Resonance - Improving Day One Retention
Colin Böhning
Improving Day One Retention of a B2C mobile App
Context
Resonance is a digital health app designed to help users monitor and improve their stress resilience through heart rate data analysis and personalised breathwork exercises. The app allows users to measure their heart rate variability (HRV) using their smartphone's camera and flashlight. By taking HRV readings each morning, users can assess the resilience of their autonomic nervous system without requiring any extra devices.
The Process
My product design process is oriented around the Double Diamond approach, which emphasises a thorough understanding of the problem space before exploring different design solutions.
Problem Exploration
One of the biggest challenges for a B2C product is retaining new users. After shipping the first MVP, we observed a significant drop-off after the first day. Looking at the product analytics revealed that users who returned the next day were much more likely to continue using the product.
The main objective is to increase the number of users who return to the app on the day after their initial installation.
Diving a bit deeper into the product analytics showed that most users already dropped of before taking their first HRV reading.
Why are users dropping off?
We conducted user interviews and observed users using the product to get a better understanding of:
What is the primary reason for users dropping off after the onboarding?
What is the "Aha-moment" experienced by users who return the next day?
Analysing interview recordings to identify common themes.
Insights
After analyzing all user interviews and observing users in real-time, we have identified the following common themes:
Many users simply overlooked the option to do the first HRV reading.
Some users had difficulty interpreting the HRV data. What does it tell me?
Some users didn’t understand the value of daily HRV readings - Why should I do it everyday?
Problem Statement
How might we help users to take their first two HRV readings, while also helping them understand the results and educating them about the value of daily HRV readings?
Solution Exploration
Exploring different solutions through a combination of brainstorming sessions and iterative sketching.
Prioritising different solution ideas on estimated effort and impact with the whole team including engineers.
Solutions
Making the first HRV reading part of the user onboarding flow.
Guiding the user to educative content about HRV when he is confronted with the HRV data for the first time.
The updated user flow including educational content about HRV.
By utilising in-app notifications and a reminder email (based on In-App-activity), the user gets reminded and informed about the value of HRV monitoring in case he dropped out of the user journey.
Outbound messaging automation to reactivate users at the right time in the user journey
Impact
The experiment showed that the new version improved the user retention significantly.
87% of the users who finished the onboarding also finished their first HRV reading → Reducing user churn after onboarding by 46%
The conversion from first to second measurement could be increased by 11% from 62% to 73%
Day 1 Retention could be improved from 24% to 64%
Thanks for reading 👋
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Posted May 3, 2025
Product design and creative direction of an iOS App that lets users monitor and improve their stress resilience using breathwork and heart rate data analysis.
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