FITNESS FORUM
BACKGROUND
When deciding to purchase a product online do you read the reviews? Do you wonder if the reviews are from real customers or paid reviews by the product’s company?
My client believes users across the U.S. deserve a trustworthy fitness focused app to find a community of like-minded people to give reliable reviews of workout products. Plus, a way to write their own reviews of which workout products worked best for themselves.
Link to prototype: Fitness Forum App Prototype
THE NEED FOR AUTHENTICITY
Users are frustrated with finding products online that have unauthentic vague reviews from customers. They desire an app to have genuine assessments and a welcoming community to communicate their own fitness journey with.
The GOALS: Get users to be open/willing to write quality reviews on products. Secondly, make users feel safe on the app. Lastly, to get community engagement high among the users.
MY ROLE
Conducted UX research (i.e., competitor review, user interviews, and usability testing) on users for creating personas, competitor analysis/remixing, empathy maps, journey map, user flow, storyboard, and the final prototype. Created a UI design of an app directed towards thousands of fitness-focused individuals. This included creating wireframe sketches, wireframes, and a medium-fidelity prototype.
THE THREE R’s
RECRUITMENT: Find local friends/family that are physically active for research testing. Additionally online networking apps for volunteer testers.
RESOURCES: A computer to conduct the interviews and prototype testing with the users. A quiet space to conduct in person testing/interviews. I used Figma, Notion, Slack, and Google Suite for this product design project.
RESTRAINTS: Lack of time and resources to make a high-fidelity app. A medium-fidelity prototype was the set goal.
COMPETITOR REVIEW + REMIX
PINTEREST:
Requiring the user to sign up before they do anything in the app can make the users feel uneasy and reluctant to follow through with the app. Being able to preview an app first before creating an account encourages users into trusting an app, and not making them feel “tricked” into signing up for an account to something they don’t know if they like yet. Encourage and emphasize creating an account to users for the fitness app, but make sure they don’t feel like they’re forced to sign up without trying out the product/app first.
Anonymous identity communities seem to foster a larger following/number of users that have a stronger sense of belonging.
A black and white color contrast is a safe go-to for passing accessibility standards.
REDDIT:
This was an app I grew inspiration from as well, because you’re able to hop right into the app without the hassle of signing up before knowing if you’ even like the app or not.
The community aspect of Reddit is the strongest out of any app I have seen. There’s mass amounts of communities with complete strangers feeling a sense of belonging with each other.
It’s easy to navigate and has good accessibility compliance. In my opinion there’s not anything negative to say about the app.
I was going to just do a remix of Pinterest and Reddit at first, but I decided that it’d be best to go ahead and do a competitor review as well. Plus, I believe it’s better for presenting to a client as such since the two app’s content concepts gave more inspiration to me than their visual concepts.
CUSTOMER INTERVIEWS
Lifestyle OPEN-ENDED quantitative questions.
What kind of work do you do?
For how long have you been doing that?
What kinds of things do you like to do when you're not working?
What do you do to take care of yourself? To stay in shape? To stay active?
Who (friends, coaches, pets) helps keep you active? How do they help you?
Do you share info about your workouts or your goals with anyone? When? Why? How?
What, if anything, do you do to keep track of what you're doing? How does that help you?
How have your exercise habits changed over time?
What kinds of things do you look for or avoid in a fitness app?
What would you want to know about these apps before you'd try them?
PERSONAS
Key Findings:
Majority don’t exercise at the gym, but rather through their job (being on their feet or doing lifting at work).
Most haven’t used a workout product app before, but rather calorie counter apps.
All have read reviews before purchasing a product before.
Cell phone usage outside of work hours was noted as a pastime for all of them. (YouTube and TikTok mainly).
People/Influencers online made them motivated to workout/inspired to be fit. Or for personal happiness when looking in the mirror.
They prefer an app they can personalize their journey (put in their weight, height, set goal weight, etc.)
IMPORTANCE: The customers mainly gained inspiration from other online users versus to their families. People can feel closer to users online in their desired communities than in their real-life social circle.
JOURNEY MAP
I imagined what it would be like for a typical individual who is not a regular at the gym and who is new to taking workout supplements. There are so many products out there for all stages of a workout process across different platforms. Some of these sites could have comments/reviews that were paid for by the product owner on top of it. I also imagined how important it would be for a user to have a personalized account that they can input their weight, height, and get a tailored solution journey towards their goal body.
EMPATHY MAPS
I had empathized with users who either set too high or too low expectations for themselves, and then become a little hard on themselves when they don’t meet their goals. As well as, having too high or too low expectations for their fitness journey and having an unfavorable outcome can hinder the user’s motivation. As well as, it can cause distress if the user isn’t doing well currently, but in the past they were successful with their routine.
For this empathy map I imagined the users who were curious to try out workout products that they never had tried before. These users may not know where to start when it comes to other categories of work out products like supplements/vitamins and pre-workout. They likely would want to find one that is on the popular side to ensure that the product works.
USER FLOW
At first I had the idea for the app to have a checkout function to purchase the products, but I feel like it would take away from the safe-space community aspect that is for helping others. There’s other ways (i.e buying “spotline” time for user’s profiles) for the client to make money off the app. Building the community and user reviews are the top priority for the client, and I didn’t want to divert from it.
LOGO + TYPEFACE + COLOR PALETTE
For the logo I was thinking of those images of Earth Day with the sticky people holding hands around the globe. Instead of a globe I though a bar weight would be the “base”/foundation that is holding the community together. The user’s love for fitness. It also gets the apps main focus across easily.
For the typeface I kept it simple with just one typeface. I kept it even simpler with having just variations for headings and body text/buttons. Roboto also is a little “fun” looking and not a “serious” feeling type of text.
ACCESSIBILITY
For the colors of the app, I used black and white as the main app colors for best usability compliance. Red and blue as accent colors to fit an “All-American” theme. When I think of fitness, I thought of the tv show “All-American Ninja Warrior”.
WIREFRAMES
For the loading page on the sketches, I imagined how the Earth Day logo is a group of people holding hands on the Earth. Then that logo remixed with a group of people holding hands on a bench bar weight. This shows a sense of community and a common goal of health/fitness. I used a singular person on the weight for the logo to symbolize that they are on top of their health.
From the sketches to the digital wireframe I made the change of removing the checkout feature. I had added “categories” keys for easier navigation so users can jump straight into specially just protein, pre-workout, or supplement products.
USABILITY TESTING
Key Takeaways: I really honed in on the three MVPs after this usability testing because of the great feedback. Using a cue button such as ‘Join Community” versus simply ‘Community’ really made a difference in getting users to use the socializing portion of the app. This in turn helps users feel safe see others put their stories out there and encourages users to engage more. This is the goal rather than them just looking at reviews and clicking off the app after.
A user had said that there should be an emphasis on joining the community as the regular ‘Community’ button wasn't encouraging enough to join when on the community page. This gave me the idea to have a more direct button labeled ‘Join Community’ button to increase sign ups equaling higher engagement, more reviews, and making users feel safe as they have a community to lean on.
Changes I made: I made the scroll button bigger. Added a product image and page for all four displayed items. Plus, attached a profile image and page for all four selections. I had included a “sign up” page. Finally, I changed the “Community” button to “Join Community” when on the user profiles section.
PROTOTYPE
Link to prototype:
LESSONS LEARNED
Users want the app to be more realistic with having different pages for each product shown and for each profile shown. The community page needs to have a clearer button for the user to create an account, thus making the purpose clearer for having a highly engaging community.
I had made the flows and started to connect the frames then when I had played the prototype only certain sections were showing. I learned by trial and error with Figma on how to make the process run smoother in the future without this issue. It’s easier to wait to group/frame the screens until the very end when I’m ready to make the prototype flow.