TL ; DR
DailyBloom is a 14-week program for people living with IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) designed by Dr. Reddy’s. After launch, patients were leaving before the care could help. Over nine months, I designed the user journey and made it something people came back to every day.
The first version was live with about 300 patients. I was brought in as a UI/UX Design Consultant for one problem: patients leaving before they saw results.
The Care Plan
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a long-term gut condition. It brings stomach pain, bloating and unpredictable trips to the bathroom, and it often flares up with stress or certain foods.
What helps
Small daily habits: eating the right foods, calming the mind, and steady advice from a nutritionist.
The catch
Those habits only work if you keep them up for weeks, including the days you feel awful.
Where DailyBloom fits
Dr. Reddy’s turned that care into a 14-week program run through an app, the first of its kind in India.
Three kinds of care run side by side, with no medicine involved: a low-FODMAP diet (LFD), cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and yoga (MBB). Three assessments measure how a patient is doing at the start, the middle and the end.
Weeks 1 to 2
Discovery Phase
Learn how your gut works and what sets off your symptoms.
Weeks 2 to 6
Elimination Diet
High-FODMAP foods come off the plate to calm the gut. In the app, this phase is called Gut Cleanse.
Weeks 6 to 10
Reintroduction Diet
Foods come back one group at a time, to find your own triggers.
Weeks 10 to 14
Sustenance Diet
A long-term way of eating built around what your gut handles well.
The program asks for daily effort from people who often feel too unwell to give it.
The Problem
About 300 patients were on the first version. Their use was inconsistent: days skipped, meals not logged, and many stopped before fourteen weeks could show results. Feedback kept describing the same feeling: lost.
A long, cluttered start with no payoff in sight. People left before a habit could form. See fix 1
Diet, breathing and webinars each sat in a different place, and some were locked. Patients had to remember where everything was. See fix 2
The same tips for every type of IBS and every lifestyle, so it rarely felt like it was about you. See fix 3
A low score and nothing to mark small wins, so motivation faded in the middle weeks. See fix 4
No easy way to tell the care team what was working, or to choose what was shared with them. See fix 5
In one line
DailyBloom gave patients plenty to do, but no clear path through it and no reason to come back tomorrow.
Why it mattered to patients
Stopping meant going back to guessing what to eat and how to cope, on their own.
Why it mattered to Dr. Reddy’s
A care program only works, and can only show that it works, when people finish it.
Process
With the lead UX and CX strategist, we spoke with 90+ DailyBloom patients and read through their feedback in the app. We worked through a double diamond: understand the problem first, then design and test the fix.
Two rounds of opening up and narrowing down. First to understand why patients were leaving, then to find what would bring them back. All of it on a live app, with patients mid-program the whole time.
The problem space
The solution space
DiscoverOpen up
DefineNarrow down
DevelopOpen up
DeliverNarrow down
StartPatients leaving before the results show
The questionHow do we make daily care feel personal and light?
EndFive fixes, shipped
01 · Discover
Listen to the people leaving
Interviews with patients on the program, their feedback in the app, and the 14-week clinical plan.
What came out
Why people were leaving, in their own words.
02 · Define
Find where and why they drop
Sorted what we heard into five findings, and placed each one on the 14 weeks.
What came out
Two weak points, the first day and the middle weeks, and one question to answer.
03 · Develop
Explore, then test
Three ways to bring people back and two ways to show progress, tried as beta versions by 90+ existing patients over several rounds.
What came out
Rewards earned by doing the care, and progress that compares, never ranks.
04 · Deliver
Ship one change at a time
Each fix released to the live app on its own, then tracked through goals, meal logs and check-ins.
What came out
Goal completion up 72%. See the fixes
What patients said in the testing sessions is under NDA. Their feedback shaped the fixes, and the impact section shows how it landed.
Each finding answers one of the problems above, and led to the fix with the same number.
The question we set out to answer
How do you make daily IBS care feel personal and light, on day one and in week nine?
Finding 01
Show the benefit first.
New patients couldn’t see what all the logging would get them.
See fix 1Finding 03
Meet each patient where they are.
Everyone got the same tips, and first-timers and regulars needed different things.
See fix 3Points, badges and streaks are why people keep returning to games and fitness apps. In a care program they can backfire and make serious treatment feel trivial. We explored three directions.
A spin-the-wheel and social sharing. Fun, but one more thing to learn, and attention drifts away from the care plan.
Logging meals, watching wellness videos, inviting a friend. Nothing new to learn, and every reward moves the treatment forward.
Easy to build, but nothing to carry people through fourteen weeks.
When the reward and the care are the same action, the reward is the treatment.
A ranked list is the obvious choice. But seeing yourself at #847 on a day you feel unwell is discouraging. So the version that shipped compares you with the group and shows the next step up.
Rejected · A ranked list
Ranking a struggling patient near the bottom discourages them. Illustrative mock.
Shipped · Compared with the group
You see how you’re doing against the group, and how to move up. The badges are DailyBloom’s own: Great Starter, Top Leader and the weekly medal.
Solution
Each fix answers the problem with the same number, in the order a patient meets them: day one, every day, and week by week.
The first version asked for effort first. Now a short test gives every patient their own gut health score, and a plan they can start the same day.
In the first version, three tools sat behind locks until a patient progressed. Now six are open on the home screen from day one.
Before · 3 tools, locked
Three tools, each locked until the patient progressed.
After · 6 tools, open
Zen Box, CogniArt, Journaling, Mood Check-in, Affirmation and Hypnotherapy, all open.
Someone trying a breathing exercise for the first time needs a guide. Someone on day 40 just wants to start. The same feature now has two ways in.
5 steps
The first time: guided, then turned into a habit.
1 tap
Every time after: straight in from home.
The same screen at three scores. Each one says what the number means and what to do next, so even a low score never ends in a dead end.
Every reward is earned by doing the care: logging meals, finishing a breathing session, keeping a streak. Opening the app and leaving earns nothing.
IBS Talks
BloomYoga
Inside the app
Care plans, meals, breathing, therapy sessions, health records, rewards and the Tribe feed, as patients see them every day.
Handoff
Patients were mid-program the whole time, so each fix went to the development team ready to build, and shipped to the live app on its own.
Screens for every fix
The five fixes, designed for iOS and Android.
The rewards rules
What earns a scratch card, a weekly badge, a phase badge and the premium badge, written down for the team to build.
Support until release
Working with the developers through build and beta testing until each change went live.
Plan for week fifteen
Rewards kept people going during the program. Whether the habits last after the badges stop is the next question to design for.
Keep listening after launch
The 1–10 check-ins after every call tell the team what to fix next, straight from patients.
Impact
2,000+ patients use DailyBloom, and it’s rated 4.9 on Android and 4.8 on the App Store. These numbers come from the live app, after the changes shipped.
The result that mattered most
+72%
The clearest sign it worked: patients followed through on their plan.
+120%
Patients came back and used the app far more often.
High engagement on the app
Gut health and quality of life
Patients said they finally felt supported and motivated, the two things the first version had missed.
Feedback after launch, summarised
Reflections
Nine months of designing for people who often feel unwell changed how I approach every product.
01
Give before you ask.
Patients left when the app asked for effort up front. Showing them their own score in the first minute earned the effort that followed. Now every first-time experience I design gives something back before it asks for anything.
02
Reward the behaviour, not the visit.
Rewards only worked because they were earned by doing the care. If a reward can be won by opening the app and leaving, it teaches the wrong habit.
03
Design for the bad day.
People reach for a health app when they feel worst. Every screen had to work for someone tired and in pain: fewer steps, plain words, and help one tap away.
04
A live product is a conversation.
Shipping one change at a time and testing betas with patients meant every round taught us something. I learned to treat each release as a question, not a final answer.
In health products, the reward should be the treatment.
DailyBloom IBS is shown with names and personal details replaced. Research details remain under NDA.
All I wanted was a call saying they’d be late.
Instead I waited three days for a pickup I’d already paid for. A lot of people had the same story, so I redesigned pickup around keeping people in the loop.
AI-First Concept
Open to Full-Time roles
If people sign up and drift away, or your AI feature confuses more than it helps, that’s the problem I like most. Tell me where users get stuck.
