OVERVIEW
As we all know, the world has changed due to Covid. The fitness world has been one of the industries that has been impacted the most. Gyms have been forced to shut down leaving people without a place to workout. Many students use the gym as a way to relieve stress and now with this resource gone people are trying to find a new way to workout. As university students, we understand this challenge and that is why we decided to design a fitness app that will solve the problem.
PROBLEM
With gyms facing a critical blow due to the pandemic and learning that there was a 32% reduction in physical activity once social distancing was established, we came up with a solution that answered the question:
How might we create a safe and reliable gym-like environment from the comfort of home?”
USERS & AUDIENCE
students who:
- need an at-home gym experience
- had the habit of going to the gym to relieve stress
- need to establish a new routine at home.
TEAM MEMBERS
Justice Gin, Daniel Hanick, Elisha Levak, Tay Miranda, Vedant Patel, and myself.
SHARED RESPONSIBILITIES
- brainstorming
- user research
- creating a customer journey map
- designing the interface and prototype
- testing prototype usability
- presenting a pitch of our solution.
DURATION
Fall 2020 term, Customer Experience Design, UW
PROCESS
USER RESEARCH
We started with researching COVID's impact on the bigger industries and found that the fitness industry faced a large, negative impact. After calling with friends, we regrouped and came to the conclusion that many students found it more difficult to be active with gyms being closed and didn’t have a way to relieve stress.
CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP
Using miro, we worked on design sprints and formed a customer journey map around Harjot, a university student who was passionate about fitness and used to go to the gym with his friends every day. In order to dive deeper into Harjot’s needs and for us to understand his journey, we went through multiple user reviews on their current frustrations from the gym closures and their solutions for it. We mapped out Harjot’s journey from frustration from the closure of gyms to looking and finding a viable product that suited his need to stay active and connected with his friends. A challenge we faced at this time was initially mapping out his journey throughout the school day without going to the gym, as opposed to his journey looking for a way to remain active. We learned from our mistake when our professor made it clear to us that we were going in the wrong direction.
Harjot goes through multiple phases and feelings, with each phase showcasing his thoughts and potential opportunities for our product to come in. We focused on phases 2 - 4 where Harjot is researching, comparing and engaging in these products. Narrowing down the focus to these phases, and looking at Harjot’s thoughts helped us map out the opportunities for potential features of the app. Additionally, we worked on design sprints to discover the things that we enjoy interacting with on a daily basis and what makes them so enjoyable, so we could plan on implementing that data and those ideas into our solution.
WIREFRAMING AND PROTOTYPING
Once we had determined our target audience’s goals, frustrations, and needs, as well as features stemming from our own experiences, we began working on wireframes and then building up our prototype on Figma. We each individually created potential wireframes to turn into prototypes and then we decided as a team how to incorporate the best parts of each wireframe into our prototype. A few of our group members worked on the bulk of the prototype design, including creating a branding style guide, while the rest worked on usability testing and fine-tuning. This was the most efficient way for us to work and produce our finalized interactive prototype.
OUTCOMES
Our solution, the mobile app START, addresses the needs of our customer segment by focusing on mimicking the gym environment by focusing on its functional, social, and personal aspects
The Start app provides functional home workouts, is organized to easily find the workout that suits needs best, and allows users to choose exercises by the target area or difficulty level. Users also have the option to invite friends to join in with them for a workout, to integrate the social aspect of the regular gym environment. In addition, the app provides a spot to view personal growth and accomplishments. Having visual records and reports of statistics allows a user to watch themselves set new records which pushes personal mental competitive limits, and personal physical capabilities.
TAKEAWAYS
The most important thing that I have learned from these experiences is that the key to working in groups is finding the best form of communication. In completing our prototype and presentation, we learned the most efficient way for us to work was to divide the tasks so that instead of having everybody working equally on all assignments, we would assign leads to each assignment, with the other team members there for minor details and edits. This ensured that everybody had a major responsibility, while also contributing to each assignment . We finished our presentation and prototype feeling confident and proud because we figured out the best communication for us. This task assignment formatting is what I would carry on with me to a future work space.