Designing products in the health and wellness space often means working without clear templates, established interaction patterns, or reliable benchmarks. For teams operating at scale, the challenge is not only to ship new features, but to create experiences that feel natural, effective, and sustainable for long-term use.
This TechBullion conversation looks at how those challenges are approached in practice by a lead product designer at Welltech (London, UK). Vladyslav Dmytriiev shares insights from his work on complex, consumer-facing products – from defining early concepts and testing assumptions, to making structural design decisions that continue to influence products well beyond their initial launch.
1) You’ve worked on products that go beyond standard market patterns. When designing a product that doesn’t yet have clear industry benchmarks, how do you approach defining the initial product concept?
Answer: When my work involves not viewing competitors, my research involves Analogous Inspiration to address certain issues associated with mobile interaction. When creating a yoga flow feature, the research didn’t focus on competitors’ apps, and instead, the inspiration came from how gesture navigation and video game tutorials on TikTok assist users with guiding movements without interrupting the flow.
From a technical standpoint, I would automatically begin high-fidelity prototyping in a system such as “Create with Play.” Current prototyping in Figma does not allow a designer to test the “feel” of gestures in a gesture-driven UI. I would want to see that a latency and feedback cycle in a formal hardware environment was what we wanted before expending engineering resources.
2) What signals help you understand that a product idea has the potential to become truly differentiated, rather than just another iteration of existing solutions?
Answer: “It’s all about the opportunities to apply ‘Subtraction Design’ – stripping away the friction that’s become the standard. In the wellness space, the standard might be having to wade through the filter system to find the exercise.”
Actually making it differentiated would be to apply Predictive Logic (logical deduction via the times of day, historical data) to identify the best possible exercise right now, àListing the decision fatigue altogether. The signal of success is more than the satisfaction rate, more than the reduction in ‘Time to Action’ or the ‘Day-1’ retention rate, it’s the ability to solve the problem faster than the rest.
3) When working on “first-of-its-kind” features or products, how do you balance exploration and experimentation with the need for predictable business results?
Answer: I employ a ‘Portfolio Approach’ for my roadmap, where I set aside 20% of my velocity for my risky bets, managed through Remote Config (such as Firebase in our latest product).
This will enable us to roll out experimental versions of features, such as “AI Coaching,” to a 5% audience as part of a rapid testing process that does not necessitate an overall update to the App Store. We establish “Kill Criteria”: If the effect of the new feature reduces our core “Session Completion Rate” by just 1%, the kill switch will be auto-engaged.
4) Can you walk us through your process of translating a high-level product vision into concrete UX and interface decisions?
Answer: The gap that I fill with my solution will define “Mobile Experience Principles” that prescribe how certain components should act. When our vision is “Effortless Flow,” my rule will be “No blocking states during a workout.”
At Figma, this translates to I deliberately build non-modal interactions through toast notifications or a floating action button rather than a pop-up that pauses a video playing in the meantime. We are also utilizing a lot of Micro-interactions or Lottie animations in coming up with status notifications (such as “set complete”), meaning that the user does not have to stop what she or he is doing to read what is written there.
5) At what point in concept development do you start testing assumptions with users, and what methods do you find most effective for early-stage validation?
Answer: I personally verify instantly with ‘Painted Door Tests’ (Simulated Doors), also known as ‘Fake Doors’, within the live environment on the app, for the testing of true intentions
For instance, before the creation of the ‘Nutrition Tracking’ module, we created the locked entry point with the home screen. We were able to measure the Tap-Through Rate and know the level at which the user will attempt to gain access. This provides us with information regarding the demand and the discoverability. If the tap rate is low, the UI design does not have the power to save the module.
6) Health and wellness products often aim to change user behavior. How does this influence the way you design product concepts from the very beginning?
Answer: Variable Rewards and the feedback circuit work for the design of the ‘limbic system.’ On mobile, this is accomplished through Haptics, Sound Design, in conjunction with the goals above, offering a neurological ‘reward’ when a player completes a play session.
Technology-wise, we optimize our push notification approach not just to nag, but to trigger ‘Local Notification’ triggers (such as time or location) instead of server-based blasts. We measure ‘Streak Resurrection’ – the effectiveness we can muster in reactivating a dormant user rather than simply daily active usage to make the product feel enabling rather than punishing.
7) You’ve led products from concept to launch and iteration. Looking back, which early design decisions tend to have the most long-term impact on a product’s success?
Answer: The most essential choice is always the Data Model and Information Architecture. In the context of the app I am working on, the choice between treating ‘Programs’ as either a fixed video playlist or a dynamic container for the metadata determines the degree of flexibility we have for the next few years. If we embed the 30-day program as a static list, then personalizing it at all stages according to the user’s needs won’t be feasible. My approach with backend developers at the initial stages ensures that the Entity Relationships are such that dynamic content can be injected. While graphics can be reskinned in two weeks, the static data model can hinder the development of new features for the next six to eight months.
8) How do you decide which innovative ideas should make it into the first release and which should be postponed, even if they are promising?
Answer: I prioritize using the ‘Spiky MVP’ ideology – to strive to be the best in the world at something, rather than average at everything. For the yoga app, the experience for the Video Player feature has to be ‘10x better’ – perfect buffering, easy scrubbing, and picture-in-picture functionality.
Another area where we can cut our ‘table stakes’ features, things like ‘social sharing or advanced player profiling,’ is if it impacts the quality of the ‘Core Player.’ We measure our success through ‘Core Action Frequency.’ That means the first feature an app user uses is our primary ‘differentiator.’
9) When creating unique products, design systems can sometimes feel restrictive. How do you ensure consistency and scalability without limiting innovation?
Answer: For this project, I’m using a “Core vs. Snowflake” model. Here, ‘Core’ is a library that is built upon the native components provided by the Operating System (OS), such as ‘SwiftUI,’ focusing on performance and accessibility.
However, for high-impact points, like “Workout Summary,” we have ‘Snowflake’ elements that go against the norms. We might use custom shaders in the Metal API or transitions, which could be ‘non-standard,’ but that’s where the emotional payoff of our app happens.
10) From your experience, what distinguishes a genuinely innovative product design from something that only appears innovative on the surface?
Answer: Surface innovation is simply a “UI Facelift.” The video player is made to look pretty. Deep innovation leverages the mobile hardware capability set (e.g., CoreML, Computer Vision) to shift the value equation architecturally.
For instance, whereas the enhancement by itself may only watch a video, the truly innovative enhancement may track the user’s posture through the front-facing camera and make adjustments in real time, effectively changing the offering from a ‘content library’ to an ‘interactive coach,’ something the redesign alone never could offer.
