Role
Product/UX Designer
Responsibility
End-to-end UI/UX design
Duration
6 months (2 months design-focused), 2023–2024
Company
Humansa
Background
Humansa, a high-end healthcare and wellness brand under the Hong Kong New World Group, aimed to redefine customer experience with a luxury mobile app. This app would unify their services, spanning fitness, skincare, dental care, and diagnostics, while automating bookings and enhancing customer loyalty.
Our mission was clear: to create a premium, user-friendly app that captured the essence of luxury while solving real user problems. However, with ambitious business goals, a tight timeline, and multiple technical dependencies, the challenge lay in prioritising features and delivering an MVP by Q1, 2024.
Challenges
Objectives
The project had three core objectives:
My role
As a part of the mobile team, I led the end-to-end design of the Humansa mobile app, including all product research, stakeholder communication and workshops, design, and prototyping.
We launched the MVP in Hong Kong market in January 2024.
With a tight timeline and vague initial goals, I devised a robust research plan to uncover actionable insights.
Understanding users:
Observational research: We analysed customer interactions at Humansa outlets to identify inefficiencies in booking and registration flows.
Expert interviews: I interviewed healthcare professionals and frequent users, gaining insights into industry norms and customer expectations.
Voice of customer survey analysis: Reviewing customer survey feedback helped me understand pain points in existing experiences.
Defining business goals:
Market Analysis: Benchmarking against competitors' mobile apps revealed gaps and opportunities to differentiate Humansa’s offerings.
Stakeholder Interviews: Conversations with key business users clarified operational pain points and feature priorities.
This research shaped a user-centred vision for the app while aligning with Humansa’s premium branding.
Using affinity mapping, I synthesised research insights to shape the app’s core features.
Personas reflecting Humansa’s premium target audience—executives and high-income families—were created to guide user-centric design decisions.
We also distilled insights into detailed user journeys, also focusing on executives and high-income families.
Key insights:
User Needs:
Business Goals:
Feature prioritisation:
To build a scalable app that could evolve post-MVP, we focused on implementation details to ensure a seamless rollout of core features within the tight timeline of the phase-one development. Collaborating closely with the client, we facilitated a workshop with business users to align on priorities and incorporate their perspectives into the design process. This collaborative effort was instrumental in balancing user needs, business goals, and technical constraints.
Through this process, we achieved consensus on core user needs and prioritised features that were both impactful and feasible for the MVP, including:
Armed with insights from the workshop, I translated them into a sitemap that captured the app’s core functionalities.
I also developed wireframes for the app’s core features, including a streamlined booking system, QR code-based check-ins, and a tracking dashboard in profile section.
Our team presented them to stakeholders and developers ensured feasibility and clarity before progressing to detailed design. At this point, we noted some technical questions and features to be tested, like the feasibility of tracking of purchased packages and the fields needed for making an appointments.
The finalised designs prioritised MVP features while accommodating future scalability. Some of the key features are displaying below:
Streamlined Booking: Users can book services with an intuitive step-by-step flow, though backend staff confirm bookings due to payment gateway constraints at that moment. They can check their appointments, progress, and health report in the unified place.
QR Code for Check-Ins: Membership codes facilitate faster, seamless in-outlet registration.
Personalised Profile Tracking: Tailored reminders, loyalty programs, and a referral system enhance engagement.
Luxury Aesthetics: A sleek design aligned with Humansa’s premium brand identity.
Given the dynamic nature of the membership program, we used an in-app web page for FAQs and program details to maintain the launch schedule. Certain features, such as fitness bookings, were deferred to Phase 2, so as not to jeopardise the release schedule set by the client.
The app design follows the clients’ design guideline. Adding interactions and styles that satisfy the premium, sooth, natural feeling of clients’ brand. I also constructed the design systems as a guideline and depository for future design iteration and development.
The Humansa app launched successfully in Q1, 2024, with early metrics showing significant improvements in customer engagement and online bookings. The client praised our research-driven approach, efficient collaboration, and user-centric design.
Reflecting on this journey, I learned the importance of balancing ambitious timelines with user and business needs. My favourite moments were the collaborative workshops and design critiques, which enriched the app’s functionality and elegance. If I were to revisit this project, I’d incorporate in-office usability tests to further validate our designs given the resource constraints.
The journey never ends, there are more and more to come.
This project reminded me that design is an ongoing journey. By empowering Humansa with a scalable foundation, we paved the way for continuous improvements, ensuring the app evolves with its users’ needs. The journey doesn’t stop here—there’s always more to design, test, and improve.
