Ultrahuman: Need of an upgrade

Amit Das (SVP of Design, at Urban Company)

Amit was using an Apple watch as a fitness tracker, and now is a “UH ring AIR” user. He is a designer himself and referred it to 4 folks in his network (including me). He syncs his UH data to Apple Health and uses apps like “Any Distance” to track fitness.
Amit: UH app feedback

The Ring:

• Comfortable to wear, no skin irritation, and super-light

• No scratches in 6 weeks of usage

• Like the charger design as well, easy to fit it correctly

• It was marketed on the website for 6 days battery life; with regular workouts, it runs for 3 days

• Need to charge it every 3 days; not a bummer but different from what was shown loudly on the website

• I wish it had a tracker if I misplaced it somewhere

The App:

• It’s too complicated to use for the first few times

• The cards on the home screen are not predictable

• Everything is extremely text-heavy and feels like a lot of work to understand something

• Don’t understand if a number is good or bad. I give it to my trainer to figure out what’s good or bad; his answer is, “Leave all this, let’s work-out”

• I’d ideally want to see how am I doing daily against all metrics

• Blood vision was interesting and my yearly health check-up was due so I thought of going with it. I’m not sure what am I supposed to do next.

• Starting a workout is very hidden, it was a struggle to find it.

Conclusion:

• I like the ring form factor, I hate using the app but have no choice.

• In Amit’s words, “It is not a shareable and brag-worthy app”.

• Recommends the product.

Alka Gupta (Head of Marketing, Zenduty)

Alka also switched to the Ring AIR from an Apple watch. She is a passionate tech innovation adopter. She wants to be able to be on top of her health & fitness using these products.

The Ring:

• I really like it, great to wear.

• I use it mainly for my sleep tracking, it’s better than Apple Health.

• I got this as it’s unintrusive, unlike a smartwatch.

• I got the patch (I do it yearly) again to check my vitals and track it.

The App:

• I didn’t know about the app features before I got the ring, it was a surprise.

• I like the menstrual cycle tracking feature, also it comes on top of the home page.

• It’s too much text to read and understand.

• While browsing, I mistake the “Movement index” for “Sleep index” sometimes (as the widget looks the same)

• I don’t understand and use a lot of features and data.

• I open the app only 2 times a day, 30 min after I wake up. 30 min before going to bed, to log my food.

• I cannot use the app easily, as I used to in Apple Health.

• I want the sleep data always up-front.

• I want to know my heart rate, skin temperature, and other things in realtime, when I am on the app.

• I have only used metabolism tracking only on this app so I am used to it, the metabolism tab is better designed.

• I don’t know what are zones, I don’t know what will happen with this.

• The app pages are not well connected. Things are hidden, so even I have to use features like “create goals”, but I didn’t know where they are.

• I never see the Weekly report, as it takes me outside the app.

Conclusion:

• The sleep-tracking feature is very comprehensive. However, I get lost in the app, it is not easy to use.

• In Alka’s words, “It doesn’t feel like it’s designed with care for the user”

• Recommends the product.

Overall Observations

The app doesn’t follow a few fundamental design principles of data-tracking presentation and usability principles, some of them are:

• App onboarding is missing, user is left on their own to figure out what is what.

• The app is not designed for muscle memory for the user to build familiarity.

• The language/ terms used in the app are beyond layman’s understanding.

• Information/ data disclosure is not well sequenced. It’s too much information on the face, and it gets overwhelming for the consumer.

• Context saving from the previous step is missing.

• Feature discovery is poor. The user is lost on: “where is what”, “what is what”, “why it is the way it is”, and “what to make out of it” It’s confusing.

• The app doesn’t help the user to be on top of their fitness, features like “day at a glance” are missing. It’s just a tracker (with some generic suggestions).

• Because everything looks the same, I don’t know what’s important and what’s not.

• An overview of a scope/ index doesn’t tell if it’s optimal or sub-optimal.

• Examples of fitness/ health apps that are well designed and UH can learn from Any distance, Rise, Supersonic, Gyroscope, Apple Health , Whoop band