I use many apps daily but decided to review one that many
classmates may not be familiar with called Wellness Coach. While the app was developed in 2018, in the
aftermath of uncertainty and instability brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the
program rebranded and received a sizable investment from the Zoom Apps Fund.
(Dahlberg, 2021). The timing was perfect
as employee burnout was all too common, and employers needed to provide
additional benefits to help retain their top performers. D Sharma points out the many reasons this is an
attractive benefit an employer can offer and how the employee experience can be
vastly improved by making overall health and wellness a priority. (Sharma,
2021)
Wellness
Coach is an enterprise all-encompassing wellness app that provides various
tools to help employees deal with stress, grief, anxiety, fitness, and even
sleep issues. The app is available as a stand-alone web and mobile app and is
also available as a plug-in for many common workplace collaboration tools, such
as Microsoft Teams. Let’s review the app’s usability, design, and functionality
and explore three recommendations to improve this product.
While
I use it more frequently on my computer to allow a larger screen to browse the
content, the mobile app offers the same excellent content. The app design is
simple, and most content can be found from links directly on the home page,
allowing users to click and play any content instantly. All content can be favorited for easy
accessibility, and much of the content can be downloaded for offline access. There
are a couple of additional menu paths in addition to the main home page that
allow access to explore/search by topic, view Favorites, and view History
provided. The Home Page is broken
into ten sections:
1.
Daily Wellness is a short audio meditation automatically selected each day
on the top of the page.
2.
Ruth, a personalized coaching experience AI functionality that
allows users to ask questions or make statements regarding their mental or
physical health. Upon asking a question,
Ruth will make some recommendations for improving the issue and provide
relevant mindfulness sessions that can help.
3.
Today’s
Progress allows end users to connect to
Apple Health or Fitbit applications that will track steps taken, minutes spent
reviewing or listening to wellness sessions, and allows users to track water
consumption. These three areas tend to be universally recognized as
contributing to the overall good health of all people.
4.
The Challenges
section allows users to start a challenge with friends and coworkers to promote
and reinforce healthy activities through comradery and connectedness. These
challenges can be company-wide, team-specific, or amongst the entire Wellness
Coach app community.
5.
Quick Links allow users to go to the content they are looking for specifically,
including the following categories:
a.
Focus Music
b.
Meditation
c.
Audiobooks
d.
Fitness
e.
Breathing
Bubble
f.
Recents
g.
Challenges
h.
Live Class
replays
6.
Personal Coaching section allows users to schedule one-on-one coaching
sessions with a professional coach specializing in specific topics as desired.
7.
Group Coaching are live sessions provided on specific dates and times.
8.
Recommendations
provided specifically by the user's employer.
9.
Programs are collections of sessions designed to help users achieve
their goals. Programs offer a learning and practice path for anyone having
trouble picking a session, meditation, book, or exercise, and typically encompass
all modalities.
10.
The last
section of the app is a link to share access with up to 5 friends and
family members so they can join users in their wellness journeys.
- Make the app available on the Apple Watch. With the ever-increasing popularity of smartwatches, a condensed watch app would be extremely useful. I do not carry my phone while exercising and could consume more content if this feature was enabled.
- Enable community groups or some form of social collaboration that would allow users to provide helpful advice, exercises, or recipes to help others who are tackling a similar issue. This could be custom functionality or just embedded links to other social networking /sharing platforms.
- Allow individual memberships without the requirement of an employer. While this app benefits employees, some team members hesitate to invest time in the product when they think they may be moving on to a different employer. Allowing some type of transition option would increase brand awareness, and users would act as brand ambassadors to their new employer.
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