Creating an actionable care plan leveraging recommendations unique to a users' oral microbiome.
Bristle users receive an at-home kit and send a spit sample back to Bristle to be analyzed in their lab.
Bristle then provides health insights showing the most prominent bacteria in a user’s microbiome to help find and fix the root cause of oral conditions like bad breath, chronic tooth decay, and gum inflammation, all without a visit to the dentist’s office.
Bristle generates targeted diet and lifestyle recommendations based on a user's spit swab results, but they need to be organized in a way that is clear and actionable for users.
Structure the currently disjoined recommendations as a comprehensive and actionable care routine.
Adoption of recommended products and care plan as a whole and driving users to re-test.
4 months
Lead product designer: Libby Abizaid (me!)
CEO: Danny
Lead software engineer: Carmen
Head of Community & Care: Iman
Of their acute sufferers, customer surveys showed that a significant majority suffered from Halitosis, or chronic bad breath. The next phase of Bristle's product evolution was targeting this majority.
Bristle had 2,500 active users. Their original user flow was solely based on results— users purchased a test, sent their swab, and then could access a breakdown of their analyzed oral microbiome.
From survey feedback Bristle knew that the majority of users were coming to treat their halitosis. Bristle was in the process of creating programs to tackle specific oral health conditions.
Their new business model would have users purchase two tests, a before and after. After taking the first test and reviewing the results and care plan with a coach, users would be expected to adopt recommendations and re-tests after 3 to 6 months.
Bristle's new feature, "Recommendations," was located at the bottom of their test breakdown.
Using high level logic their test results generated fifteen to twenty diet, lifestyle, and supplement recommendations specific to each users' oral microbiome.
Users were also given an extensive health care plan document after having their 1:1 coaching call. This care plan was written by their coach and more comprehensive, personalized, and regimented.
What Bristle needed was something in the middle of these two care plans. The goal was to optimize care plans for actionability (doing what they tell people to do) and adherence (motivating people to stick to the regimen). My task was to design a new care plan for users to unite and improve the two that they already had.
I conducted an audit of Bristle's current care portal. I reviewed it against Nielson Norman’s 12 UX principles to give it an overall usability score and pin pointed the top issues.
As a startup, Bristle had limited resources for new customer research so I drew heavily on competitors and best in class health tech.
Direct: OralDNA, MicrobeDx, Viome
Inspiration: Evvy, TinyHealth, 23andMe
I envisioned a care plan that landed somewhere in between the list of recommendations and the comprehensive care document. I shared early wireframes with the team and they loved the direction.
After sharing early wireframes with the team I started building my designs out in Figma. We worked collaboratively and went back and forth on Figma comments between Zoom design reviews.
I worked closely with Iman, one of Bristle’s health coaches and head of Community and Care, to ensure that the health plan I was creating was consistent with what their coaching offered.
The personalized recommendations were reorganized into groupings— lifestyle, diet, and supplements. They were laid out as a prescriptive daily schedule for users to adhere to.
Users could click into the recommendations summary cards for more detailed information, including research, references, and recommended products.
The new product recommendations section gave Bristle a way to push partnered products. For example, users could now purchase suggested supplements in app.
Bristle's goal was to position themselves as a long term health partner rather than a one time health test.
By surfacing and pushing continued testing and 1:1 health coaching calls, the new health plan encouraged users to continue seeking care and checking back in on their results and progress.
Check out my other case study to see the goals and phases feature!
The next feature in Bristle's strategy is allowing users to compare multiple test results over time. More to come!
