BetterUp Weekly Plan

BetterUp is a human transformation platform providing coaching and personalized learning.

Impact: Launched company’s first curated growth plan with 35% activation- 4x above baseline.

Skills: Research, Interaction design, UX, UI

Time: 5 months

Start with customer obsession

BetterUp’s 1:1 coaching model was effective but costly to scale. Leadership tasked the team with digitizing the experience coaches provide for their members.

I joined as a researcher during an alpha rollout, focusing on how members interacted with the new aspiration-setting feature introduced during onboarding. To better understand this user base, I conducted 10 user interviews with individuals interested in self-development, exploring how they define "progress" and what motivates continued engagement.

How Might We: help users without a coach make progress towards an “aspiration”?

Early explorations of progress loop

Refine engagement loop after “aspirations” fell short

During the alpha release, we saw significant drop-off at the aspiration creation step. We revisited our problem framing and iterated, shifting focus to a simplified engagement loop after different iterations.

Revised approach:

• Aspirations was optional step post-onboarding

• Allowed users to set weekly effort targets

• Introduced progress check-ins for satisfaction tracking

We then integrated BetterUp’s resource center as recommended items- connecting members to live workshops, videos, articles, and quizzes.

What motivates for progress?

We showed users different ways to visualize “units” of progress and learned that users best understood the action/activity based model.

Simplify engagement loop

User testing revealed key insights about the new flow:

• Aspirations were still difficult to grasp upfront

• Users understood the connection between recommended activities and onboarding survey

• Users wanted to track completed efforts, see what’s left, and receive progress recognition

To address this, we iterated on a time-bound “weekly plan”—guiding users through curated activities and adapting content after check-ins.

Usability testing revealed:

1. Preference for vertical list over a carousel for viewing activities

2. Desire to curate and replace items in weekly plan

3. Expectation of accountability and support from BetterUp

Ship to learn

Our MVP released included:

• Curated growth plan on mobile and web based, personalized from onboarding insights

• Bite-sized, recommended activities updated weekly based on readiness

• Regular check-ins and reflections to track progress and re-calibrate the journey

Design without losing sight of the bigger picture

🚀 35% activation— 4x improvement over 8% baseline engagement

Reflections:

• Clear upfront expectations helped drive initial engagement

• Week-over-week retention performed poorly—users struggled to connect efforts to a meaningful "why”

• Qualitative reflections may have improved re-engagement

• Live coach workshops performed well—highlighting them could further boost activation, and was taken into the next iteration