SUMMARY AND CHALLENGE

The fitness industry is experiencing disruption due to advancement in technology. Today's consumers are embracing wearable technologies and other activity tracking products more than ever before. However despite the availability of personal metrics people continue to struggle to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

As a team of three we were given six weeks and tasked with creating a digital product concept that reimagines how people can adopt and maintain a healthy lifestyle. 

RESEARCH

We began to discuss what important factors existed to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Looked at trackers and how they work to bring people together and deliver positive feedback. This led to discussing communities and seeing how they play a very important role in general. Being part of a community and knowing you have that support system is what helps people become and stay successful. Finally we talked about how people's level of success can change. Something happens and that leads to a behavior change which we became intrigued with and wondered how and why this happens. 

This directed our domain research into these three categories:

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

Looking at already existing fitness apps our team wanted to focus on the visualization of data delivered to the user. What kind of community the app offers and how they connected users to one another. We also researched what types of activities or workouts these apps provided as well as how the app works to keep the users motivated. What was their method for continued support and motivation throughout the life of the users experience?

We conducted 12 user interviews and 3 SME interviews aimed to learn each individual's idea of a healthy lifestyle and what they have been doing to embody that idea. What are the triggers and motivators in their own personal lives? Did they have an exercise routine? An activity tracker? What level of social interaction went into them staying active?

Through affinity mapping we narrowed in on our research and it was clearly evident there were patterns user behavior. The two main takeaways we found were based on activity tracker data and the importance of social engagement. 

Erica Greer, our persona was created to help guide our design decisions based on her need for social engagement as a form of motivation. She is our hopeless health seeker and wants to be fit/healthy but needs someone to do activities with so she is not discouraged. Her consistent problem of being motivated, trying new things but falling off the wagon due to lack of social engagement gives our problem a face, personality and reason to solve it. 

Using Erica as our modeled user led us to our problem statement and design principles:

People need a structure for social engagement that keeps them committed to a fitness routine. In the same way social accountability keeps them engaged in other aspects of life such as career or family responsibilities.

We used these five design principles to give us a base for the overall feel and tone we wanted to represent while building our concepts. Through these principles we were able to stay connected to Erica (our persona) and rest assured we were creating a product that would benefit her as a user. 

IDEATION

Individually we created our own concepts which were to encompass a way to deliver tracker data information and provide a social aspect to help maintain motivation.

The three delivered concepts were:

1. Challenging others through meet-up workouts: This was the concept I developed. It focused on finding workouts or activities catered to you and someone to do them with based on similar activity levels (showed annotated below)
2. Finding sidekicks to stay active: Based on interests and level of activity you are able to join groups or find individuals who have the same interests. 
3. Mentorship and habit formation: This focused on finding a mentor to help you through your journey.

CHALLENGE APP MAP

As I synthesized our research I found that there was a general desire to be healthy and fit but the uncomfortable feeling of doing it alone was a hinderance. So I created a concept that focused on challenging someone else to a workout. I figured if I can provide users with a person and an activity they would be active and would not have to do it alone. 

I began by creating a site map that flows through the users first time logging in and finding someone to challenge to an activity.

PAPER PROTOTYPES

I elaborated on the dashboard page including more information on the users progress and tracker stats. I also put focus on being able to see other users progress, I learned that the visualization of others success was motivating. Upon set up users are given an activity number based on their tracker device, this number pairs them with others who have a similar level of activity, giving them the ability to challenge one another to activities via meetup or virtually. This prototype was tested against four separate users.

INSIGHTS FROM CONCEPT TESING

LO-FI PROTOTYPES

Users had a positive response to the competition of a challenge, it was fun and made them want to work to win. They also appreciated seeing others progress, it gave them motivation to work harder. I focused my prototype on the challenge and competitive aspect. Giving users the ability to see one another's progress toward their goal via a leaderboard.

PROTOTYPE INSIGHTS:

1. Leaderboard was successful and exciting to users, they found motivation in comparing their progress amongst other users. 
2. Favored the idea of having a mentor or guide as a person to go to for advice, and the aspect of group based activities.
3. Reluctant to commit to a stranger for a long period of time, wanted to choose their own group and mentor
4. Activity data was still unclear. 

After our prototypes we evaluated all user feedback and decided to move forward with one concept. Mentorship and habit formation became our base concept because it had the idea of pairing users with someone for motivation, and working with them by delivering workouts and feedback. With that we opened it up to a group dynamic making it more social, and included the leaderboard since healthy competition was fun and attractive to users. 

We each worked individually on style tiles and put our main focus on exploring different ways to visualize tracker data. We each designed our own dashboard page focusing on three main features:

1. Way to deliver tracker information to users.
2. Feature an inspirational story: A story submitted by other users who found success in the fitness world.
3. Show a goal for the user to reach along with their current status to that goal.

FITLEY

Once we analyzed our explorations we chose a single direction (annotated below) that best achieved our goals. The interface has a bar in the background of the dashboard page and every time the user logs in the graph fills towards the top showing their progress increase. Their active minutes goal is shown on the page along with daily streaks and access to detailed stats pulled from the tracker device. 

We named our app Fitly and continued by dividing the remaining design throughout the team so that usability testing could be conducted. Questions we wanted answered through usability testing were:

1. How users feel about being introduced to their mentor and group right away?
2. Do they want to message their group first or prefer to explore the app?
3. Is the activity number understandable?
4. Are users able to find the inspirational story?

USABILITY TESTING INSIGHTS

1. Activity minutes were unclear, users needed clarification where the goal number came from and how it was actionable
2. Never found inspirational story or activities by way of swiping up
3. Once they found the story they liked the idea and were interested in reading it
4. Users wanted to choose their own mentor and groups. Didn't want to be assigned, and preferred to explore and choose what groups to be a part of
5. They still wanted to see the breakdown of their data tracker information (steps, calories ect.)
6. Every user tested saw the name Fitly as Filthy.

FINAL UI

Final changes we made due to usability testing:

1. 4 of 5 users first saw the name Fitly as Filthy. Therefore we changed our name to Fitley.
2. Added an explanation of "active minutes" and how they were accrued to the on-boarding.
3. Moved groups to a community section, and changed the way groups are run. Each group  is mentor led, groups have weekly scheduled activities and the mentor is at every meeting regardless of how many members show. This eliminates the fear of doing it alone and gives you someone to rely on.
4. Moved the "inspirational story" to a hero image on the activities page. This encourages users with a story of others success.
5. On the dashboard we added an overlay to show a breakdown of data information once the user chooses to view details.
6. Daily streaks are on the dashboard, but once clicked into users can only view the current week. This eliminates the ability to see the past and all of the days they didn't make their goal and feeling defeated because of that.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This was the first time I worked on a team through an entire UX and UI process. I realized how important it is to align with your team. Working on our own concepts and merging them into one had its difficult moments, but being able to talk through everything as a team allows you to settle on a direction. 

Learning to always rely on your research as a form of validation. If we had moments of wanting to add a "feature" or "page"to our app we always made sure to check our research. If it didn't align with our research we didn't pursue it. 

Failure is your best friend. I learned that no matter what all you have to do is be open to the possibility your idea may not work. That is the best way to learn exactly what is wrong with it.