New Features and a Smartwatch App to Increase MAU of a Health Tracking App by 15%

About Our Client

The Client is a provider of a comprehensive health tracking app with millions of users worldwide. The Client offers GDPR-compliant iOS and Android apps to track dozens of parameters, including physical activity and mood changes, and health state.

To stay ahead of the competition, the Client was looking to enhance the functionality of its product and decided to extend the in-house mobile development team with highly qualified resources.

Team Augmentation to Launch New Product Features Faster

Trusting ScienceSoft’s track record in mobile and healthcare software development, the Client decided to hire two Android and two iOS developers.

In under a week, ScienceSoft’s talents joined the project. After a quick onboarding period, they began to deal with the feature backlog and implement new functionality and integrations. The Client was satisfied with the technical skills, productivity, and proactive approach of ScienceSoft’s developers. The company decided to extend the initial short-term outsourcing contract, and eventually, its partnership with ScienceSoft lasted for over two years.

Working together with the Client’s core team, ScienceSoft delivered the following features for the health tracking app:

Usability improvements

ScienceSoft upgraded the app’s navigation, localization, and added new in-app notifications.

UI changes

The team implemented a new UI design system for the app: replaced the colors, applied dedicated text styles to the content elements, and automated UI updates.

Dynamic in-app widgets

The developers added new scrollable widgets to the main application screen. Built on the server-driven UI pattern, the widgets are dynamic and display a range of parameters unique to each user (e.g., the logged symptoms). They also provide convenient shortcuts to the lifestyle log, symptom analytics, educational content, etc.

User account anonymization

To heighten data privacy, the developers implemented user account anonymization via a dedicated Relay server and Oblivious HTTP protocol. It helped the Client increase user trust and satisfaction with its product.

A/B Testing to Ensure Excellent User Experience

To make sure the users liked the new features, ScienceSoft’s team helped conduct A/B testing of the latest features and the UI layout. Using feature flags, ScienceSoft turned on the experimental functionality or UI option for a randomly selected focus group and collected the interaction and engagement metrics.

Based on the collected parameters, the Client assessed the success or failure of a new feature and decided on whether to roll it out to all app users.

New Complementary App for Wear OS Smartwatches

Following the Client’s growth strategy, ScienceSoft’s talents took part in the development of a complementary Wear OS app for smartwatches.

ScienceSoft helped deliver the following app features:

• Logging in and out using a mobile app via a Health Platform API integration.
• Reading, saving, and processing the activity data from smartwatch sensors (e.g., steps taken, distance covered, calories burned).
• Logging and editing the symptoms using smartwatches.
• Changing the smartwatch app settings.

The app’s UI was adapted to both standard and rounded corners of smartwatches, so the features were displayed correctly on different wearable devices.

Timely Feature Delivery and UX Improvements Driving a 15% MAU Increase

During the two-year collaboration with ScienceSoft, the Client introduced a range of new features and UI improvements for its health app without the need to hire full-time Android and iOS developers to keep up the delivery pace. ScienceSoft’s talents also helped launch a complementary app for Wear OS smartwatches, making the Client’s platform even more convenient for users. This resulted in increased user engagement and steady MAU (monthly active users) growth of 15%.

Technologies and Tools

iOS: Swift.

Android: Retrofit, Dagger, Epoxy.