Alkeme Health
Alkeme Health, a new startup focused around he mental health and wellness of Black people, is looking to dive into better understanding its users, their needs, as well as how they as a company fit in the mental health community. With products and services ready to launch, Alkeme is also looking for a way to validate them.
The Details
My Role
Lead/Sole UX Researcher
Tools:
Typeform
Google Docs
Figma
Excel
Alkeme Health Overview
Alkeme Health is a digital health company eliminating disparities from the healthcare system, starting with a mental health platform that centers on the Black experience. As a new company founded in 2020, Alkeme is working daily to better understand the disparities in healthcare and how those disparities are affecting Black people. As Alkeme aims to move forward with programs, products and other services, they pulled me in to serve as Lead UX Researcher to help facilitate research efforts.
What I Wanted to Learn
Upon joining Alkeme, the team was already gearing up to launch a set of products and services. Due to the fact that no prior research or product validation had been done, I directed the team to hold off on product and service launches until after we learned more about who our potential customers were and what they were looking for in solutions.
I thought it was best to start with an overall audience survey to really understand the people who were already supporters of what the company was doing. Up until this point, Alkeme had been teasing the brand as a mental health company for Black millennials. They’d been sharing content around the brands mission and values to attract an audience, as well as building a mailing list from a landing page.
I wanted to use this as a research opportunity to understand Black millennials, but not just as it related to mental health. I wanted to really understand them. What is their typical day to day like? What kind of jobs do they hold? What are they doing for fun? Everything was on the table.
The Initial Survey
I wanted to understand Black millennials and their relationship with health, wellness, and mental health. I also wanted to understand how and if they’ve addressed these aspects in the past, and how they’d like to address it moving forward. I used generative research techniques to better understand the day to day experiences of Black millennials as they move throughout the world.
From here I constructed a research plan. I took note of things like participants, timelines, budgets, and recommended tools to use for the surveys and interviews. After getting sign off from the team and everything needed to get started, we began surveying our audience.
-
of our audience at that time identified their sexual orientation as "straight"
-
are more proactive when it comes to their mental and physical health
-
was a common reply to how people were coping with life's many adversities
-
was a common reply to how people are maintaining good mental health
Personas
After gathering data, we learned exactly who our current audience was, how they were thinking about their overall health, as well as the methods they’re taking to address it. From there I began creating personas. Creating personas was important for a few reasons:
It would serve as a research asset for the entire team to learn from and understand at a glance who the Alkeme audience is
It becomes a powerful asset for explaining the Alkeme audience to new team members who join
It’s a must have in pitch decks when going out to secure funding from investors
Over time as we learned new key information about our audience, personas were updated to reflect those findings. They’ve been used in decks, meetings, and as an asset to explain the depth and variety of their audience.
As of today Alkeme Health has secured over $4Million in funding.
Product Validation
Prior to my joining the company, the team already had a few ideas for initial products and services to roll out to their audience. The first set of product offerings were meditation and group therapy based services called “Waves”, “Volumes” and “Labs”. We learned in our previous survey that one of the ways the Alkeme audience was maintaining their mental health was with meditation and therapy. With that, I felt this would be a good time to get the products and services out to a selected group from our audience and get feedback on them.
What We Wanted to Learn
The purpose of this study was to understand how the Alkeme meditation and group therapy product offerings were being received and resonating with users. I used generative research techniques to better understand if we’re on target or missing the mark with our audience. I also wanted to understand what similar products or services they had used in the past to achieve their meditation and therapy goals.
Success Metrics
Going into the surveys we set a few success metrics for ourselves to clearly call out what success meant to us. This was important to push the team on so that once our feedback was received, we wouldn't be clouded by any positive or negative feedback and blindly use that as a measurement of meeting or missing the mark. A few of those metrics were as follows:
Are the current product offering meeting the expectations of users?
Are users able to receive all of their therapy and meditation needs from Alkeme?
Would users coming back to Alkeme for their therapy and meditation needs or are they going somewhere else to supplement?
Survey Results and Insights
Insight 1
About half of our users did not have the time or discipline to meditate which is why they didn’t. Responses like “making time” and “improving my sleep habit to wake up earlier daily” are repeated themes as to why people do not have the time or discipline to meditate regularly.
Takeaway: I directed the company to think through possible solutions to help users “make time” and become more disciplined in order to ensure their participation in daily guided meditation. To simply put a product in front of users, will not ensure that they actually use it. We needed to understand how users were currently scheduling and following through on self care during their day and week. This would allow us to understand how we might be able to leverage some of those methodologies for Alkeme.
Insight 2
From the survey, we learned that most people were meditating in the morning “when everything is quiet and still”, “to start the day”, “before their kids wake up”, etc. We also learned that some people ended their day with meditation to “wind down”, and others as sleep meditation.
Takeaway: I wanted us to further explore the impact of scheduled meditation on one's day. For example, what impact does morning meditation have on the rest of one's day? We’d also needed to understand and be walked through scenarios in which meditation is not scheduled and exactly what triggers this unscheduled meditation.
Insight 3
About 30% of users said the soundscape was not a good fit for them. Although about 70% said the soundscape was a good fit, we not only wanted to dive into that 30%, but also understand what kind of soundscapes users are currently finding success with in their own meditation practices.
Takeaway: We needed to understand what kind of soundscape (if any) resonates with users and allows them to get the most out of their meditation sessions.
Next Steps
From there I wanted to take the research a step further and talk to some of these people to dig deeper into their responses from the surveys. I decided to create two sets of interview questions for two different user types: those who currently meditate, and those who do not. Unfortunately, due to time constraints beyond my control, we were unable to complete the interviews. Completing the interviews would have allowed us to pull out additional insights and draw even better connections. I informed the team of the impact of this loss however time just wouldn’t allow
Competitive Analysis
Another thing I knew the company could benefit from, especially at its’ early stage, was a competitive analysis of mental health companies. Not only would the data serve as talking points for the CEO during meetings, pitches, etc. but it would allow the entire team to see who our competitors are as well as identify the areas of opportunity .
The Strategy
I included eight companies that we as a team thought would be good to start with. Through this exercise we learned so much like:
Pricing strategies
How companies have pivoted their services due to Covid-19
What offerings they have in addition to mental health services
What kind of social media presence they have and what posts were performing the best
Who their target audience was
Key competitive advantages they might have over us
How and where they’re selling to customers
Being able to identify their key weaknesses in the market
My “Aha” Moment
This exercise sparked so many conversations and future products. We also talked about indirect competitors like churches. This sparked a larger conversation around not limiting our thinking as it relates to mental health and the Black community as traditionally churches have been used as a form of therapy. This led to a conversation around expanding the Alkeme target age range to those who are most active in church: often people over 45.
The important thing I realized here was that it was my idea to put together this competitive analysis that provided the team with the foresight to expand our offerings to other age groups. This turned out to be pivotal in that the main thing that we realized was that although it’s important to start with a core audience and create for them, the more you only focus on that audience, the more you could be limiting yourself.
Additional Research Responsibilities
Weekly Tasks
A few things I was also tasked with included:
Pulling stats for Black mental health over the last 5 years that would be used in pitch decks
Compiling notes from the team around our feedback from our virtual events and sharing those out
Social Media Direction
With my personal experience in social media marketing and graphic design, I was also tasked with creating Instagram story templates to be used by the team. I created a short visual do’s and don’t list for the social media marketer around how to use the graphics. I included things like how best to repost Instagram live videos so the posts remain aesthetically pleasing and how to use the template to post polls and ask questions.
Example taken from an Instagram content guidance document I put together
Preparing the Team For My Departure
At the time of my departure from the team, my position had not been backfilled so I wanted to leave the team with my closing thoughts as well as next steps as they continue research. For this document I thought it was important to lay out the following:
Recap what had been done from a research standpoint over the three months I was there. I covered:
Audience
Social Media
Competitors
I then moved over to where I thought the team should continue with the research. I included things like:
Continuing to test products and services. I highlighted that although this had been done, as our audience grows and products/services change, it’s important to keep our information up to date
Creating a plan for testing price points
Begin outreach with the LGBTQ+ community to better understand their mental health needs. We got a start on this, but this work needs to continue.
Begin outreach with members of the differently abled and hard of hearing communities.
Looking Back
Working as the lead and sole UX Researcher was beneficial in my personal and professional growth for a few reasons. The first aspect that I quickly realized around week two of my service there was that this role was pulling out skills I didn't get to use in my full time role. Things like writing and presenting report outs to the team, working directly with the CEO to provide insights to help secure funding, and not having other UX coworkers to consult with were all positive to me. One might ask, “How was it a positive to not have other researchers to consult with?” What I realized during this time was that when you work on a large team, roles and responsibilities are divided up and oftentimes you are not responsible for every aspect of a project.
With me being exposed to all parts of the business and sitting in on meetings that did not directly impact me, it allowed me to have a birds eye view of the company and its’ goals. With that, I was not only fixated on what I was solely responsible for. This left me feeling empowered and knowledgeable to be able to do my job effectively. Had I stayed on and additional UX support had come aboard, that would have been great. We would have been able to conduct more research, test more frequently, and move quickly. However, my takeaway was that I took on research responsibilities for a new startup and I alone had the power to get it done.