UX Case Study: InsideTracker Mobile App
Product: Personalised health and fitness app for iOS and Android
Role: Senior UX/UI Designer
Collaboration: Cross-functional team across product, engineering and scientific advisory
Scope: Discovery, IA, user journeys, interaction design, prototyping, data visualisation, onboarding, subscription, wearable integrations
Background
InsideTracker translates blood, DNA and physiological data into personalised nutrition and exercise recommendations for half a million users worldwide. Founded in 2009 by scientists from MIT, Harvard and Tufts, it was an early entrant in personalised health and helped set the standard for the category that followed.
In 2020, I led the UX and UI design of its first native mobile app. The desktop product delivered detailed health reports, but interpreting and applying them required time and attention. Results were experienced as a single event, while meaningful behaviour change happened over time, in the supermarket, at the gym and throughout a member’s daily life.
The mobile app had to turn a single interaction into an ongoing relationship. This was not a responsive redesign. It required a new product experience that gave members clear, personalised recommendations, helped them understand their progress and answer a more immediate question, "What should I do today?".
My approach
I owned the end-to-end design process, from discovery and problem definition through to implementation, partnering with product, engineering and the scientific advisory board.
We reviewed the existing platform, support tickets and user feedback to identify key tasks, points of friction and differences in health literacy and motivation. We clarified who was actually using it: the optimising athlete, the worried-well, the user managing a specific marker on advice from a clinician. Their tolerance for complexity was wildly different, and the desktop product had been designed for the most engaged of them.
The research revealed a clear insight: users didn't want more data, they wanted direction. They needed timely guidance that could support better decisions in the moment, and lead them towards better health outcomes over time.
Information architecture
The desktop experience organised information around scientific data domains. While logical, that structure didn't reflect how members action their day. They want to know what to eat, how hard to train, and whether the thing they changed last month worked. I restructured the mobile experience around the tasks members wanted to complete:
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Review current health priorities
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Understand their results
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Follow personalised recommendations
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Track goals and progress
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Manage connected data and account settings
I mapped the product IA and core user flows before moving into interface design. This helped define how members would move between results, recommendations, goals and progress without losing context. Low-fidelity wireframes were created to test structure, hierarchy and navigation, and to confirm that the experience was useful, technically achievable and scientifically accurate.
Data visualisation
Health data must be accurate, accessible and easy to interpret. Every chart, scale and indicator was designed for immediate legibility. I built a consistent visual language for optimal, sub-optimal and at-risk states that scaled across blood biomarkers, DNA and physiological inputs. Colour was reinforced by labels, position and visual indicators so meaning did not depend on colour alone.
One of the greatest challenges was communicating DNA insights. Unlike blood and physiological markers, which present concrete values and defined ranges, genetic data represents probability and predisposition. I led the design and narrative approach to this challenge, shaping how genetic "potential" was communicated alongside concrete data. The experience was designed to help users understand how predispositions inform, but do not define their results, positioning DNA as context rather than certainty.
From data to action
The value of InsideTracker was not the volume of data it presented, but what members could do with it. I designed a recommendation structure that connected each insight to a clear, personalised action. Members could understand:
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What to do
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Why it mattered
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Which result or goal it supported
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How to apply it in daily life
Recommendations were written in plain language and organised around member priorities rather than scientific categories. This reduced complexity while maintaining a clear connection to the underlying data.
Goals and progress
I designed goal-setting and progress features to support consistent engagement over time. Users could choose priorities, monitor progress and review completed actions. Progress was measured against each member’s baseline rather than against other people.
The experience used positive reinforcement without penalising members for missing an action. This was important in a health product, where aggressive engagement mechanics can create unnecessary pressure.
Notifications followed the same approach. They were timely, relevant and connected to an action the member could take.
Wearable integrations
I designed the Fitbit, Apple and Garmin connection experiences, bringing activity data into the app. The work covered:
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Device connection and authorisation
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Data-sharing explanations
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Connection status
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Missing or delayed data
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Disconnected-device states
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Reconnection flows
Wearable data introduced a more frequent source of information than blood testing. The experience needed to reflect new activity without changing recommendations so often that they became difficult to trust.
I worked with product and engineering to define how this data appeared and how the app communicated incomplete information.
Delivery and outcome
I worked closely with product, engineering and scientific stakeholders to take the app from early concepts to implementation-ready designs for iOS and Android.
The final experience included subscription journeys, accessible interaction patterns and reusable components across both platforms. I supported implementation through detailed specifications, design reviews and quality assurance to maintain consistency from design through to release.
Usability testing ran throughout, with a specific focus on comprehension: not can members complete the task but do members understand what this number means about their body. Several early data visualisations tested as confidently misread, users were sure they understood, and were wrong, which is the most dangerous failure mode in health design and invisible to completion-rate metrics. I iterated on the comprehension gaps that surfaced in sessions, and validated the changes in follow-up rounds.
The app extended InsideTracker beyond a single test or desktop report. It created an ongoing relationship that helped members understand their health, follow personalised recommendations and track progress over time. The most effective solution was not the one that displayed the most data. It was the one that helped members understand their position and take an informed next step.