These are our beta testers after using our new digital health proof of concept Sproutiful for a week. When tracking your food is this easy, you can think more consciously about what you eat, add more plant variety to your meals, and boost your overall well being.
We know it’s incredibly hard to deliver a great individual digital health experience, at scale. How do you make a service that stays fantastic for each user, that they’ll stick with? You need a different approach.
I’m Nicki Sprinz, CEO of ustwo, and I took on the role of client for Sproutiful, which tackles this ever-present dilemma. We’re excited about it because:
- it will provide a more accessible and engaging experience in a crucial and timely area of healthcare: gut health
- it’s designed to help users stay engaged and overcome typical barriers to adherence like uploading information and understanding individual needs
- our team used AI to build it in only 8 weeks
And I’m a happy client. In beta testing, 75% of users ate a greater variety of plants than before using the app. And 66% agreed or strongly agreed that they’d want to use the app in future.
Why we chose gut health
‘You are what you eat’ has never been more true. There is increasing investment in gut health research, driven by a rising consumer interest from the uptick in fermented foods to a recent Netflix documentary Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut.
New studies and discoveries show just how critical your gut biome is for your overall health, and we have more and more insight into factors that influence the composition of our microbiome, such as diet, exercise, environment and comorbidities like mental health or autoimmune disorders.
So we felt that the ‘second brain’ offered the perfect context in which to explore motivation and ongoing engagement.
Digital health experiences have promised a lot. Better access to healthcare and engagement, improved patient outcomes and efficiency of care delivery, and driving down healthcare costs. But they can be out of reach for many people due to a lack of financial resources or time, and manually logging progress can be error prone and inflexible.
All of this means that great services need to be tailored to the individual, and that’s really hard to do at scale. But it isn’t impossible.
How to build an AI proof of concept in 8 weeks
Our team chose to directly address key principles of adherence - we believe they are essential in creating behaviour change. How might we make it easy? How might we make it rewarding? How might we help users commit?
Our approach was to design for all by asking the right questions, combine creativity with AI from the start, and speed to value.
1.Design for all by asking the right questions
We knew that users found digital health great at the start, but later found it taxing as time progressed. Some digital health services have high churn rates due to high cost, the pain of manual logging, and reaching a point of no new information. So the team asked: what if we evolved the experience to meet the user’s context? Could an experience that evolves with user needs and behaviours prevent them from reaching the tipping point of boredom?
The ustwo team also knew that gut health is often a luxury only a small minority can afford. So they asked: what if we made gut health accessible and inclusive? Could we speak to people in different ways and attract a new audience to gut health, ultimately showing the ability to impact more lives?
And it was clear that tracking and logging behaviour involved a high degree of manual effort, which was a blocker to delivering accurate and personalised information. So the team asked: what if an experience was supercharged by AI? Could AI remove friction and make the experience easier, intuitive and more personal?
2. Combine creativity, coaching and AI from the start
Our approach with Sproutiful was to make, test and learn. The team built prototypes quickly, collected and analysed data, performed hypothesis-driven testing, and iterated responsively. And from day one we brought in coaching expertise from Harvard Medical School’s Dr Om Lala to apply Motivational Interviewing, an evidence-based coaching method that helps people achieve their goals by drawing on intrinsic motivation, meeting people where they are, and leaning into ambivalence.
In parallel, we experimented and trained an AI model from day one to help define and refine the user opportunity. This allowed us to conduct generative interviews and moderated testing in a short timeframe.
Leveraging AI doesn’t mean compromising on user feedback. Generative interviews, moderated testing and a small beta programme were all conducted in Sproutiful’s 8- week timeframe. Experimenting and training the AI model ran in parallel to defining the user opportunity.
Leveraging AI doesn’t mean replacing human creativity in the product’s development, either. Sproutiful wouldn’t be the same delightful experience without the human touch and work of our designers.
The insight is that AI is a tool, rather than a product in its own right. True value lies in its purposeful application. By focusing on the biggest challenges and tailoring AI applications to meet those specific needs, you can create impactful, scalable solutions.
3. Speed to value
Previously, creating a framework to deliver personalisation would have been complex and time-consuming. When we use AI correctly, it can do a lot of the heavy lifting for us to personalise the service to each individual user.
For instance, in training Sproutiful to respond to certain actions, we took OpenAI’s GPT creator feature, added more layers to it and integrated it into the app experience so that it became more than just a basic chat function.
“You can do this in a very scrappy way – but our version of ‘scrappy’ is still very polished.”
AI also reduces the requirements for building longer user journeys and simplifies introducing new capabilities. A lighter product equals speed and reduced maintenance.
Working like this on Sproutiful meant we could combine a customer’s early-stage vision with our ability to rapidly pilot. The result: stakeholders now get it. They can see the risks and potential. Confidence is built. Suddenly, everyone’s itching to launch. Nothing gets buy-in like an early-stage new service in the market.
Purposeful AI
The Sproutiful app serves as a smart companion, guiding users toward better food choices, optimising their gut microbiome, and enhancing overall wellbeing. It starts with a simple plan to boost plant diversity in the diet and provides continuous coaching to help users track progress and uncover new insights.
Sproutiful captures data and tracks behaviour: streamlined, multimodal AI-driven tracking makes it easier for users to log what they’re eating. It curates personalised recommendations based on continuous behavioural data ensure a tailored experience and keep users engaged.
Sproutiful coaches users: Scalable, AI-powered motivational support and scientifically-evidenced coaching techniques help people commit to their goals.
AI makes the app more approachable: there is less of a learning curve and users can naturally talk, type, or show the app with limited context and it can fill in the blanks.
Positive impact
At ustwo we’re utterly committed to making healthcare more accessible, and our track record is strong.
Sproutiful builds on ustwo’s portfolio of healthcare projects that harness AI and digital solutions to boost patient outcomes, reduce healthcare costs, and streamline care delivery. We’ve helped Novo Nordisk, Lilly, Google Fitbit, Peloton, Helios Health, and The Body Coach solve real user challenges, remove barriers and create products that people love to use.
The underlying barriers we saw while developing Sproutiful - tracking, motivation and discovery/novelty - apply across many industries. As do the opportunities to create deeper user engagement and healthy and sustainable behaviour change.
To explore opportunities together, experiment with AI and accelerate growth, drop us a line at hello@ustwo.com.
For me, it’s been brilliant to act as the client on an ustwo project. I can now see why our clients say that we're true partners. What I love about Sproutiful is the way it fits into your life. It’s motivating: it gives me energy rather than draining it away.