FITnet

A lifestyle enhancement application designed to facilitate the adoption of good habits and productive routines.

Roles

UX Research

UI Design

Branding

Project Context

Type: Solo Passion Project

Duration: 8 weeks 2022

Tools: Figma, Miro

Project Deliverables

Interactive Mobile Interface Design

Lifestyle Change

Intrinsic Motivation

THE PROBLEM

Users tend to loose engagement with fitness applications after certain usage. These applications are downloaded as a obligation under certain circumstances rather than for fun.

In a health conscious world where fitness is the talk of the town, why do applications designed to improve one’s lifestyle see a decline in user investment after a certain period?

USER PERSPECTIVE

How might we generate intrinsic motivation to facilitate the formation of good habits for lifestyle enhancement?

PRODUCT PERSPECTIVE

How might we design an experience to connect a user’s problem to our product solution to build long-term investment and user engagement?

SOLUTION SNEAK PEAK

Solution

Automation and Personalisation

Needs may change daily based on their mental and physical activities.
For this purpose, I designed a chatbot to keep up to date with the daily requirements of the user.
With this feature, the application customises routines that match the user's current capacity that benefit the user's long-term goals

Peer motivation

There is no harm in a bit of competition. Healthy competition stimulates motivation.
fitNET lets friends come together, perform activities and even share progress.
Keeping the conversation in the loop builds excitement for future such activities.

Curiosity

My goal was to match the frequency of the internal trigger (behaviour, time of the day) with the external trigger (notification).
The chatbot plays an essential role in understanding the user's routine.
I designed my notifications to be fun, and humourous and provide sneak peeks that can entice users.
Curiosity actually didn't kill the cat 😁

PROJECT JOURNEY MAP

Approach

RESEARCH

With sufficient knowledge on understanding behaviours, habit forming products I dove straight into primary research with my concept in mind.

SURVEY INSIGHTS

From the survey, I could define and understand my target audience's point of view and study statistics on specific themes I identified while doing secondary research. This helped me choose participants that I felt would be able to give in-depth insights during my interview process.

WHY PARTICIPANTS COULDNT KEEP UP WITH THEIR SCHEDULES

REASON FOR UNINSTALLING/ NOT USING FITNESS APPLICATIONS

TARGET AUDIENCE

Busy young adults on a fitness journey to incorporate good habits and healthy living.

INTERVIEW

I gained in-depth insights into my participant's experiences and opinions. With this data, I was able to build personas, empathy maps and journey maps.

INTERVIEWEES

What I focused on during the interviews:

Understanding the weekday and weekend routines of my participants.
What keeps them motivated.
Time management throughout the day.
Factors stimulating competition in my participants.
Understanding fitness in each's journey and goals.
Feedback and opinions on fitness applications they use.
De-coding environment preferences.
Understanding how incentives and rewards could make a difference.

ANALYSIS

Productivity rate increases when users follow a schedule and are calm and composed mentally.
I observed that, eventually, an activity becomes more of a task for the user.

To make my insights crisp and bring clarity, I created themed groups via affinity mapping

INSIGHTS

BUILDING EMPATHY

Based on the themes I was able to create scenarios for personas to deep dive into the characteristics of my target audience and pin point their needs and goals.

COMPETITVE STUDY ANALYSIS

I Studied four of the most popular lifestyle and fitness applications. From my research, I found that in almost all the apps, tracking fitness and gamification was the priority. They allowed customisation but didn't take enough 'user freedom' into consideration. Progress is not only about moving forward.

Detailed research insights

Secondary research Insights, Survey results, interview insights, competitor analysis.

Iteration

ITERATION AND CHALLENEGES

My first approach was purely based on game mechanics to stimulate motivation and excitement; I also iterated on creating a 'social network feed' called fitFeed.

Ideation

DESIGN IDEATION

Once I had enough data to conceptualise features, I sketched flows and and created paper wireframes.

Paper wireframing helped me ideate quick and allowed room for rapid brainstorming.

WIREFRAMES

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

EVALUATION AND IMPROVEMENTS

Evaluation

Before designing the final prototype, I performed two rapid evaluations: the A/B testing method and the click test to evaluate my high-fidelity wireframes. Based on user feedback, I re-iterated my designs.

What I evaluated:

User preference for screens.
The intuitiveness of interactive elements.
The time taken to complete the given task.
Recorded click patterns.

For my final prototype evaluation, I performed an un-moderated usability study. With the 'Figma mirror' App, I asked participants to navigate through the application. I analysed the success rate of my product via a survey where I evaluated satisfaction rates.

Design Concept

FINAL DESIGN

Onboarding

The onboarding is an essential step to get the application familiar with the user.
The selections are set as 'user goals' which they can edit based on their requirements.
Setting up personal details (name, age) for a new user is not part of the onboarding. Users will be prompted to fill in those details once they have successfully onboarded.

*Setting up personal details (name, age) for a new user is not part of the onboarding. The user will get a prompt to fill in those details once they have successfully onboarded*

Customisation: Explore and Chat Assistant

Keeping up to date with the user's daily needs and not just their end goal. Menstrual cramps, fractures etc., can account for changes in routine. The chatbot helps users log their existing symptoms to be able to cater to their short-term needs (keeping in mind long-term goals)
A custom search based on record needs help you engage in activities faster.

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Interactive prototype

Link to the interactive prototype on Figma

RETROSPECTIVE

Business Perspective

If developed, having premium subscriptions and access would be a big plus for the product.
App development would also allow me to assess the stickiness of the application over time and work on new versions.

Next Steps and Learnings

Inspiration

I was inspired to start this project after reading 'Hooked' by Nir Eyal. I believe many young adults would be able to identify with its purpose.

Do Not Assume

The research I conducted taught me how valuable user insights are. Research taught me the value of user insights. Empathy and interviews helped me build for diverse users.

Time management

I followed a schedule, planned my research, and paced well. I realised the importance of managing time when you aren't under a time crunch, as it is often easy to go off track.

Feedback Value

Iterating changed and bettered my designs drastically. It highlighted conspicuous issues. Getting bias free feedback and opinions helped my designs.

What I could've done differently

I would've liked to give more focus to the app's usability.
It would've been insightful to have designers evaluate my design using the cognitive walkthrough technique or heuristic evaluation.

Business Perspective

If developed, having premium subscriptions and access would be a big plus for the product.
App development would also allow me to assess the stickiness of the application over time and work on new versions.

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