Optumizeme

Healthcare Mobile App Development - [x]cube LABS

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Encouraging healthy lifestyle through social network

When UHG wanted to help people live healthier lives through practical challenges and made an attempt to make the health system work better for everyone through OptumizeMe, we stepped in to design a private social network and create a gamified platform.

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Here's how we leveraged our deep expertise in building healthcare apps to encourage healthy lifestyles.

BACKGROUND

UnitedHealth Group is the most preferred healthcare company in the United States, and has become well known for its varied range of products and its commitment to introducing innovative approaches, products and services to "improve personal health and promote healthier populations in local communities".

UnitedHealth Group's innovation and R&D mobility strategy/ Healthcare division approached [x]cube LABS to lead the development effort and offer consulting services for their OptumizeMe mobile app.

Through OptumizeMe, UHG wanted to help people live healthier lives through practical challenges and made an attempt to make the healthcare system work better for everyone. And we stepped in to design a private social network and create a gamified platform, allowing users to join causes, challenges, and to encourage each other in custom-user-created activities as well as company-driven objectives.

WHY IS OPTUMIZEME AN APP?

The purpose of this app is to connect people within a company, but more specifically, to create a social network that encourages a healthy lifestyle practice. The upstream effect of this objective is to improve an individual's health, and through that, to decrease the cost of the insurance provider's expenditure towards potentially unnecessary procedures brought on by an unhealthy lifestyle.

UHG already had this platform which they were testing internally to improve the fitness levels of their employees before releasing the app externally to a wider audience across various platforms. Using the app, the company kept a track of the health and well-being of its employees by tracking their calorie-intake, exercise regimen (with or without a coach), while encouraging them to follow through their fitness goals.

Mobile Application Development for Healthcare Company - [x]cube LABS

DESIGN SPEAK

The most interesting aspect of this project is where it started, and where it ended, in terms of User-centric Design. From the initial tangled web of complex interactions and an unclear path on user goals, we moved towards a middle ground with a well-optimized, streamlined, intuitive (even if somewhat heavy), user-friendly app. Through careful analysis and the core interactions, the project requirements were synthesized with a streamlined user-centered design proposal.

WHAT WAS OUR STRATEGY?

The simplification of the product is a key aspect to understand how we strive for the perfect design, always! The stickiness is also obtained by this ease of use, plus the social aspect, driven by peer encouragement, UGC, and group activities.

Gamification, branding of the app as a UHG + Optum Health product, and an awesome user-centric design gave the app an ideal appeal and easily adoptable user experience

KEY FEATURES

Over 1,000 different lifestyle-type challenges from which you can choose.
Challenges could be as small as getting eight hours of sleep at night or some as committed as giving up caffeine or training for a marathon.
Quite beneficial for setting up personal fitness goals and following them strictly.
Socialize through the app by challenging friends, colleagues to take up tasks or achieve goals.
Train under a coach remotely – either in a small group of 5-6 people or individually.
Take advantage of the time-tracking feature to know how much time was spent on each activity, which activities of the routine are completed in how much time and when, etc.

CHALLENGES

Redesigning an already existing app with a special focus on UI and UX, though not a challenge per se, is not very easy. You need to balance several existing elements so that the app experience and user engagement is of desired standards. Getting the right balance to make the app appealing to delight users and boost engagement was the challenging part.

SOLUTION

At [x]cube we analyzed the existing app UHG had and identified opportunity to achieve the client's vision with addition of a new module to the existing app. This would substantially save on their time to market as well as reduce any learning curve that an user might have with a completely new app. The static UI for all the screens were developed initially. Later, the screens were populated with data fetched from Server, using APIs provided by UHG.

RESULT

The app received excellent response with thousands of UHG customers downloading the app in the first few weeks of the launch. The engagement was high with many users inviting their friends and challenging them on various contests.

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