Product lessons from a meditation app

Photo by Le Minh Phuong on Unsplash edited on Photolab.me

I was recently reading my post on how to design user registration flows. A couple of thoughts occurred to me. I will illustrate them through using an example. My employer partnered with a meditation app to offer employees a premium subscription for free for a limited period. I installed the app right away without reading the instructions:

• Click on the link provided by HR via Slack
• Register by following the steps & providing user information
• Activate account
• Download the app on your device
• Become the next incarnation of Buddha

Here is what idiots like me did:

• Read the slack messages in a hurry
• Downloaded the app from the play store on my phone
• Followed instructions for registration provided by the app
• Created the account
• Found myself unable to find where to enter the promo code/ get free access to the premium account

I had painted myself into a corner by following the wrong set of instructions. If that sounds ridiculous, it is because it is. Why should the instructions in the onboarding flow of an app be considered wrong? I had roughly executed the same steps that were required but ended up in the wrong place because of jumbling up the order.

My missteps were as follows:

• Step 1, which is clicking on the link provided by HR is crucial to the success of the whole thing. The link has a promo code baked in for the sake of “usability”. So not clicking on the link means you miss out the opportunity to redeem the offer. I can almost imagine a dumbfounded team staring at each other on why I didn’t follow the steps. We’ll come back to this.
• Step 4 was downloading the app. I am supposed to have an active account before doing this. Instead, I downloaded it and then followed the onboarding creating the account afterwards.

Clearly, I wasn’t going to get enlightenment soon. There are two issues here:

• The way the Design-Product team visualised the user journey is incomplete/broken. The product & design teams didn’t anticipate that the links shared may not be opened on a mobile device but on a laptop. With a little bit of distraction the user could easily be fooled into multi-tasking his/her way into the predicament I found myself in. We are distracted all the time so not taking distraction into account would be a grave mistake.
• Offer redemption was tightly coupled to one medium.

No matter how the user onboards the app, there needs to be a mechanism where a promo code can be entered to avail the offer.

Problem solved. Now the offer can be shared through Whatsapp, SMS, Slack, e-mail, or whatever medium floats your boat. The user can always avail of the offer & use the app. That is the intention of an offer, I’d hope.

Apps blow it when they impede returning flows

I noticed that every time I changed devices I let a few apps go. This was either because I had forgotten the password or the resetting/returning flow was too cumbersome. If somebody comes to me with this problem, I will first ask — How many times do users change their devices?

A few years ago, the answer to this question would be, very rarely. Today, this is hardly the case. I recommend looking at the data and making a decision but also it is fairly safe to assume that this is a frequent use case.

We are so distracted these days that even a little bit of friction in the “forgot password” flow of an app means we put it off to later. This will never be a problem for critical apps like banking, payments, email etc. because of the underlying importance of the app function. In the case of this meditation app — it required me to log off from my account on my older device. I wasn’t on a premium plan anyway so the upside of asking me to log off & log in again into my new device (when I most likely have forgotten my password) seems low. There are good reasons justifying it but I can argue against them:

• “But if the user is using one account on many devices, it may become a problem” — No. This is not Netflix. I’m likely to meditate on one device at a time. If you are really concerned about misuse don’t allow simultaneous sessions.
• “But if multiple users are using one account, I can’t get accurate usage stats.” — Please segment the stats by user & device and assign the combination an ID. Also, ask the question, how many users have multiple such IDs, and is it worth solving for this?
• “Let the free user drop off, I don’t care” — This is not worth arguing with.
• “I m serious about security so don’t f@#$ about.” — Valid. When the users log in to the new device automatically log them off on the other with a message. With the message, please.

A quick summary:

• When designing for offers think through how the offers are going to be shared and test via all media.
• Resetting passwords can be a make or break feature
• A good question to ask yourself while designing the app is what happens when the user switches devices. Can he/she continue seamlessly or are you gonna make it painful?
• Don’t make it painful to use multiple devices unless there is a valid reason to do so.

In conclusion, design for distraction may not be the best approach for a mindfulness app but the end justifies the means. There you go, enlightenment & a rant in one shot. If you enjoyed this, please like, clap etc. You can read my older design/product posts on:

• How to Price your products
• How to design User Registration Flows
• How to Design Roles & access controls
• How to Design great list pages
• The Challenges of Enterprise Product Management