Groups & Classes Redesign
Making peer support and mental health education easier to access
I redesigned BetterHelp’s Groups & Classes experience to improve discovery, sign-ups, and repeat participation.
BetterHelp is the world’s largest online therapy platform. Its Group Session and Classes experience had not been updated since 2018. I led its redesign from research through final design.
Problem
Members struggle to find group and class sessions that fit both their interests and availability, making it harder to discover relevant sessions and participate consistently.
JTBD
New users: When I'm looking for a group or class session for the first time, I want to quickly understand which options fit my needs, identity, and schedule, so I can choose and register for one.
Returning users: When I've had a session that was a good fit, I want to easily find the same or a similar session the following week, so I can continue getting support without starting my search over.
Impact
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Led the redesign end-to-end, from research through final design.
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Validated the new experience with 15 BetterHelp clients across two rounds of usability testing.
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Proposed and gained buy in for a unified Groups & Classes discovery experience, improving accessibility to mental health.
Discover
I started by mapping out the existing experience, interviewing stakeholders, doing a competitive analysis, and looking at existing user feedback.
The current experience for Group Sessions and Classes.
I did an audit of the current UX by creating a user flow diagram for Group Sessions and Classes. Then I created a screenflow with annotations for problems, opportunities, and general notes.
I spoke with people across the teams that shaped the experience.
Product
'We need to improve browsing for Groups and Classes to get more members discovering and participating."
Engineering
"The design should use as many components from the new design system as possible because we are moving the app into React.”
Clinical
"People have very different expectations for Groups and Classes, so it’s important to make the differences clear before they sign up."
Operations
"The experience has to work with the way sessions are currently scheduled and delivered."
I also looked at the broader experience.
I looked at user feedback we had as well as TrustPilot reviews about groups and classes.
Did a competitive analysis on services that offered peer support and webinars.
Attended group sessions and classes myself to get first-hand experience.
General research on peer support, why people do it, pain points, what they expect.
Key insights from discovery
Great value driver, but underused. Less than 5% of members attended a Group or Class, despite strong positive sentiment from those who did.
Finding a group session was difficult. Browsing UX made it hard for members to find sessions they were interested in at a time they could attend.
Groups & Classes needed to be modernized. They had not been updated since 2018 and needed to be brought into the new design system.
Groups and Classes lived in separate places in the app but shared many of the same core properties: topic, title, host, date, and a similar path from discovery to registration. What if members could browse both together?
My hypothesis was that combining them would also give members more relevant sessions to choose from, while reducing the friction of choosing a format before they knew what they were looking for.
Rather than testing with static screens, the prototype let participants interact with the browsing experience as they would a real product.
This allowed me to see the different paths users take from discovery to registration, and if my hypothesis of combining Groups and Classes into one experience was valid or if it introduced more friction and confusion.
I used Claude Code to generate a dataset of 250 mock sessions in CSV format, then built the prototype in Figma Make so I could easily share it with participants during usability testing.
User Testing 1
Five moderated, speak-aloud usability tests with two different tasks—one designed to nudge participants toward booking a Class, and another toward booking a Group session—followed by a short interview.
Questions
How do users discover and navigate to relevant sessions?
What filters do they use and in what order?
Where do users hesitate, backtrack, or abandon a path?
Outcomes
5/5 found and booked a relevant session
5/5 said they'd use the experience more often.
2/5 had screens too small to see the session carousel.
No participants tapped the "See all" link to access all sessions under a topic.
User Testing 2
Based on the first test, I refined the session cards and made “See all” more prominent. I then ran a second round of testing to address a key concern: would members understand the difference between Groups and Classes when browsing them together? I updated the explanatory banner and conducted 10 unmoderated usability tests focused on session-type comprehension.
Questions
Do users understand that there are two types of sessions?
Do they understand the difference between them?
Did they know which type they were booking?
Outcomes
10/10 understood there were two session types.
10/10 correctly described the difference between them.
Takeaways
Impact
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Led the redesign end-to-end, from research through final design.
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Validated the new experience with 15 BetterHelp clients across two rounds of usability testing.
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Proposed and gained approval for a unified Groups & Classes discovery experience.
Vision for the Future
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Personalized recommendations. Use onboarding information, goals, therapist history to surface relevant sessions.
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Re-registration reminders through email and push notification once users have participated in a group session before.
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Extend engagement beyond the live session with discussion threads on the group session page.
