Synopsis

Group College Project

Timeline:

14 weeks

Problem

In the past decade, health and fitness have become increasingly important in society. While there are many applications tailored to the physical needs of the fitness community, we noticed most apps lacked two major features:

While there are different websites and apps a user can use to book a trainer, only a couple of fitness apps have that feature built into them. This meant that if a user wanted to find a personal trainer, they would have to resort to a separate application to do so. It can be a hassle for users to use two individual applications to achieve one goal ultimately. By having everything the user needs in one place, the experience becomes easier and more enjoyable.

Locating and booking a personal trainer

A way to socialize with like-minded individuals

Why do gym applications need a social feature embedded in them? According to the National Library of Medicine, 95% of those that started a gym program with a friend completed the program, while only 76% completed the program alone. Having an accountability partner can be important and yet, not every individual has the means to pair up with like-minded individuals.

Solutions

Our solution was to implement social media-like features as well as the ability to book a trainer all within the same app.

Competitve Analysis: The Gap in the Market Matrix

We analyzed around 15 apps on the market and our research concluded that only 33% of the fitness apps had any sort of direct messaging and only 47% included features to help find trainers.

User Interviews

We surveyed potential users’ open-ended questions to see what things they struggled with in regard to the gym and what potential features they might like. The following images are responses we gathered from users in response to two main questions:

How do you feel in regards to finding friends to work out with via an app?

What struggles do you have with finding a personal trainer?

User Persona

Ideation

Since social media has become second nature to most users, we wanted to focus on making sure the user experience for locating and booking a trainer was as seamless as possible. After creating information architecture and interaction analysis, we created a mid-fidelity prototype that we could use to test users.

User Testing

View Mid-Fidelity Prototype

Potential Designs

Once we were content with the layout of the app, we then moved on to color and typography. We created three different possible design styles based on the different feelings we were trying to convey.

We then set these designs to a handful of users to ask them what they liked and disliked about each design, from the results, we then moved on to creating the style guide:

Final Product

View the final prototype here

Future Improvments and Insights

As this was my first UX project, I learned many valuable lessons. I am happy with the results of the project, however, there are always improvements that can be made. If there were another iteration, I would:

• Change the call-to-action method of booking a trainer: While our design worked and was efficient, I believe through another iteration we could have designed it in a way that was just as efficient and yet did not take so much screen space

• Include more users in user testing: Given this was a school project, it was a challenge getting a sufficient amount of users for our user testing. Ideally, the next iteration would have a larger amount of users.

During every project, there will be obstacles and essential lessons you can take away from the process, here is what I learned:

• Iterate as much as possible: The first design is never the best design. There is always an improvement to be made.

• Be flexible: When it comes to relying on and working with other individuals, it can be a challenge when someone is not providing their best effort or is late with deliverables you need to move forward. Being flexible and learning how to maneuver around these challenges is necessary when working with other individuals.