Apple Wellness Service Design
a conceptual design created for Apple; a wellness and employee assistance platform integrated within Apple's ecosystem, aimed to enhanced individual health, mental wellbeing, and work-life balance.
My Role:
Product/Service Designer
Team:
iSchool Student Colleagues
Timeline:
8 weeks, 2024
Service Design
Mobile Design
Background
Within Apple’s ecosystem, existing wellness resources are scattered, however it has no central hub that unifies them all, leaving individuals seeking for a benefits and wellness plan; Apple connoisseur or not, empty-handed and hanging.
Challenge
How might we create a single, cohesive wellness platform within Apple’s suite that enhances access, increases engagement, and supports holistic health for employees?
Deliverable & Impact
Designed a prototype for “Wellness” featuring goal tracking, telehealth, mental health check-ins, and benefits navigation; all styled in Apple’s visual and interaction language. The concept demonstrations improved usability and potential for strong employee uptake.
Challenge
Disconnected Benefits and Wellness Resources Hurt Engagement and Awareness
To uncover key pain points, my team and I conducted informal interviews with 8 professionals; some of whom were current or former Apple employees. Questions regarding their experiences accessing workplace benefits, mental health resources, and wellness programs were asked.
3 core issues that consistently resurfaced:
-
Resources were scattered across multiple platforms, making them too hard to find.
-
Mental health offerings were under-promoted or buried in internal portals.
-
There was little to no personalization, tracking or follow-up on wellness goals.
To synthesize the findings, I created the persona 'Amelia' along with journey maps to guide feature ideation and UX priorities.
Inefficient Content Browsing Experience Creates Friction for Users
Employees & End Users
need a more intuitive and efficient browsing experience, helping users
find their preferred content format
and reducing friction across their
user journey.
HR & Benefits Admins
need to improve user engagement metrics, aligning the design with product goals and ensuring cross-team execution.
Wellness Providers
need to organize and deliver content
by media type to improve system scalability.
Proposal
A Unified, Personalized Wellness Companion within the Apple Ecosystem
The proposal aimed to create "Wellness", a companion app accessible via Apple OS.
Potential Benefits
Higher Engagement & Awareness:
Centralized hub spot increases usage of under utilized services.
Healthier Employees:
Daily check-ins and contextual reminders promote proactive and consistent care.
Data-Driven Decisions:
HR accesses anonymized trends to inform benefit offerings to new and consistent users.
Design Process
1
Conducted user research with ~8 working individuals regarding benefit plans, exploring pain points, goals, and existing routines on EAPs.
2
Persona and journey map was constructed to define the main user needs and scope of product; i.e. "Tom wants to start therapy" or "May is stressed before annual review".
This helped to narrow down the product scope.
3
Wireframes and UI mockups of the product; both iPhone and watch interface were designed following Apple's native Human Interface Guidelines.
4
Usability testing was conducted internally to test prototype for clarity and refinement. Some focus tasks included:
Booking an appointment, Attending appointment, and Finding benefit details.
Deliverables
Video Storyboard Walkthrough of Wellness
A live storyboard walkthrough was created to showcase how Wellness would function in the real-world for real users.
Screen Designs with Pivotal Points
Pivotal Points within the user flow. Each flow details key features integral to the user experience, as well as the outcomes of using Apple Wellness.
Impact
"It feels really seamless; everything is in 1 place and it reminds me to take much-needed breaks."
- Anonymous Employee, Tested as a Concept User, April. 2024
4.7/5
Task success rate in booking a telehealth session
3x
Increase during check-in flow completion vs. comparable platforms
90%
Participants said they would use it daily
Reflection
Designing 'Wellness' Reinforced the Importance of Bringing Health, Benefits, and Behaviour Design into a Single Unified Experience.
During this project, I learned that employees respond best to simple design and gentle nudges, rather than overly complex or even gamified features. Creating an integrated wellness platform significantly increases participation in services that are often overlooked, such as mental health check-ins or fitness reinbursements.
Even in a conceptual project such as this, I've learned that aligning with ecosystem standards such as Apple's design guidelines and data privacy expectations was critical in creating something believable, intuitive, and scalable.
Mid-fi designs of the product were provided as stimuli to participants; think aloud thoughts and behavior were recorded, as well as quantitative metrics during this user research session.
This particular session was useful in pinpointing areas within the product that could be refined; both in user flow and UI design.
Initial wireframes of the Wellness product.
Storyboard of Amelia's Crispy, Smooth, Digital Journey; she learns about the offerings of the Apple Wellness product, gets acquainted with it, and comes to love the product offers; removing many of the barriers and pain points she has previously experienced with other EAPs, before learning about Apple Wellness.