Heak Training

User Research

The process started by creating a fictional character based on competitors' marketing. By analyzing whom they were aiming at, we listed some of the common characteristics of fitness apps users.

Building empathy

Immediately after gathering enough data, we looked for 20 profiles that fit that demographic information and conducted interviews to know about their relationship with fitness apps, their habits when working out, their fears, and goals.

After the interviews and analyzing the information in an affinity diagram, were cleared spotted two groups with completely different motivations and goals.

1. A group of users was working young adults who didn’t have the time or motivation to work out.
2. The other group, online students who only enjoy working out in outdoor group activities, but his small friend circle makes it difficult.

These interviews revelated that a tight schedule was far from being the only factor limiting users from working out as initial assumptions made us believe. Other problems including being overcome by their work, bad timing to receive motivational messages, and even anxiety or difficulty to find new partners had made users quit from previous tries of getting fit or incorporating working out as a usual activity in their lifestyle.

With that data, two personas were created: Zareen, representing the first group, and Louis, representing the second one.

Personas

Zareen pain points

• Lack of Time
  Due to her tight schedule, she barely has time. The little gap at the end of her day has to be split between commuting, cooking, and her new adult responsibilities.
• Suffocation
  After her demanding work, she is completely tired, so when she finally has the chance to work out simply doesn’t have the motivation.
• Bad Timing
  She has received motivational messages from other fitness apps, but they are usually received at the wrong moment, when isn’t possible to follow them.

Louis pain points

• Need for a partner
  Louis cannot conceive of working out alone, otherwise, a fun activity becomes a reminder of loneliness.
• Hard to find partners
  His online classes, his reduced group of friends, and his shy personality make it almost impossible to find new friends and work out.
• Only outdoors can fill him
  Louis doesn’t find interest o gyms or working out from home, for him exercising is biking, running, football… something outside.

Problem Statements

Zareen story and Problem statement

“As an intern who has a lot of work, I want to have an external huge motivation to take me up, so I would continue attending the gym.”

Zareen is a suffocated intern who needs some external strong motivation to start working out because it’s almost impossible some days.

Louis story and Problem statement

“As a full-time online student who likes working out, I want to make new friends to practice together, so it’d be more interesting and fun.”

Louis is an online student whit a crying need for meeting active people to work out because he doesn’t like working out solo, it makes him feel alone.

Hypothesis

1. We believe encouraging messages at a custom time and a daily goals system will help Zareen to keep motivated for the long-term by approaching working out just one little step at a time instead of seeing a huge mountain to claim.
2. If the app could offer Louis a way to find people with similar interests, then he could expand his group of friends, be integrated into new outdoor activities, and enjoy working out his way.

Competitive Audit

We already had our hypothesis about how to solve our users’ frustrations but before starting the design we wanted to see how our direct and indirect competence was solving similar problems.

The goal of the Competitive research:

• Has anyone tried to solve the problems we want to solve?
• What are the things every platform does? To imitate the good parts.
• What are things no one does? To avoid making those mistakes or on the contrary, fill those gaps.

Competitors

As we wanted to get information from a wide spectrum, I investigated 4 competitors at vastly distinct positions. Three of them were from the fitness industry and the last, was somehow related but from the healthy industry.

• Brand One (censored)
  Direct competitor. Daily home workout routines without gym equipment. Practice by yourself, it’s impersonal, highly customizable to you. Free.
• Brand Two (censored)
  Direct competitor. Wide selection of video workout sessions to do at home or in the gym, guided by professionals. Choose the program that suits you. Community feeling. Free.
• Brand Three (censored)
  Indirect competitor. Fun live classes with specialized offerings for all ages. Requires equipment. A strong feeling of pertinence with live sessions. Subscription model.
• Brand Four (censored)
  Indirect competitor. A healthy guide to lose weight. No diet and no yo-yo effect. Free and subscription model.

Competitive Audit Spreadsheet

Apart from analyzing each competitor from the outside, I became an active user of each app for approximately 3 weeks to get a complete understanding of them. That was a part that I particularly enjoyed due to I love training and it was interesting to see how different were the solutions for the same problems.

Competitive Audit Report

Gaps

• Move from an online community to face-to-face activities.
• Text when the user’s own pace is not followed.
• Share goals and achievements on social media.
• City League positioning.
• Sweet communication.

Opportunities for Zareen

• Cute motivational personal reminders at a custom time, Zareen would appreciate it.
• Little daily achievements that encourage users to continue and work out.
• Message to encourage continuity if the user's own pace is not followed.
• Statistics over time.

Opportunities for Louis

• Be part of groups with similar interests as you and train outside with them.
• Share goals achieved on social media. Louis thinks this could help him to find partners and so do I. No pictures of himself are required to make the post.
• City League positioning (optional). A healthy comparison with people similar to you in terms of age, interest, level, and location incentives competition and continuity.

Paper Wireframes

I sketched several variants of each screen to find out the best solutions for each section before jumping to digital. This allowed me to explore many solutions in a matter of minutes.

Sketches of variants of the Home screen

Digital Wireframes

Then, the best ideas were gathered and reorganized.

The goal of this home screen is to provide short and long-term motivation to our users, keeping in mind their different needs.

Home screen Digital Wireframe

The feeling of pertinence and community was found vital for our users.

Users have the chance to join a group that shares their interests and meet with participants to practice together.

Groups screen Digital Wireframe

Usability Study on Low-Fi Prototype

In the early stage of the design was conducted a usability test with a Low Fidelity Prototype among 5 participants.

Findings

• It was necessary to rethink the home screen.
  It was found crucial info was needed on the home screen so, other pieces of information had to go away or be condensed to keep it simple.
• Problematic Pluss button.
  There was a Plus button on the bottom right corner to start tracking your training or to manually add the last activity you made. It was spotted that 4/5 users tried to use that button to complete other tasks.
  The button was redesigned to not be too much attractive, labeled, and repositioned beside the Progress Circle to avoid confusion.
• A huge revelation: Not being alone doesn’t mean being in a group.
  Despite there was a crying need for not to work out alone, 3/5 users would be more pleased with training with one single partner rather than with a group.
  As a result, we added the new function “Find a Partner”, where you could look for people with similar interests to yours and invite them to work out together either in the gym or outdoor activities. Also, we kept the function Groups as it was well received by most of the users.

Usability Study on Hi-Fi Prototype

After iterating the design with the previous findings and stepping up to a High-Fidelity Prototype, there was conducted a second usability test among other 5 participants.

These were the findings.

• More is more.
  To feel motivated for completing achievements their icons needed to be expressive, animated, and colorful rather than linear.

Close-up of the achievements section with animated colorful icons

• More info about the people to create more connections.
  It was necessary to see more about someone to have an idea of their personality and step forward to invite them to work out together.
  We added more fields to complete about yourself (all optional), so people could have a better idea of who you were and vice versa. Gallery, hobbies, habits, music, and social medias, not to mention Profile picture, description, interests, and workout data.

Image of all the info you can find from a partner in their profile

Mockups

The Home screen was rethought to be simplified while including more vital information in a more friendly way.

The Profile screen was added to the navigation bar to facilitate updates on it.

Home screen before and after the usability test

Was found that pictures had a crucial role when empathizing with people, so the “Find a Partner” screen was redesigned to give pictures more relevance while showing the same information.

Find a Partner screen before and after the usability test

Accessibility

• The app has the function of activating a Neurodivergent-friendly font to improve legibility.
• It was added a function to Customize the font size in order to provide low-visual impairment users with an enjoyable experience.
• The entire app was designed with contrasting colors, moreover, there is an option to activate High contrasting colors.

Create Your League

We believe that healthy competition is an important motivator, so we offer the optional feature of displaying the user's position in a local ranking. This is an optional feature as a comparison is sometimes the opposite of a motivator for some users.

The next step would be to give users the option to set the parameters for that comparison such as age, location, gender, and level so they could specify the group to be compared to and focus on being on the top of it.

Add Performance info on the Home screen

Users from fitness apps are used to receive some basic info about their daily performance like Time moving and Distance. Until now our priority has been the motivational and community features keeping the app simple, however, showing that info could result in a smoother transition for users that want to give Heak Training a shoot.