Coaches were struggling with inefficient workshop preparation and lacked tools for personalized member support. The Coach Experience Platform (CXP) addressed these pain points through a coach-centered web application that streamlined workshop workflows and established a foundation for personalized coaching services.
My role
Led end-to-end product design from initial discovery research with 20+ coaches through MVP definition and launch
Conducted research sessions with coaches across North America to understand workflow pain points and service delivery needs
Collaborated cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Research, Service Design, and Instructional Design teams
Drove iterative testing and pilot observations, leading to 3 major design iterations that improved usability before full rollout
Outcome
CXP successfully launched May 2023 to coaches across North America on desktop web and tablet.
The connection problem
WeightWatchers (WW) started as a community gathering where people came together to support one another's health and weight loss journey. It continues to be that today - both a digital and in-person platform where connections form around a shared journey. WW coaches are an integral part of that shared journey.
Coaches run both virtual and in-person workshops where connections happen. However, despite being WW's superpower, coaches were often an afterthought, and their outdated tools reflected this reality. Current tools were creating administrative burdens and system unreliability that prevented coaches from doing what they do best: making connections.
Building with, not for
I couldn't design something meaningful for coaches without really understanding their current experience. Over one week, I facilitated and connected with 8 coaches across the US to understand current pain points and unmet needs, which became the foundation for the project.
Co-designing with coaches became an integral part of my design process, and it was important for me to include them from beginning to end.
The research revealed that coaches were caught between competing demands. They wanted to create personalized experiences for members, but administrative tasks were eating up the time they needed for relationship building. These challenges included:
01
Third party systems
Coaches were forced to toggle between WeightWatchers platform and external check-in tools, creating friction in their workflow and disrupting the member experience.
02
Manual fallbacks
When technology broke down, coaches had to revert to paper lists and manual entry, adding administrative burden and potential for errors.
03
Limited context
Coaches struggled to access member history, goals, or previous interactions, making it difficult to provide personalized support and build meaningful connections.
04
Speed bottlenecks
Tasks that should take 30 seconds per member often took 1-2 minutes, eating into valuable coaching time and creating frustration for both coaches and members.
Defining our North Star
Before diving into alignment sessions, I needed to establish a shared vision for what success could look like for CXP. I created end-to-end vision sketches to gauge initial impressions and to understand which features were must-have and nice-to-have, as well as to understand any business concerns or technical constraints.
In parallel, I also created a North Star storyboard to illustrate how CXP could transform the coaching experience. The storyboard walked through a day in the life of Coach Gigi and identified both North Star and MVP features.
After conversations with coaches and alignment sessions with leadership, I noticed that there were key tensions that needed to be addressed in order to launch CXP successfully.
01
Data vs. simplicity
Leadership wanted comprehensive data for personalization, while coaches wanted simplicity without added complexity to their workload.
02
Tools vs. connection
Leadership focused on relationship building between coaches and members, while coaches felt current tools hindered rather than helped these connections.
03
Collaboration vs. isolation
Leadership wanted better coach collaboration, while coaches felt isolated from both WW and each other.
Finding the middle ground
These conversations led to three design principles that shaped our approach:
Foundation first, personalization later
We can't optimize what we can't measure, and CXP would be our foundation for data gathering
Individual efficiency builds community
By streamlining workflows and reducing administrative tasks, we create space for relationship building.
Unified experience across workflows
Design for the coach ecosystem, not just individual productivity. CXP needed to integrate seamlessly across touchpoints, creating a cohesive platform rather than disconnected tools.
Exploring various concepts
Using the design principles as the foundation, I began to explore different design concepts to share with the team. Two concepts that I delved deeper into were an insights-driven approach and a service design exploration.
Insights-driven concept
By empowering coaches with actionable data, they can effectively personalize their coaching methods as well as their in-person workshops to connect better with their members.
Service design concept
Currently a lot of the administrative burden falls on the coaches, and I wanted to explore what this would look like if I reframed it as giving members more agency.
In the app, members can proactively check into their events and prepare for their sessions with personalized recommendations and content.
Coach facing experience
By focusing less on administrative tasks, coaches can now focus on coaching effectiveness with resources on the coaching platform such as ready-to-use guides, seeing member sentiments, and engaging with other coaches.
Designing the MVP
While the team loved the service design approach, we faced a critical question: How do we deliver value quickly without overwhelming coaches who were already skeptical of new tools?
Our strategy: Build foundational components first, then layer complexity. Rather than changing coaches' mental models completely, we decided to improve existing workflows to create a foundation that builds up to the service design concept.
Designing within constraints
While designing the CXP experience, I collaborated closely with Engineering in weekly reviews, addressing technical constraints posed by legacy technology at WW and making necessary revisions to the MVP designs.
In parallel to finalizing MVP designs, we also needed to ensure a successful launch by testing CXP in actual workshop settings.
Testing in the wild
Once we had the MVP designs, the team traveled to Detroit and Windsor to test with actual coaches in real workshop settings. Within the first week, our team identified 15 crucial enhancements, and we built and released 5 of them immediately.
The most important lesson: We initially limited member search to email addresses for accuracy, but this created unexpected friction. Members struggled to remember their email addresses, and when they did remember, they'd spell them out faster than coaches could type on tablets.
Quickly iterating
We implemented two changes for the next day:
Adding a QR scanner to scan member IDs
This was originally slated as a fast follow to MVP, but given the high disruption that we witnessed, I collaborated closely with Engineering to make this happen.
Search by member name and
zip code
We learned that coaches were already using a backup search by name and zip code. Although it didn't give the most accurate results, it tended to be quicker. So we added an entry point to this search experience on the home page.
As one coach said:
“I've been coaching for a long time, and no one's ever asked for our feedback like this. It feels good to know what we shared matters.”
Although capturing quantitative metrics was not in scope for MVP, we received overwhelmingly positive responses from coaches.
01
Operation
We addressed the manual workarounds and system reliability issues that were frustrating coaches daily.
02
Scalability
We created an in-house platform that set the foundation for a more integrated coach experience.
03
Adoption
Most importantly, we turned coach skepticism into trust and genuine enthusiasm for CXP.
Future explorations
The MVP was just the beginning. The foundation we built helped us move towards the service design concept and opened up possibilities for the following phases.
Phase 02: member empowerment
I wanted to continue exploring member empowerment and giving members more agency around event management and building connections with coaches.
This included explorations involving AI to match members to coaches based on weight loss journey, preferences, locations, and in-app behaviors.
Phase 03: deepening connections
On the coach side, I wanted to keep exploring how to improve relationship building and deepen the coach-member connection. This included explorations around an enhanced member profile with actionable insights based on in-app and IRL behaviors.
Reflections
The Coach Experience Platform proved that earning user trust isn't about building everything at once. It's about co-designing solutions, validating in context, and showing that their voices truly matter
Co-design builds trust
Involving coaches early and often helped us design tools that reflected their real needs. By listening closely and iterating quickly, we showed that their voices mattered. This turned initial skepticism into genuine trust and enthusiasm.
Context is everything
While we can envision various use cases, situational and contextual factors can rapidly alter how designs actually work. The pilot made me realize the importance of observing designs in real-life scenarios.
Validations over assumptions
Even thoughtful decisions can cause harm if not tested in context. Our email search decision taught us that good intentions don't always equal good impact.
