Covid-19 took its toll on every industry, the fitness industry being no exception. With everything becoming remote, personal trainers were faced with the harsh reality that their services would be worth much less digitally than in-person.
Working with a stakeholder, it was my job to create a fitness app that would be marketable and profitable for my client and stakeholder, Soly, as well as suit the needs of all of our users. Being a personal trainer myself, I understand the desire to sell my services digitally because it would allow for further reach. However, as a user, I would only be willing to pay so much for something that is so impersonal.
Problem statement: A millennial woman needs to be able to work out on her own time and select a program that meets her goals because she is busy and does not feel the need to have one on one sessions with a trainer.
Users and Audience: The stakeholder wanted to reach “Driven” women through fitness. To simplify this, and make sure that the app would be able to reach the widest audience, the target users became women over the age of 18 who wanted to better themselves.
Roles and Responsibilities: Evaluation and Research, information architecture, content strategy, user and task flows, app mapping, wire-framing low fidelity and high fidelity designs, prototyping, usability testing, visual design, branding, iteration and implementation.
Scope and Constraints: Create an end to end mobile app that satisfied the user needs and business needs. Due to time constraints I worked on the MVP, which would take the user through two flows: on-boarding and accessing the user’s daily workout one of two ways: through the homepage and through the workouts tab.
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Solution: through my research I learned that most women do not want to have contact with trainers regularly, they feel that personal training is a big commitment that is very expensive. However, they would like some accountability and sometimes have questions / need reassurance that they are doing an exercise correctly. Thus, I realized that our stakeholder’s best option would be to offer check-ins with her to discuss programming and answer any questions the user may have. The user would be able to choose which subscription option they want ranging from no contact to weekly check ins. This would also solve the problem of accountability, but provide an affordable option for the user.
Users will be able to subscribe to one of three options:
- No contact- This would give users access to all other resources on the app
- Monthly check ins- Monthly (online) meetings with the trainer, access to all resources on app
-Weekly check ins- Weekly (online) meetings with the trainer, access to all resources on the app
I conducted 1:1 interviews with 4 women ages 18+ who have experience with using fitness apps. The interviews were done via online video meetings.
Empathy Interview Summary: Users enjoy being able to work out remotely and follow a self paced program, rather than working out in person with a trainer (38% prefer self paced programs). The most important features to them include meal plans, video and written instructions, customizable programs, progress tracking (including picture uploads). However, they do not want to be overwhelmed with the amount of features available in the app.
Competitive analysis allowed me to compare features of popular fitness apps to help me find gaps that our product could potentially fill
Key Insights: None of the popular self paced fitness apps that offered subscriptions offered check-ins with the coach or live workouts, and none of the one-on-one personal training apps offered outside resources or self-paced programs.
User interviews were transcribed onto sticky notes and an empathy map was created to understand the user on a deeper level.
The user’s pain points were translated into a POV and how might we statements:
POV: A millennial woman needs to be able to work out on her own time and select a program that meets her goals because she is busy and does not feel the need to have one on one sessions with a trainer.
- How might we create an app that makes the user feel like their goals are being considered?
- How might we create an app that includes only priority features so the user doesn’t get overwhelmed?
- How might we make the user motivated even though they are not being supervised by the trainer?
- How might we cater to the user's goals as well as business needs?
Using the POV and HMW statements, I was able to create a persona to encapsulate the target user in a single person that would help guide my designs.
Solution: Users would be able to choose their level of contact with the trainer
Users will be able to subscribe to one of three options:
- No contact- they would have access to all resources on the app
- Monthly check ins- monthly (online) meetings with the trainer, access to all resources on app
- Weekly check ins- weekly (online) meetings with the trainer, access to all resources on the app
The POV Statement, HMW questions, Persona, and empathy map left me with a list of features that could potentially be useful in the app. I needed to prioritize these features to see what would be most valuable to add to the app during phase 1 of the design. To do this, I created a priority matrix.
Most Important Features
- On-boarding
- Workout layout/ resources
- Progress Tracker
Knowing which features would need to be implemented in phase 1, I created an app map to help me visualize the layout.
The user flows of on-boarding and accessing the daily workout would highlight the most important features of the app.
A UI requirements document was created so that I could keep track of all of the important pages that I needed to design
Sketching each page helped tremendously with visualizing the elements that would need to be laid out on each page, without putting too much time or effort into wireframes
When I was happy with my potential layouts, I wire-framed each page (sans design elements) so that I could see the app start to come together and really focus on the UX, without investing time into color and type.
Branding is always challenging for me, but the existing logo did not align with the business goals, in my opinion. It needed to be simplified. I wanted to see a logo that better suited the business goals and the user needs, while also remaining on trend (for marketing purposes)
The colors teal and purple were chosen because they depicted the brand attributes of “powerful, ruthless, balanced, confident, driven, and accepting.” Comparable apps utilize a lot of really bright colors, but the stakeholder was adamant about reaching strong, confident, and powerful women, so the color scheme needed to be more serious. Purple evokes feelings of being creative and wise, and teal (which is a combination of blue and green) evokes feelings of health, growth, trust, and dependability.
Using the style tile and detailed wireframes I had previously created, I was able to add color and style to my design in a way that was aesthetically pleasing and would also suit the needs of Nicole Young (my persona).
Summary of research
- 100% of participants were able to complete the tasks
- No major issues with task completion
- 80% of participants mentioned that they would like to be able to see/ explore the app without having to put in credit card information
- 100% of participants would rather see which day of their program they are on instead of the date (A/B test results)
- 80% of participants mentioned they like the color scheme
- 80% of participants said they would like to pick more than one option for the survey question that asked about their training preference.
Solutions
- Add a “skip this step” option to the program selection page, the user can continue without putting in credit card information. They will be allowed to explore the app to an extent, if they try to click on anything they will get a pop up that will ask them to select a plan to continue
- Allow the user to select more than one option under “what is your training preference” survey question
What Went Right? I received a lot of very positive feedback on my design. My research, albeit light, was enough for me to create an app that was sound in regards to UX. Although choosing color and logo were more instinctual than anything, they paid off and fit well within the user and business goals.
What went wrong? I loved this project, but there is so much more research that I wish I could have done. Aside from that, being a trainer myself, I know what I would want to see in an app like this for myself, so I had to keep reminding myself of my stakeholder and considering her needs and desires. It was also difficult to design an app that would fulfill her vision, but also cater to the needs of the many users she would want to target. However, there will always be compromise in design and she was very considerate of user needs, which stakeholders tend to brush aside over their own visions.
What I learned. There is so much that goes into creating a mobile app. I barely brushed the surface of what this app needs to be functional. There is so much work that still needs to be done, and I am unsure how the vision (and my design) would fare against any technical constraints that may be brought up in the future.
Next Steps: The next most important design feature would be to add the users profile page, and all of its associated functions including measurement information, progress photos, calendar schedule for meetings with the trainer, and a progress chart.
The coach tab will be important for those users that are paying for subscriptions which require meetings with the trainer. In this tab, users will be able to schedule meetings, view their calendar, and write any notes that they want the trainer to look over.
Phase 1
- Sign up
- On-boarding
- Home page
- Workouts tab
Phase 2
- Profile page
- Coach tab
Phase 3
- Nutrition tab
