Putting The Customer First: Jobs-To-Be-Done

Matt Barthelemy at UXDX Europe. Video: https://youtu.be/JRXUZWhGjgk

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Fitbit in context

[00:00:07] Is this on? Just for the record, I would rather be here than in the coffin. Thanks, Jay, thanks, Rory. I'm going to get that third round of applause by thanking Charlotte, Katherine and the entire staff that has put this together. It's a massive effort, so thank you very much. All right, I'm Matt Barthelemy, and I'm going to tell some stories from Fitbit. I'm going to start with some context; I think context is very helpful for understanding. Fitbit has really just an 11-year history, which is pretty short in the span of things. The company was founded in 2007, and that's when the first iPhone came out. There have been massive changes in 11 years. In 2006, if I had said to a friend, "I really want to get a tracker for my wife, and ideally one that she's comfortable taking to bed every night," that would have been a really weird conversation. But now that's part of a normal conversation.

[00:01:17] We're the number one brand in wearables; we basically invented the category. We have over 25 million active users and counting, and that's growing, thankfully. We have tracked more than 6 billion nights of sleep. For context, Fitbit has tracked more nights of sleep than all the sleep centers that do sleep studies around the world, which is pretty massive. It's big data, or huge data. That data is all anonymized, but it teaches us about people, and it allows us to create algorithms that can detect serious health conditions. We've already said that we can detect signs of apnea, signs of AFib and other life-threatening conditions. More on that. We can now offer human coaching, actually one-to-one or one-to-many coaching from an actual human coach, and also programs that we've built that a coach can leverage with a user. And we're leaning into condition management; I'll talk more about that.

[00:02:25] We've had countless lives improved and countless lives saved. We get stories all the time. People write in to us and tell us stories about how their Fitbit saved their lives. We have medical professionals who've said, "If it wasn't for your Fitbit, you wouldn't be standing here right now. You'd be in a coffin." So that's a little context about Fitbit. Fitbit's vision is to make everyone in the world healthier. It sounds like a simple phrase, and I think it's simple but powerful, and that's what motivates us to do the work that we do.

The past: a single thread of fitness

[00:03:02] I'm going to break this up into three chunks: a little bit about the past, mostly about the present and then a little bit about the future. The first chunk: I think of the early years of Fitbit, the foundational years, as mostly unidirectional. Here's an image of the product lineup from that point. We talked about the Fitbit family, and it's really a family in the sense of a line of products. But I would challenge that it doesn't really speak to family in the sense of a human family. I don't know that we were addressing everybody in most people's families. There's also a clear thread about fitness. It actually lists all these subcategories of fitness: everyday fitness, active fitness, performance fitness. I like that there's a subcategory called Wi-Fi. I'm also glad that the scale wasn't shown to scale. Anyway, that's how we got to 2016, with this more or less singular thread.

The present: adding wellness and health

[00:04:11] Today and the very recent past: I would say that we're becoming multidirectional. We're adding vectors to this more singular line of fitness. If you think about the core, Fitbit was trying to raise awareness, if we go back ten years or so. Why is fitness important? Why is getting 10,000 steps beneficial? Why should you think about the amount of sleep you get or the quality of the sleep you get? This leads to improved behaviors: getting up, getting active, trying to get to bed half an hour earlier. And this helps people achieve better fitness. The vectors we're adding are, first, wellness. That's radiating out from general fitness to improved wellness, and we'll talk more about this. And then actual health. Fitness and wellness are not the same; fitness and health are not the same. So we're trying to look at a more holistic picture of how we can help people.

[00:05:18] Thinking about the wellness part, one of the things we leaned into was trying to understand stress. These are challenges we all face. I faced stress getting here this morning. Stress is not inherently bad, but unmitigated stress, or chronic stress, is stress that people feel like they can't manage or do anything about. I was able to get a taxi, I was able to get here, I was able to manage it, so it's okay. Actually, this whiteboard is a little bit stressful. We're trying to get the whole picture of what people are dealing with on a day-to-day basis. We do a lot of primary and secondary research. We want to understand the conditions that the people we're trying to help are living in: where are they, and what can we do? In this case, reducing stress. If you take an aspirin and make the pain go away, it doesn't uplift your spirit. But if you can make stress go down, it actually uplifts your spirit. There's a teeter-totter effect. So in this case we were actually looking at whether we could help people enjoy life more and feel happier, which is awesome.

[00:06:28] People who don't know how to manage their stress report that they feel helpless. They don't know what to do. Again, this is the condition that many people are living in, so we're understanding the context. We ask people what brought them to Fitbit and what keeps them motivated and working with Fitbit, and these are the top items that people tell us. Not a big surprise: the three at the bottom are probably what you would guess. But I think the middle part really speaks to wellness. People are saying, "I have a real motivation to have improved wellness." I'm putting that label on it, but that's how I view those four in the middle. Emotional well-being and reducing stress are the ones that we keyed into for what I'm going to talk to you about.

Stress, heart rate variability and Relax

[00:07:20] We also try to educate ourselves about the physiology: what's happening when people are dealing with stress? There are a lot of biomarkers that indicate people are under stress, but they are many and varied, and it's hard to really key on exactly the right marker, the right metric. But we did find that increased heart rate variability, HRV, is actually a good indicator of how you're doing with stress, or how stress is affecting your body. I found heart rate variability very interesting, because on the face of it, when you say heart rate variability, to me it sounds like a bad thing. But actually heart rate variability is a good thing. If you have this natural variability in the rhythm of your heartbeat, it's actually a sign that your body is functioning well. What we learned, and we didn't invent this, is that paced breathing can actually enhance your heart rate variability. It calms things down and gets your system working in a better, more even fashion. And there were some very simple things that we could do. This was a discovery: wow, this is an actual intervention that we could do to help people.

[00:08:33] We're also looking at what the recommendation from experts is. We think about mindfulness as a component of well-being, and we've learned from experts in the field, and there's a ton of research on mindfulness, that small interventions can be especially helpful. There was another component which was interesting for a company with our background, where it's so much about metrics, like did you get your step goal today, or did you get your sleep goal today. In a sense, there shouldn't be a metric. You're not trying to achieve a metric or a score for mindfulness. So we had to separate ourselves from trying to achieve a metric, and focus on helping people just feel better.

[00:09:25] So we did what I think is a simple but powerful intervention. It's the Relax app. On your Fitbit smartwatch, you can just do a two-minute breathing exercise. Because we know what's happening with your body, we have sensors on the watch, we can monitor how you're doing. You do a simple guided breathing exercise, and it's been shown to be effective, and people have responded incredibly well. Again, a small intervention, but it's making a difference for people.

Understanding women's health and wellness

[00:09:59] Building on this idea of fitness and wellness and health, we set up a project to make a concerted effort to understand more about what's happening in women's lives: women's health and wellness, etc. As we've said, fitness is great, absolutely, but fitness isn't everything. The sad picture on the left: "I'm very fit, but I'm not happy." Fitness is a component of health and wellness, but it's not everything. The community aspect, a general feeling of well-being, is very powerful. Again, we're trying to understand the context of our users. Pursuing fitness and wellness involves a lot of trade-offs. We all face this: "I wanted to go for a run or have a workout, but I worked late and I feel like I can't, so I put it off." The women that we were talking to talked a lot about this. Some of these women feel like they're caretakers, to a partner, to children, etc., and they actually feel guilty about having that time for themselves, but that time is helping with their health and wellness. So it's a struggle. Again, we were trying to understand the context.

[00:11:23] We did a lot of interviews with women. One of the things we learned was that community and support is huge. Not a big surprise, but it's huge. We have running groups and running clubs and workout clubs, etc., and people reported that those were super helpful for them. They helped keep them accountable and gave them a community to work in; if they were lagging, somebody could encourage them. Within Fitbit, we could do a whole segment on Fitbit's community effort. We have what's been billed as the most positive social network. We have a whole community segment within our app: there are forums, there are groups, people can create groups, people can sign up to challenges, you can invite friends. We know from research that this is hugely helpful for people, just having that sense of community, whether it's a literal face-to-face community or an online community. We could talk more about that.

[00:12:30] Another aspect for women, with their health, wellness and fitness, was their menstrual cycle. A lot of women talked about how it impacts them day to day, month to month: how things change, the difference in mood, or the difference in physical ability, or tiredness, energy, etc. People talked about all these different ways that they kept track of it. Some people kept a spreadsheet, other people would put a note on the calendar one day a month, and other people didn't really track it or think that much about it. So there's a huge span in how people were dealing with and thinking about this part of their lives. But it was very clear that it was a big part of the health, wellness and fitness picture for women.

Designing female health tracking

[00:13:27] So we decided we're going to lean into this, and we're going to integrate women's reproductive health tracking into the core app and into the smartwatch experience. I would like you to meet the lead designer on this. This is Garrett. You might think, "Wait, you had a guy leading the design effort?" In my view, that's actually a great way to go about it. He was not designing for himself, believe me. He's a great designer, and he brings his great process, his great design thinking about how to organize information, how to get from A to B to C. But he had to be guided by users, completely. So in my view, I think it's great. Some people question it, but I will say the product manager was female and the engineering manager was female, so you need a lot of support. Anyway, he did a great job. Obviously we had a lot of women giving guidance; he wouldn't have been able to do this without that guidance.

[00:14:30] Paper prototyping. I love paper prototyping. You can see scribbling on there, like mood, craving, stress. This is coming from users. Garrett's saying, "You tell me. I'm not pretending to know; you tell me." And even the hierarchy: how do you think we should arrange these? It was super helpful to go through this process. Then, once we had actual interactive prototypes, there were more rounds of feedback, more opportunity to understand how this was resonating and how it was working for the actual users. This was introduced earlier this year, and we've gotten a lot of good feedback on it. A couple of screens I can share: you can see the calendar view. You can log details, so we allow you to log things that we can't detect but that you could tell us, if you want to tell us about symptoms you're experiencing, etc. And then a more detailed view.

Gender-inclusive hardware: Versa and Ionic

[00:15:39] That was more on the software and experience side. We also wanted to think about the hardware side. How are we doing? Are we meeting the needs and desires of female customers? We used this two-by-two approach to thinking about how hardware is designed, not just tech products, products in general. On one side, it's "we'll design it for guys, and then later, oh yeah, we'll make a female version." On the other, the higher end, there's thinking about women's needs and desires up front. And there's very gender specific versus very gender inclusive. The team populated it with a few examples, like Lululemon. Some people think of it as a women's brand, but it's actually for men and women. I think maybe they started with women, but they've been very gender inclusive. And then there are famous examples like cycling team suits that were clearly designed for men, not designed for women.

[00:16:48] The result of this, and I'm skipping through this pretty quickly, is that earlier this year we introduced the Fitbit Versa. As was noted in the intro, this has become the best-selling product in Fitbit's history, which we're super excited about. It's not for women. In my view it's very gender inclusive. There are lots of SKUs on here that I think look more masculine, and some that may look more feminine. It's selling to men and women for sure, but in this case it's over two-thirds women, and in the smartwatch category that's a pretty great accomplishment. So we're very happy with the Versa. We have CMF and band sizing options, which again are meant to be gender inclusive. There are definitely men buying the Versa; it's not a woman's watch. But again, if we think about this multi-vector approach... Sorry, I forgot that I have some of these, where people are giving us accolades: "The best all-around Fitbit to date." "Fitbit's strongest counterpunch to the Apple Watch." Okay. There's room for everybody. We want to win, but there's room for everybody.

[00:18:12] The Fitbit Ionic, if you think of it, is more of a sport fitness super watch. It is a smartwatch, a great watch, with third-party apps and all kinds of goodness on there, but I think of it as a pretty serious workout watch. The adoption for this tends to be people who are a little more serious about sport fitness, really into their workouts: swim workouts, all kinds of workouts, triathletes, etc. The purchasing audience for this is skewing male, which is probably not hugely surprising. It is attractive to astronauts. That guy is wearing a Fitbit. He's got the haircut; he is clearly an astronaut. He's going to take our watch into outer space, which I think is super cool. We didn't give him that; he chose it on his own. They also showed me the laser pointer, so I'm going to use it. See, even cool ex-presidents like the Ionic.

Kids: Fitbit Ace

[00:19:26] All right, another vector: we're now looking at kids. This year we introduced Fitbit Ace, which is the first product we've done that's specifically for kids. We know that kids have been wearing Fitbits for years. They ask their parents for one, or the parents upgrade and they get the old one, and they're walking around in the Fitbit. In the US there are some privacy laws, so they have to either lie about their age or have their parents sign them up to actually get into our ecosystem. Now we're creating a product that's specifically for kids, and it allows their parents to set it up for them. Other countries have different regulations. We think the sweet spot for this particular product is eight to twelve, gender neutral, gender inclusive. You might think that the blue one is for babies because it's really little, but that's not true; it's just floating in the background. I don't know why. We've got audio.

[00:21:18] So you can see the blue one is regular-sized. We're excited about this, and we're getting a lot of positive response. There's a comment here: "Fitbit Ace to help kids finally put down their screens." Again, if we think about the changes that have occurred over the last 11 years, kids are definitely, I think, spending more time static, on the rug, looking at screens. So anything that helps get the activity level up, for health and fitness, is good. Then there's this family aspect: family challenges, or mom and dad saying, "Hey, how'd you do?" I'd also say sleep for kids, as a parent, is hugely important, so being able to track and monitor kids' sleep is really a big benefit. You have a sense of how much your kids are sleeping, but now you can actually have more data on that.

[00:22:13] So we're now making products that appeal to astronauts and also to kids that want to be astronauts. This is a nine-year-old that lives in my house. She wants to be an astronaut, and she likes her Fitbit Ace. She's demonstrating; I learned a lot from her. And yes, that's my daughter, and no, I'm not a creepy stalker. She's wearing her astronaut shirt, which is completely coincidental. She doesn't even know that she's in this PowerPoint. My wife took the photos, and she did ask, "Am I going to be in a TV commercial for Fitbit?" So I'm going to have to manage that.

The current lineup and Charge 3

[00:22:57] This is our current lineup. Sorry, that's not our complete lineup; these are the newest products that we've brought to market. The Fitbit Ionic, where I'm actually showing the Adidas edition, again leaning more into sport. The Versa with female health tracking: you can do it right on your watch. Again, we're trying to reduce that friction and make it just a normal part of your daily or monthly activity. And then Fitbit Ace: now we're doing products specifically for kids. We're adding vectors, and I think we're attracting a bigger slice of the family with these offerings, not just hardware but software.

[00:23:40] But wait, there's more. We just introduced our newest tracker. People have told us, "I don't really want a smartwatch. I like a tracker, I like something more like a bracelet." Great, so we still make great trackers. Charge 3 has this amazing touchscreen, the first touchscreen on a tracker, with an amazing display, grayscale, high resolution. It's really great, and it even supports some third-party apps, so you can get some of the benefit that accrues to a smartwatch, but we're bringing that to a tracker. Great bands, great accessories, because there's still a fashion component to all this, and we know that. We know our products need to look great and feel great. So we're super excited about this. It starts shipping this month, but the dates vary by geography.

The future: omnidirectional

[00:24:28] All right, with 48 seconds left, a little bit about the future. I've decided to call it omnidirectional. If we go back to the vision, again simple but powerful: make everyone in the world healthier. Everyone, that's a whole lot of different types of people, and in the world is a whole lot of different cultures. So we've got a lot of work to do if we really want to reach everyone around the world. In the short term, one of the things we're really leaning into is behavior change. If you think about basic behavior change, back in the day seatbelts were considered optional, then shoulder belts became normal, and now airbags are normal. That's just awareness that leads to behavior change. We've done that with fitness, with steps, with sleep. We're trying to up the ante on behavior change. There'd be a lot more to say on that, but again, this is a simple statement about thinking about behaviors: if your motivation is high and the effort required to make a change is also high, you can do it, because the motivation is high. But in that nether region, prompts saying, "Hey, try this new behavior," are really hard to make work. So we're trying to understand all these different challenges that people face and how we can help them.

[00:26:05] This year we acquired a company called Twine. They have a coaching platform that helps people develop action plans and then pairs them with a human coach that can help them pay off on that action plan. Using the app on the phone, or interventions on the watch, we can support that action plan and support the communication between the user and their coach. What we love about this is that we didn't have to build it from scratch. It's proven, it's tested, we know that it works. We're super excited. We actually just rebranded them two weeks ago, so it's now called Fitbit Plus [?], but originally the company was called Twine. So we're very excited about the potential for bringing action plans and human coaching.

[00:26:52] All right, I'm wrapping up. Be healthy: consider getting some walking in. Be well: make time for a friend. And before I end, I have to say thank you to everybody, the teams at Fitbit, all the people that did so much great work. All the things I showed you are a tremendous amount of work from a really tremendous team. I get to work with great people, and that helps my wellness. So thank you.