Lower back and neck pain costs the U.S. healthcare system over $134 billion annually—and musculoskeletal (MSK) disorders cost another $129 billion—more than diabetes and heart disease combined.
However, physical therapy offers a chance to interrupt that spiral of expensive suffering. Physical therapy is a key step in recovery after an injury or surgery. RecoveryOne offers virtual physical therapy to address musculoskeletal injuries and strains from the convenience of a patient’s home – exactly the sort of health benefit that millions of work-from-home employees need.
But RecoveryOne found that initial uptake was low and people who enrolled tended to drop off, not completing their full course of treatment. Recognizing that this was a behavioral challenge, RecoveryOne asked Irrational Labs to use behavioral design to improve conversion across their enrollment flow—resulting in a 64% increase in enrollment.
The Challenge
Behavioral Diagnosis
The first phase in Irrational Labs’ 3B framework is about understanding the behavior people need to take and the barriers they face in doing so.
We started with a deep dive on RecoveryOne’s enrollment flow. We signed up, did their intake interviews and a first PT session (like many remote workers, our backs hurt!). Along the way, we noted every action, decision, or information input that was required. At each step, we layered on analytic insights from RecoveryOne’s existing data and identified the psychological principles that might be causing drop-off. The result: a behavioral map.
Two challenges stood out:
- Present bias vs. long-term gains
The body often gives misleading feedback, making it hard to connect actions to immediate outcomes. For instance, eating a salad today won’t noticeably lower your weight next week, and skipping a physical therapy session won’t prevent you from walking. This requires a conscious and consistent focus on long-term health over short-term comfort. - Incompatible mental model
An additional challenge for RecoveryOne? People typically associate physical therapy with in-person, hands-on interactions, like a therapist guiding exercises. However, most physical therapy actually happens at home during daily exercises. As a telehealth company in this space, RecoveryOne had to establish a new mental model and build trust in their service.
The Solution
Behavioral Design
After identifying the key behavior and reducing barriers to it, the 3B framework focuses on amplifying the benefits of taking the behavior. Taken together, this combination of psychological insights and behaviorally informed solutions drives action.
For RecoveryOne, we started with people’s first interaction with RecoveryOne’s website. We designed an interactive, 5-question quiz that progressively revealed concrete, personalized benefits while also creating a new mental model.
- Concrete, personalized benefits: Eliciting people’s concerns lets you tailor their experience, ensuring the information they see is relevant. For example, visitors who reported time scarcity saw more information about the convenience of on-demand sessions and async professional support. Cost-conscious visitors, on the other hand, learned about RecoveryOne’s insurance coverage and functionally unlimited sessions. As AI capabilities evolve, it could become possible to calculate precise out-of-pocket costs and provide an early timeline for recovery.
- Creating a mental model: The purpose of the quiz isn’t just to personalize. When people read the response options, they are also learning about what’s on offer. RecoveryOne communicates their capabilities when they ask the user what sort of pain they’re experiencing: “We can help with multiple types of pain”.
Each user selection elicits a response from the quiz in turn. As mentioned above, this emphasizes the particular benefit. Additionally, these responses can create confidence in RecoveryOne’s ability to solve users’ problems. At the same time, they can normalize getting help for those who might otherwise feel unsure.
The Impact
RecoveryOne’s enrollment went up an impressive 64% after they rolled out this short 5-question quiz to their website.
Lessons Learned
The collaboration between RecoveryOne and Irrational Labs provided valuable insights into how to increase user engagement in virtual health programs:
- Build mental models interactively: Interactively building a clear mental model for the benefits of a product at onboarding significantly enhances engagement. This strategy proved effective in converting users who initially hesitated to commit to a new form of physical therapy.
- Clear communication builds trust: Simplifying complex information and clearly presenting benefits helps build trust and changes how users think about the service, making it more acceptable.
- Behavioral insights drive engagement: Applying behavioral science principles, such as addressing immediate concerns and creating a compelling mental model, can significantly improve user retention and engagement.
If scaled across a larger population, the 64% pre-post increase in engagement could lead to significant long-term benefits. Accessible physical therapy could benefit the one in two Americans reporting some form of musculoskeletal condition, creating substantial healthcare savings and productivity gains. Additionally, improved health outcomes could reduce the overall burden on the healthcare system, leading to a healthier, more productive workforce.
By incorporating these lessons, RecoveryOne continues to refine its approach and set a benchmark for other virtual health services. The insights gained from this partnership highlight the power of behavioral science in creating effective, user-centered health solutions.
Interested in applying behavioral science to your product strategy? Contact us: [email protected]