Meaningful motivation: from foundational work to A/B/C testing

Problem statement

The needs around this project at Babbel was manifold:

From a business standpoint, Babbel's new branded coaching voice needed to be incorporated into product copy, and that meant improving celebrations messaging in product touch points.

From a user perspective, meaningful motivation was required, celebrating the small and big wins with an appropriate level of feedback on each situation (every small thing doesn't need confetti)!

Hypothesis

If a user is encouraged and acknowledged for their progress in a lesson, they are more likely to finish it and be motivated to start another lesson.

Methodology & insights

This agile team project was the springboard to do foundational work on celebration, and I partnered with a Learning Content Designer to do the following:

  • Gather internal and external research

  • Look at benchmarking with other apps, exercise apps particularly

  • Look at UI elements, such as sounds, ticks, confetti

Process & testing

  • Map messaging in user journey

  • Map user emotions to the above

  • Audit current messaging

  • Write new messaging

  • Localise copy and repull keys 

Next steps

Co-writing workshop to explore celebration copy in various parts of product

Artefacts

  • Celebration user journey map

  • Celebration decision tree for future messaging needs

Research and foundational work on celebration.

Co-writing work to explore what celebration copy could look like across product.

Artefact: user journey map for key celebration moments

Solution

We were able to do an A/B/C test, adding celebratory copy at 50% and 70% through the lesson.

Motivational copy specifies user experience journey along with a light touch of animation.


Results

Both B and C versions of in-lesson motivation increased lesson completion rate by 1% compared to control.


Impact & next steps

Version B was rolled out to all users. I was delighted to be able to create two important artefacts that help not only the content design team when working on motivational and celebration messaging, but also stakeholders such as product managers and product designers to understand what "celebration" means and ideas on how to communicate this to users at various stages of the user journey.