The Goal
Discovery & Ideation
We kicked off by mapping assumptions about our audience and identifying themes through team ideation sessions. These helped shape early hypotheses and guide our research strategy. Emerging themes:
Trust & Expertise: She wants wellness advice from credible, expert-backed sources, and a safe space to ask questions, ideally anonymously.
Community & Accountability: She’s short on time but values motivation from others. Goal-setting, peer stories, and shared challenges help her stay engaged.
User Research
I led exploratory interviews with 20 women (ages 26–44, across the U.S. and Paris) to validate our assumptions and uncover needs. Key insights:
Wellness is holistic: Most women defined it beyond physical health—mental and emotional wellness were top priorities.
She values credibility: Reddit, Instagram, and friends were common sources, but she prefers info from experts or firsthand experiences.
She wants anonymity: Many hesitate to ask doctors personal questions. An anonymous, judgment-free space would increase engagement.
Biggest barriers: Time, motivation, and cost.
Preferred formats: Short-form content, podcasts, and infographics. Long videos were a turn-off unless captioned.
These findings helped us create detailed personas and sharpen our concept directions.
Concept Development
We tested both concepts with 18 women (ages 24–46) via moderated sessions on usertesting.com. What we learned:
Strong interest in both directions (many wanted a hybrid.)
Key features users loved: Anonymous Q&A with experts, Personalized dashboards, Community wellness events or challenges
Preferred flexibility in format: live Q&As, podcasts, articles, and courses.
Least exciting element? Newsletters.
The MVP
We launched an early version focused on high-interest features:
Ask an Expert: Anonymous question submission with expert responses
Expert-backed content
Two-way communication (Q&A threads, not static content)
We tested and iterated while simultaneously exploring the future-state vision.
Impact & Reflection
This was one of my favorite projects at theSkimm. The open-ended brief allowed us to think big, and speaking with users about their wellness journeys was incredibly meaningful.
While the full future-state product was paused due to company reprioritization, the MVP’s Ask an Expert feature became the most engaged-with module on both the wellness homepage and in newsletters. It later evolved into a cross-functional content franchise that still lives on in theSkimm’s ecosystem today.
What I’d Do Differently 💡
Run a Design Sprint: This project was a perfect candidate for a sprint. After establishing our personas, I would have facilitated a cross-functional design sprint to quickly align on direction and prototype early concepts.
Start Smaller with Research: While the 20 exploratory interviews were valuable, they were also time-intensive. Starting with just 5 would have surfaced strong signals early, giving us a chance to iterate faster before scaling
