A workout app that encourages users to perform physical activity during lockdown. It enables users to video call and work out with their friends, choose workouts that fit their available spaces, customise their workout plans and support the community.
Role: UX/UI Designer
Duration: 3 months
Client: University Project
It is hard for people to conduct physical activity under the social distancing restrictions impleneted due to the widespread of COVID-19. People are forced to stay at home, minimize outdoor activities and reduce close contact with others to prevent the virus from speading. The sudden loss of routines also demotivates people from being physically active on a daily basis.
Having the frustration in mind, we focused our literature research on discovering why it is frustrating and what are the general incentives that motivate people to exercise outdoors and in the gyms. Based on those factors, we then uncovered the key motivators that are lacking due to the lockdown. We also conducted a competitor analysis on 12 competitors including Nike Training Club, Youtube, Ring Fit, Smart Rope to understand what the products on the market have to offer and an ethnographic analysis to uncover how users interact with those products, their satisfactions and frustrations.
People don't know what to do without the access to workout facilities or equipments
Some people struggle to stay fit indoors without knocking into their furniture or disturbing their neighbours
Having vague work and life boundaries and trying to balancing work from home could have negative impact on time management
Loss of support network, personal values, goals, sense of achievements and enjoyment are the key barriers that prevent people from working out
The main fraustration caused by the lockdown is that people are unable to exercise at their usual spaces. People are struggling to adapt to this new normal, maintain their routines while regaining their motivation in exercise. Our tool should be able to guide users to perform physical activity in an indoor environment, response to the space accordingly, support scheduling exercises and motivate and keep users accountable.
Though most of the competitors provide comprehensive instructions for users to follow and key exercise incentives to motivate them, only half of products have workout programs for users to schedule their plans. Several competitors have options for users to choose indoor or outdoor exercises, however, none of them have the ability to response to different indoor spaces or have selection of low-noise-exercises.
* Have indoor and outdoor activity options
We discovered that users value the user experience the most. It frustates them when the interaction is not intuitive and comfusing. Majority of the users prefer to have more customisation options to adapt to their workout preferences. In terms of the exercise incentives, having a support community in the system is reported to be the most valuable feature.
Plans are broken into smaller steps with the workout intensity gradually increases throughout the month. This helps ease the users, assist them to start working out, be on top of their physical health and keep them accountable.
A gamified workout journey app with a series of home workouts for users to travel along. Embedded video call feature for users to exercise with their friends.
Scan and measure users’ desire workout spaces then generate a series of personalized workout plans for users.
We presented these ideas to our ideal users for feedback and improvements and performed quantitative and qualitative analysis to analyze the collected information.
A simple and straightforward app but users did not find this app a valuable asset in motivating them to work out
Users love the idea of gamification style app and the ability to work out with friends but the split video call screen can be too small
High in customisation and personalisation but lacks community aspect where users can motivate each other to exercise
Based on the user feedback, we decided to integrate the support community and video call feature from the Workouot Journey app to the next interation as these will motivate, challenge and keep users accountable. The customisation aspect and the idea of choosing workouts based on the available space will also be included in the next stage. However, the gamification structure was excluded because it was hard to implement with the availability of customisation.
After another two rounds of iterations, user testing and A/B testing, we were able to finalise and create FitBuddy.
One exciting feature provides by FitBuddy is the video call function. Users can deliver or accept invitation to/from their friends and exercise with them. With this additional social support, users are more likely to stay motivated and accountable.
FitBuddy is high in customization. Users can opt to filter out exercises and programs by level, intensity, etc. Most importantly, they can filter out exercises and programs based on their available workout space. Users can also customize their workout programs and set reminders to keep them accountable.
The plan page allows users to browse through their exercises and programs across the week. The social community provides the support system for users to make posts, comments and interact with others within the community. The achievement section in the profile page promotes and motivates users to perform exercises.
Challenge
What are we trying to solve?
How might we encourage people who used to exercise regularly in public spaces but fail to do so during lockdown to exercise at home?