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Designing A Better WHOOP Competitor For Fitness Enthusiasts

We did major research & designed a better fitness tracking application similar to WHOOP optimized for recommendations and actions.

Client

Helium

Industry

Health Tech

Timeline

14 Days

Headquarters

Bangalore

Socialsonic is an AI LinkedIn growth platform that helps users become a top 1% LinkedIn creator. We helped Socialsonic conduct user interviews, find problems, and designed a stunning MVP in 30 days.

About Helium

Helium by Instadapp is a project that the team experimented with a vision to create a better WHOOP. A device much more powerful and intuitive to actually push fitness enthusiasts to get results.

Outcomes

Within 2 weeks of intensive user interviews, brainstorming sessions, and idea validation, we designed the homepage experience for the app.

Businesses struggle with problems such as time-consuming transaction categorization, complex tax filings, and the need for accurate, real-time financial reporting, etc.

Creating A WHOOP Competitor

A motivated team of fitness enthusiasts were ready to take down one of the biggest health-tech giants.

Instadapp, a decentralized application, wanted to expand from web3 into the world of fitness.

The founders were huge fans of fitness band, WHOOP. They would compete on sleep, exercise, recovery, and make a positively competitive environment across the company.

They now wanted to create a competitor of WHOOP with a 10x better user experience. They reached out and we started collaborating.

Understanding Use Case & Constraints

The team at Instadapp started researching about the hardware from China while we started working on the app experience.

Our goal was simple: Design a superior experience than WHOOP. Make technical assumptions wherever required.

We started off by creating a list of constraints. The team sent us a list of sensors in the watch which gave us the initial data to play around with.

The list of sensors we had were:

After we had everything we needed in place, we started with interviewing existing WHOOP users to get a better understanding of the problems they’re solving with the product.

User Interviews

The Instadapp team was generous in helping us schedule these user interviews with WHOOP customers considering it was a fairly new product back then.

We conducted a total of five user interviews to kickstart our research of participants already using a fitness tracking wearable i.e. WHOOP.

The Instadapp team was generous in helping us schedule these user interviews with WHOOP customers considering it was a fairly new product back then.

We conducted a total of five user interviews to kickstart our research of participants already using a fitness tracking wearable i.e. WHOOP.

The Instadapp team was generous in helping us schedule these user interviews with WHOOP customers considering it was a fairly new product back then.

We conducted a total of five user interviews to kickstart our research of participants already using a fitness tracking wearable i.e. WHOOP.

Interview Questions

What are different touch points where you interact with WHOOP in your day to day life?
Can you describe your typical day and how WHOOP fits into it?
What was your initial impression when you first started using WHOOP? What made you decide to keep using it?
How often do you check your WHOOP data, and at what times of the day?
Which metrics provided by WHOOP do you find most useful? Why?
Can you give an example of how WHOOP data has influenced a specific decision or change in your lifestyle?
How easy or difficult is it for you to understand the data and insights provided by WHOOP?
What do you interpret through recovery/strain and sleep?
What if a day's recovery is less?
Do notifications make you come back to the app or a habit has formed?
Can you describe a time when WHOOP made you feel a sense of accomplishment or progress?
How do you feel when you look at your WHOOP data? Does it motivate, stress, or encourage you in any way?
Have you noticed any significant changes in your behavior or habits since using WHOOP? Can you give an example?
Which features of the WHOOP app do you use most frequently? Why are these features important to you?
Have you experienced any unexpected benefits from using WHOOP that you didn’t anticipate when you first started using it?

What are different touch points where you interact with WHOOP in your day to day life?
Can you describe your typical day and how WHOOP fits into it?
What was your initial impression when you first started using WHOOP? What made you decide to keep using it?
How often do you check your WHOOP data, and at what times of the day?
Which metrics provided by WHOOP do you find most useful? Why?
Can you give an example of how WHOOP data has influenced a specific decision or change in your lifestyle?
How easy or difficult is it for you to understand the data and insights provided by WHOOP?
What do you interpret through recovery/strain and sleep?
What if a day's recovery is less?
Do notifications make you come back to the app or a habit has formed?
Can you describe a time when WHOOP made you feel a sense of accomplishment or progress?
How do you feel when you look at your WHOOP data? Does it motivate, stress, or encourage you in any way?
Have you noticed any significant changes in your behavior or habits since using WHOOP? Can you give an example?
Which features of the WHOOP app do you use most frequently? Why are these features important to you?
Have you experienced any unexpected benefits from using WHOOP that you didn’t anticipate when you first started using it?

What are different touch points where you interact with WHOOP in your day to day life?
Can you describe your typical day and how WHOOP fits into it?
What was your initial impression when you first started using WHOOP? What made you decide to keep using it?
How often do you check your WHOOP data, and at what times of the day?
Which metrics provided by WHOOP do you find most useful? Why?
Can you give an example of how WHOOP data has influenced a specific decision or change in your lifestyle?
How easy or difficult is it for you to understand the data and insights provided by WHOOP?
What do you interpret through recovery/strain and sleep?
What if a day's recovery is less?
Do notifications make you come back to the app or a habit has formed?
Can you describe a time when WHOOP made you feel a sense of accomplishment or progress?
How do you feel when you look at your WHOOP data? Does it motivate, stress, or encourage you in any way?
Have you noticed any significant changes in your behavior or habits since using WHOOP? Can you give an example?
Which features of the WHOOP app do you use most frequently? Why are these features important to you?
Have you experienced any unexpected benefits from using WHOOP that you didn’t anticipate when you first started using it?

Post all interviews, we concluded some patterns & commonalities across these user interviews.

The WHOOP app was the first thing that they checked after waking up.
They don’t take the WHOOP recommendations seriously.
The metrics impact them psychologically(good or bad).
They started trusting WHOOP because its data was in line with their feelings.
They used WHOOP for two things - monitoring & validating.
1. Monitoring their recovery or HRV.
2. Validating if how they feel is actually true.
They do only some sort of day planning based on their WHOOP data.
Users liked the idea of having a peer group you can check in with daily.

Post all interviews, we concluded some patterns & commonalities across these user interviews.

The WHOOP app was the first thing that they checked after waking up.
They don’t take the WHOOP recommendations seriously.
The metrics impact them psychologically(good or bad).
They started trusting WHOOP because its data was in line with their feelings.
They used WHOOP for two things - monitoring & validating.
1. Monitoring their recovery or HRV.
2. Validating if how they feel is actually true.
They do only some sort of day planning based on their WHOOP data.
Users liked the idea of having a peer group you can check in with daily.

Post all interviews, we concluded some patterns & commonalities across these user interviews.

The WHOOP app was the first thing that they checked after waking up.
They don’t take the WHOOP recommendations seriously.
The metrics impact them psychologically(good or bad).
They started trusting WHOOP because its data was in line with their feelings.
They used WHOOP for two things - monitoring & validating.
1. Monitoring their recovery or HRV.
2. Validating if how they feel is actually true.
They do only some sort of day planning based on their WHOOP data.
Users liked the idea of having a peer group you can check in with daily.

Brainstorming

We took all our data to our office and did an all-hands brainstorming session to figure out the core problems, create heuristics to analyze, and design solutions.

Insights from User Interviews

When a user starts wearing WHOOP, the new concept of using data to validate how one feels is great.

It’s accurate most of the time hence users trust the fitness band more than themselves. It’s almost as if it’s their companion who knows more about them than themselves.

It’s honestly not that it’s really impacting their health. It’s the fact that their feelings are validated. The users want to feel heard. This is the first time they’re able to use accurate data to back their health.

The companion knows how to track things well but it isn’t helping them achieve their goals. This seems to be the next step in the right direction.

The current recommendations provided to users are generic & somewhat irrational if looked at practically. Many users across r/whoop share the feeling of not being able to keep up with the insane ‘sleep requirements’ WHOOP has set.

When a user starts wearing WHOOP, the new concept of using data to validate how one feels is great.

It’s accurate most of the time hence users trust the fitness band more than themselves. It’s almost as if it’s their companion who knows more about them than themselves.

The companion knows how to track things well but it isn’t helping them achieve their goals. This seems to be the next step in the right direction.

When a user starts wearing WHOOP, the new concept of using data to validate how one feels is great.

It’s accurate most of the time hence users trust the fitness band more than themselves. It’s almost as if it’s their companion who knows more about them than themselves.

The companion knows how to track things well but it isn’t helping them achieve their goals. This seems to be the next step in the right direction.

The other nuance is WHOOP users are initially unaware of the metrics presented to them & get educated about them as they track & use it everyday. They compete on metrics that matter to them making it difficult to create a health competition among peers.

The next step here seems to be presenting a simpler & single unified metric which supports overall health & promotes peer-to-peer competition.t a spctr

User Persona

We came up with multiple user personas during our brainstorming session but the conclusion was not a single persona, but a spectrum.

Max Spectrum - The Fitness Enthusiast(10)

These individuals have their health as the #1 priority in their life. They’re already aware of the most important metrics they should be tracking & regularly focus on improving them through proven activities.

They exercise regularly, have great nutrition, and sleep. They would also often participate in athletic events like 10k marathons, triathlons, etc.

Note: These are not ‘professional athletes’ as they’re not focused on optimizing their performance. Just health. Consider Anupam Mittal from Shaadi.com

They exercise regularly, have great nutrition, and sleep. They would also often participate in athletic events like 10k marathons, triathlons, etc.

Note: These are not ‘professional athletes’ as they’re not focused on optimizing their performance. Just health. Consider Anupam Mittal from Shaadi.com

They exercise regularly, have great nutrition, and sleep. They would also often participate in athletic events like 10k marathons, triathlons, etc.

Note: These are not ‘professional athletes’ as they’re not focused on optimizing their performance. Just health. Consider Anupam Mittal from Shaadi.com

Min Spectrum - The Conscious Professional(0)

These are busy professionals occupied with their work who value the importance of prioritizing health. They know they should be doing something about their health but somehow they’re not able to focus on it, maybe because of lack of time or education on what to do.

They don’t exercise enough & are either overweight or obese. They want to do the smallest things possible to change their behavior.

We want to create our application that caters users across this spectrum.

They don’t exercise enough & are either overweight or obese. They want to do the smallest things possible to change their behavior.

We want to create our application that caters users across this spectrum.

They don’t exercise enough & are either overweight or obese. They want to do the smallest things possible to change their behavior.

We want to create our application that caters users across this spectrum.

Opportunities

WHOOP users seem to be very satisfied with the accuracy of tracking. They check it every single morning & trust the numbers are correct.

The product has done a great job creating something that users can always trust.

WHOOP users seem to be very satisfied with the accuracy of tracking. They check it every single morning & trust the numbers are correct.

The product has done a great job creating something that users can always trust.

WHOOP users seem to be very satisfied with the accuracy of tracking. They check it every single morning & trust the numbers are correct.

The product has done a great job creating something that users can always trust.

Not Solved

Nutrition

A big part of health & fitness is nutrition. WHOOP has not involved nutrition in their tracking yet. Users need to fill forms/guess why something they ate could have caused the metrics to change.

Nutrition

A big part of health & fitness is nutrition. WHOOP has not involved nutrition in their tracking yet. Users need to fill forms/guess why something they ate could have caused the metrics to change.

Nutrition

A big part of health & fitness is nutrition. WHOOP has not involved nutrition in their tracking yet. Users need to fill forms/guess why something they ate could have caused the metrics to change.

Mental Health

Another big part of health & fitness is mental health. WHOOP as a product doesn’t seem to put it at its primary focus. After taking user interviews, we realized that people appreciate how Apple understands if they’re stressed and ask them to take a deep breath.

WHOOP already has this data but doesn’t do much about it.

Mental Health

WHOOP already has this data but doesn’t do much about it.

Mental Health

WHOOP already has this data but doesn’t do much about it.

Somewhat Solved

Recommendations

A pattern observed across all user interviews was that they don’t pay much attention to the recommendations provided by WHOOP. The reasons were mostly that they seemed impractical and not actionable based on their lifestyle.

WHOOP users often complain about the ‘high standards’ of sleep set by the app.

Users also feel bad when they can’t seem to meet the standards set by the app.

This seems to be a huge problem: users trust the device because of its accuracy but seem to hate it because of the ‘unachievable’ goals it sets for them.

Simplicity

Everyone’s goal is different. Some track HRV. Some track recovery. Some track strain.

During the user interviews, some people said they liked a more relaxed lifestyle hence they track recovery more.

Some might like to track what their HRV is because they want a healthy life in general.

This is great but there’s no single metric that users can track & compete with others on.

Most multiplayer games use this concept of having a universal score that people can compete against.

This is the concept of ELO which is missing in WHOOP at the moment.

All of them have ONE metric all the players compete on. It is currently missing in WHOOP.

Solution 1 - Helium Score

There are two metrics: true metrics & derived metrics.

True metrics consist of metrics like calories burnt, sleep debt, respiratory rate, etc.

These are factual metrics which are scientifically found.

Derived metrics are metrics that are derived from true metrics. Some examples from WHOOP might include recovery score, strain, etc.

Eg. Recovery Score:

Solution 1 - Helium Score

There are two metrics: true metrics & derived metrics.

True metrics consist of metrics like calories burnt, sleep debt, respiratory rate, etc.

These are factual metrics which are scientifically found.

Derived metrics are metrics that are derived from true metrics. Some examples from WHOOP might include recovery score, strain, etc.

Eg. Recovery Score:

These derived metrics are created to make it easier for users to make sense of the true metrics. Most people aren’t aware of what true metrics mean & what they should conclude of them but these derived metrics give them a sense of understanding how everything ties in.

What do users need?

From our user interviews, we realized users need three things:

A planning metric to plan their day based on yesterday’s activity.
A planning metric to get feedback on their nutrition.
A planning metric to get feedback on how they slept.
A reflection metric to see how they did in a day.

Introducing the Helium Score.

The Helium Score is the one true derived metric that all Helium users compete on. It is an ELO system created by Helium.

The HS will give everyone a fair opportunity & motivation to compete on overall health versus metrics they pick themselves.

The Helium Score will be derived from multiple true metrics.

Every single day, individuals will check their HS to see how they did yesterday.

We can also have the concept of a leaderboard showing global & local HS. Here’s how Chess.com does it:

Apart from the unified Helium Score, users get access to three important metrics along with HS:

Energy Score
Nutrition Score
Sleep Score
Activity Score

Energy Score

Users plan their day based on their recovery score in WHOOP. It’s a similar concept but reversed.

Rather than showing recovery, we want to show the benefit of that recovery i.e. energy.

WHOOP users estimate what the recovery means i.e. what changes they need to make in their workouts.

The alternative is showing them the overall energy they have to spend the entire day. The more they spend = the more sleep they have.

More advanced users can dive deep into what exactly energy means by seeing true metrics like HRV, RR, RHR, sleep debt, etc.

Nutrition Score

We can implement skin touch glucose monitoring sensors on the band. This will allow us to find glucose spikes in their entire day hence helping us calculate the nutrition score.

The nutrition score is purely for feedback. Based on the tech, here are two thoughts:

Users might be aware of food that triggers glucose spikes. We can give them instant haptic feedback that what they ate triggered their glucose.

Pro: They instantly know what foods to avoid.

Con: They love eating something but the haptic feedback turns off their mood.

The alternative is showing them Nutrition Score next day showing a graph when their glucose spiked in a subtle way.

Both approaches work based on what tech is available to us.

Sleep Score

Pretty straightforward. Users can see how they slept the next day by reviewing their sleep score.

The same concept as offered by WHOOP

Activity Score

While the first three are ‘planning’ metrics. The Activity Score is a reflection metric. A similar concept to Strain, AS is the overall activity they did during the day. The more the better.

User interviews told us that they love seeing how they performed at the end of the day. This is a dynamic score that changes every moment versus the others that are calculated the next morning.

Solution 2 - Helium Projects

The core problem with WHOOP recommendations is:

Users don’t care about those recommendations because it is not relevant to them.
The recommendations are ‘unreasonable’ even if users want to push towards them.

Let’s take John Doe(redacted user name) as an example. He was told that his VO2 is low hence he needs to focus on it. The doctor recommended him to do regular cardio & spend time in zone 3.

John loves seeing that he was in Zone 3 during an extended period of time & it’s a priority for him.

WHOOP has the capabilities to provide insights to improve VO2 but doesn’t. This is because they don’t know it’s a priority for him.

Even if something is a priority for someone, there is no easy & actionable next step to just be a little bit closer to the goal.

The core problem with WHOOP recommendations is:

Users don’t care about those recommendations because it is not relevant to them.
The recommendations are ‘unreasonable’ even if users want to push towards them.

Let’s take John Doe(redacted user name) as an example. He was told that his VO2 is low hence he needs to focus on it. The doctor recommended him to do regular cardio & spend time in zone 3.

John loves seeing that he was in Zone 3 during an extended period of time & it’s a priority for him.

WHOOP has the capabilities to provide insights to improve VO2 but doesn’t. This is because they don’t know it’s a priority for him.

Even if something is a priority for someone, there is no easy & actionable next step to just be a little bit closer to the goal.

The core problem with WHOOP recommendations is:

Users don’t care about those recommendations because it is not relevant to them.
The recommendations are ‘unreasonable’ even if users want to push towards them.

Let’s take John Doe(redacted user name) as an example. He was told that his VO2 is low hence he needs to focus on it. The doctor recommended him to do regular cardio & spend time in zone 3.

John loves seeing that he was in Zone 3 during an extended period of time & it’s a priority for him.

WHOOP has the capabilities to provide insights to improve VO2 but doesn’t. This is because they don’t know it’s a priority for him.

Even if something is a priority for someone, there is no easy & actionable next step to just be a little bit closer to the goal.

This brings the idea of Helium Projects:

Helium Projects are bite-sized health goals individuals can work on. The Helium app can recommend projects based on the concerning metrics of the user or the user can create new Helium projects to work on.

The goal is simple, once the Helium Score becomes a gamified number, users can complete Helium Projects to improve their HS.

This not only motivates users with a clear outcome but it also provides ‘baby-steps’ that will not disrupt their life in any way. They complete challenges to reach the next level.

It’s essentially a game. They are the heroes. The 100/100 unified score is their north star metric. They do challenge increasing levels of difficulty to reach the north star metric.

Our goal is to recommend and create challenges based on their HS. A person with 50/100 HS will probably have much simpler challenges to progress versus a person with 80/100 HS.