Introduction

Hi! My name is Kaelyn and I will be designing Get Fit as a UX / UI Designer and Researcher. My role was to conduct research, develop a strategic plan, and design a seamless mobile experience that would increase sustained engagement in a health and fitness tracking app. This project is one of three completed during my time as a bootcamp student at Springboard.

Project Overview

Get Fit is a family and friends health and fitness tracking app. They have found that engagement is heavy during the first three weeks of downloading the app, and then engagement decreases and the app later is deleted. The company wants to incorporate a messaging feature in the app with the goal of increasing sustained engagement.

THE PROBLEM

How many times have you wanted to track your fitness goals, but somehow have fallen short of it?

You have a health goal, you get excited about it, you start tracking our journey, then stop.I can relate to this project deeply. I try to stay motivated with my own goals, download an app thinking it will help, yet I lose engagement with both the app and the goal.

The cycle repeats and I am left feeling defeated once again.

THE SOLUTION

Get Fit will include more social features (community and messaging features) and gamification elements (challenges with friends) to hopefully increase his engagement with logging workout goals.

Our users care a lot about messaging both friends and family often, but keeps their fitness goals separate from their social life. We want to see if involving the users friends and family in their fitness goals if would be more excited to log them. They could also join clubs and make new friends in the area who also use the app and can meet up with!

DISCOVER

Research on Fitness Apps

There are many fitness and health-tracking apps on the market. I know I have attempted to use a few, but never stuck with it… Why is that?

I needed to understand the general pros and cons of fitness apps and also what products are currently on the market.

I first completed a Heuristic Evaluation of current apps that are being used for fitness and health tracking. I evaluated Strava, Any Distance, and Fitlist. With design thinking in mind, I focused on likes, dislikes, and actionable items for each application. This helped me understand what I wanted to include the most in creating Get Fit, and what can be removed or changed.

Secondary Research

After assessing current products, I needed to answer questions through secondary research.

• Why do people stop engaging with the app after a few weeks of usage?

• What messaging features or strategies have been successful in increasing sustained engagement in other health and fitness apps or similar mobile applications?

• What increases/encourages sustained engagement in successful fitness apps?

• What are the key motivators and barriers for users when it comes to adopting and maintaining healthy habits through app usage?

• How does gamification influence user engagement and long-term app usage?

While conducting secondary research, the article “Social Features: The key to personalizing and building successful health apps” revealed to me an important statistic revealing retention rates.

This emphasizes the biggest challenge with a majority of health and fitness apps being retention.

But, why do they stop using the app?

Users stop engaging with social apps for various reasons. Lack of motivation, unintuitive UI/UX, privacy and data concerns, lack of customization or personalization, monotony and repetitiveness, inaccurate data, and lack of social interaction.

Get Fit has a goal of increasing sustained engagement through adding a messaging feature. This will address the need for social interaction in an app. So I wonder, what social or messaging features are successful in increasing sustained engagement?

The article, “Top 5 social features to boost your app’s personalization strategy” reveals the top 5 social features are

1. social profiles

2. chat features

3. community groups

4. personalized news feed

5. push notifications

Personalization and social interaction will increase with a messaging feature…. But what about motivation?

A study published in the renowned journal “Computers in Human Behavior” found that users of fitness apps that incorporate gamification are more likely to stick to their fitness goals than those using traditional fitness apps. The study further reveals the need for not only social features but gamification techniques.

By putting more emphasis on personalization, social features, and gamification techniques, this version of Get Fit will strive to improve sustained engagement through social engagement and increased motivation for the user.

Let’s meet Andrew

User Persona

Andrew engages with health and fitness on a daily basis, yet struggles to track and log the activities. He is someone who enjoys being very social, yet he works out on his own just after work to get out of the house. The general user of Get Fit would be described as someone between the age of 18–34 years old, tech-savvy, budget-conscious, and prioritizes social communication with friends and family. I am sure we all have many Andrew’s in our lives. I myself fall into this user persona and would describe myself as an Andrew.

DESIGN

Information Architecture

I brainstormed the information architecture and user flow to ensure a smooth experience for the users. These initial ideations formed the basis for wireflows, which outlined the user flow for two critical tasks: adding a new workout to log and messaging a group.

User Flow

Low Fidelity Wireframes

Low Fidelity Usability Testing

Low Fidelity testing of the participants for the usability test needed to fit the characteristics of the user persona. The five participants are all between the ages of 18–35, are tech-savvy, and have a desire to use a fitness and health-tracking app. The usability test was held via Zoom and users were asked and some agreed to be recorded. During the test, as a user researcher I asked a few questions about the general design of the lo-fi prototype. Then, I asked the users to complete two tasks on the prototype.

The first task is to — add/log a new workout.

The second task was to — message the group ‘Women’s Running Club’.

Usability issues by priority:

1. Need the “add workout” icon to have more clarity and visibility — change the location of the icon and place it higher on the visual hierarchy

2. Need for an area to find “friends” — This could be done by either adding its own tab or combining friends with the group tab

3. Need for a filter when viewing different types of exercise activities in the profile tab — “Add filter” icon by activity chart and where else may need a filter

Brand Identity

To create a distinct brand identity for Get Fit, I aimed to evoke the feeling of motivation, encouraging the user to get excited about their workout. The brand personality is a trusted friend with a good sense of humor who always has your best interests in mind.The main color chosen was a bright orange, as it encourages energy, adventure, stimulation, and enthusiasm. This color choice aimed to convey a positive and optimistic vibe.The brand attributes of Get Fit were defined as contemporary, trustworthy, humorous, and motivational.

UI Kit

High Fidelity Designs

After creating a UI Kit, I got started with creating high-fidelity designs for Get Fit.

High Fidelity Screens

VALIDATE

After creating High Fidelity screens for Get Fit, I started testing my prototype on potential users.

I completed two rounds of testing the tasks of logging a new workout and messaging a specific group on the app. The testing was done via Zoom, each round of testing was completed with 5 participants in each round.

The first and second rounds of testing and iterations made after were documented below.

Changes that need to be made by priority (First Round):

1. Add time to log workout features and get rid of “upcoming workout” and “completed workout” as buttons. — Combine those into one button of “add to calendar” and the workout will be added to the past or future depending on the date.

2. Need a success screen to pop up after adding a workout. — Users were unsure if it was successfully added, and needed confirmation.

3. Add post to feed ability.

Changes that need to be made by priority (Second Round):

1. Finding the messaging feature needs to be more clear.

2. People often did not check the notifications tab at all. — However, the notifications tab was not important for these red routes I have chosen, yet would be important to find friend requests, challenge requests, and new events.

3. The notification page (if kept) needs the titles of notifications to be higher on the visual hierarchy as they are currently hard to read.

These iterations following testing are documented in the image below.

CONCLUSION

Secondary research helped reveal the need for both a messaging feature and a gamification element to help increase sustained engagement. These were added to the app to give it a social aspect and increase usage. The gamification element is the ability to challenge friends and see who is reaching the finish line faster. The goal of the project was to create an end-to-end product of a health and fitness app.

Get Fit received a lot of praise from the users tested.

“I really enjoy that you can challenge friends, I definitely feel like that would encourage me more to complete my goals” — Get Fit user.

Further testing on the app would help determine needs when completing other tasks on the app such as creating a challenge request, exploring new groups, and tracking progress. The app would also need to be tested to see if the messaging feature and gamification element worked in achieving the goal of increasing sustained engagement.

If you would like to test my prototype of Get Fit, click here.

Thank you for reading!
Kaelyn Villadiego

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