Pivot App

The Challenge

Smoking kills over 500,000 Americans every year. A person who smokes has an increased risk of developing diabetic complications, arthritis, and other comorbidities while experiencing additional mental health challenges. Almost 40% of all cancer diagnoses are related to smoking and the financial impact on a single person who smokes is an average $150,000 over their lifetime.

Traditional smoking cessation programs begin by asking users, "When would you like to quit?" Some require a specific quit date to be set prior to enrollment into the program. Additionally, those who have attempted to quit without medication, therapy, counseling, or "cold turkey", typically relapse within the first year. Our research team found that people interested in Pivot came with varying levels of motivation and intention to quit smoking.

Feature 1: Onboarding

After teaming up with our research team, I redesigned the onboarding experience to capture users' motivations and intention to quit smoking, thus allowing us to tailor a user's entire experience based on where they were ready to quit.

Several weeks after launch, we continued to review the distribution of users and learned that a significant portion (> 50%) were not ready to quit within the next month and/or set a quit date. We then set to build an experience for these users, whilst enhancing existing content and additional capabilities within the app.

Mapping the User Journey

I created a user journey map for my team to better visualize and understand our typical user's journey from initial touchpoint, to quitting, up until post-quit. This map helped us identify user pain points and opportunities.

Feature 2: Reduction

How might we encourage people who smoke to reduce how much they smoke? Historically, taking small steps has not been a touted strategy for quitting, but users who indicated a desire to quit within 6-months were open to try it. I created user flows to help drive brainstorming sessions around potential reduction pathways.

I collaborated with our research team in running UX research sessions. We interviewed 12 users, using an open-ended questionnaire and guided interview questions to gather feedback on prototypes. These prototypes explored 3 features of our proposed reduction experience.

We consolidated user feedback into insights, shared with the broader product and engineering teams, then collaborated on scoping designs to MVPs and future phases.

Learnings and Next Steps

After launching our MVPs, we learned:
(1) Users preferred the ability to choose specific routines and triggers that were personal to them, as opposed to being recommended
(2) Many reduce strategies presented were things some would do with a cigarette in hand
(3) Some said they would log cigarettes depending on data and insights the app would provide them later
(4) How and when to set a challenge reminder varied between user to user. Though some felt reminders were naggy, all users found them necessary to achieve their goal
(5) Some are strongly opposed to journaling about their triggers, whereas others considered themselves "journaling people"

Apple Watch

I designed the MVP Pivot app on Apple Watch.