights & Key findings

For customers, buying nutrition products and using aftersales services are all expressions of efforts on their health care management.

People think that they have problems with unhealthy diets and deficient sleep. However, due to the lack of conditions to obtain enough and varied fresh vegetables and excessive pressure to obtain regular and adequate sleep, they cannot have a healthy lifestyle. Under such circumstances, people will consider vitamins and other products as alternatives.

 

Pain Points

01.Professional knowledge barriers

02.Lack of incentives to be persistent for long-term management

  • Most users lack medical and nutritional knowledge and even have some misunderstandings.

  • Even if they want to have some progress in health care management, they cannot properly nor efficiently manage their health care with knowledge and plans.

  • Users need the motivation, such as getting feedback from their own body, to keep putting efforts into health care management

  • While it takes a long time and requires daily work to get effective, users do not have patient and ways to do that.

II. Define

 

What services can the WeChat account provide to facilitate customers’ health care management, in order to maintain a good relationship with them?

The problem

 

01. Motivate users with positive feedback.

02. Improve health management by scientific evaluation and knowledge sharing.

03. Assist users to put daily effort.

Design objectives

III. Ideation&Design

01. Brainstorm

We ran several brainstorming to determine what services and information it provides and how it presents.

02. Delievry

 

Feature1: Scientific Evaluation

Take daily records in the form of chat to provide customized health assessments and timely feedback.

 

Daily health records

Dr. Vi asks and collects customers’ health information every day. Data includes daily schedule, amount of exercise, diet, health status, etc.

Monthly/Annual Report

According to daily records, Dr.Vi timely updates and sends feedback on the user's health status. Seeing the obvious comparison between reports, users can clearly notice their changes and thereby be motivated to pay attention to their health.

 
 

Detailed diet evaluation

Users can use the nutritional evaluation function to get a detailed analysis of patterns, quantity, and nutritional quality of food consumed that day, checking out their dietary data including total energy consumption, nutrient intake, and nutrient diversity. They will also obtain a scientific diet plan and suggestions.

 Feature2: Little Lemons

Utilize cartoon characters to have emotional connections with customers as incentives and knowledge pool for their health care management.

IV. Reflection

Empathy is the very first step of UX design

In this project, our users are vitamin and supplements consumers, which are not related to my personal experience at all. Therefore, it is a bit hard for me to start up because it is my first time designing for an unfamiliar group of people. However, our in-depth research drove me to understand and empathize with them, which is pivotal for the following work. Without user research, I can never know that sometimes people buy supplements not for physical needs but for consolation.