UX Collection

Community

Community is a group chat inside the app Pregnancy+, where users can join groups and chat with other parents-to-be based on different interest topics such as due month, age, first pregnancy, symptoms, etc.

Pregnancy+ is the world's leading pregnancy tracker app from Philips Avent. It offers expert advice, daily articles, pregnancy trackers, healthcare tips, and interactive 3D models to track a baby's development.

Vision:
Create meaningful connections between Pregnancy+ users.

Objectives:
Increase app retention and engagement through user-to-user conversation.

Key objectives for MVP phases: 

  1. Validate whether users will engage in conversations within a community.

  2. Understand why users initiate conversations and what triggers messages.

  3. Learn how we can increase the frequency of messages.

  4. Understand how the community impacts other Pregnancy+ KPIs.

Background:

  1. Online communities are on the rise. People turn to these communities to express themselves, finding them more authentic than social media.

  2. Community sites are perceived as more welcoming and foster more meaningful peer-to-peer connections.

  3. People believe in the crowd's wisdom; Gen Z, in particular, views community sites as more reliable than expert opinions.

  4. Data shows that the more niche the interest group, the more engaged its members are in digital life.

  5. Research has shown that many people prefer not to confide in close family members during periods of struggle, instead seeking out "strangers" who are experiencing similar difficulties.

Our early assumptions were that "meaningful connections" would happen in small groups (max 10 users were allowed in each group) of "similar users" (same age, due date, proximity, interests and so on). 

MVP 1 Low-fidelity designs below:

Note: For the development, we used an off-the-shelf tool named Discover. This led us to some UX restrictions and UI limitations.

MVP 1 High-fidelity designs below:

After MVP 1, we discovered that some of our initial assumptions were incorrect. Our key takeaway was that small groups don’t effectively stimulate conversation. To foster engagement, we need larger groups with more active members, as opposed to passive users or lurkers.

In MVP 2, we enabled groups to have an unlimited number of users and we reduced the number of group topics, which led to a successful outcome.

MVP 2 Low-fidelity designs below:

MVP 2 High-fidelity designs below:

MVP 2 Results:

The MVP Phase 2 performance shows the effect of validation loops.

  • 28% retention increase: app retention up to 28% more active days for users who sign up to the Community

  • Network effect: Average number of messages increases as Community account creation remains constant 

  • 9% Ad CTR increase: Halo effect on Ad CTR with up to 9% increases in clicks for users who have a Community Account