Fitness-Live: Innovating
at-home fitness

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Thanks for stopping by. Before jumping in, may I suggest getting cozy with your favorite hot drink?
tl;dr? Vision / Discovery / Define / Ideate / Prototype / Conclusion

Note:

To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information in this case study. From here on, the company will be referred to as Fitness-Live. All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of Fitness-Live.

Fitness-Live's users were dropping off from the app before entering the payment flow and converting.

You're not tired yet, are you?
Vision / Discovery / / Ideate / Prototype / Conclusion

After our initial research phase, we had accumulated what felt like an absurd amount of information. But how were we to make sense of all that data?

It felt like we had dumped a jigsaw puzzle on the
table and thrown away the box

Enter our trusty Affinity Diagram. With a fresh, large pack of sticky notes, our team began adding any and all insights, facts, and quotes gathered from our user interviews and surveys to a blank surface. After a couple of hours, our collage of colors began to take shape and form a wall of organized information.

Relying on an affinity diagram helped us impose order on our data and disseminate information across the team by effectively communicating and organizing ideas.

As the data point grouping continued, we noticed that themes began emerging. These themes didn’t necessarily point directly to user issues with the app’s booking flow. Instead, they further highlighted that an unintuitive app flow led to user frustration and drop off before they entered the payment flow.

Some initial pain points included:

First impressions are everything. Particularly in the highly competitive fitness app space. If user’s do not trust your brand from the start, getting them to give you a second chance will be an arduous battle. One that we would rather avoid in the first place.

Our users trust us to know them. It’s not enough to create a product and rely on marketing to drive engagement. UX design requires a deep level of understanding and perspective in order to successfully curate a truly rewarding experience. To achieve this level of understanding, we replace our egos with empathy.

We began by aggregating data on user demographics, goals and ambitions, hesitations, and intrinsic motivators to help create user archetypes. Creating these personas allowed us to answer the question, Who are we designing for?

Creating personas helped frame the frustrations experienced by users on the training side of the app.

Fitness-Live has three distinct user personas, all with their own reasons for using the app. For the scope of this project we chose to focus on active users, the trainees, and passive users, the watchers, as these were the primary users involved in the booking flow.

With our user personas in mind, it was time to begin exploring the layout of the app and the paths users took when making decisions. Our initial hypothesis that users struggled with the interface flow was validated during our usability testing of the app’s current state. But now new questions arose:

Why wasn’t the app intuitive for users to navigate through?

Which mental models were users relying on when using our app?

We began by exploring the most frequently mentioned apps from our interviews and then followed it up by prospecting similar verticals that employ booking as a feature. What could we leverage from these apps to reduce the confusion felt by users?

By evaluating the aggregated data through journey mapping, we were able to better disseminate information amongst the team, providing everyone with a deeper understanding of user struggles.

Moreover, cataloging and grading the severity of problems uncovered helped us effectively communicate opportunities for improvement to our stakeholders.

The themes mined from the data along with the perspective gained from our research methods led to the creation of our How Might We problem statements. Ultimately, we determined that Fitness-Live was losing user engagement too early in the purchase cycle.

The user interface did not follow best practices, leading users to struggle finding the information they required to make purchase decisions. Additionally, users cited low image and video quality as a reason for developing a sense of mistrust towards the professionalism and authenticity of the fitness platform.

Our analysis translated into the following problem statements, which we felt would best guide our future thinking and address the observed pain points.

How might we get users excited to book a session?


How might we make the app more intuitive for user navigation?


How might we better convey the quality of trainers?


How might we educate the users on the social aspects of the app?

May I suggest a refill?
Vision / Discovery / Define / / Prototype / Conclusion

For the first round of ideation, our team decided to return to our trusted sticky notes and rapidly brainstorm potential solutions to our newly defined problem statements. No idea or concept was off limits.

Four fifteen minute rounds later and we had a wealth of potential solutions that might address our users pain points. Some solutions seemed ingenious. Others were so far-fetched and comical that they bordered on science fiction. However, this type of thinking freed up our creativity and helped us explore solutions that we would otherwise have overlooked.

In order to prioritize our solutions (and their feasibility), ideas were moved into four quadrants (Must, Should, Could, Won’t) where we weighed their impact against the relative effort required to implement them. The process was repeated another time using only the ideas in the Must and Should quadrants in order to further emphasize the most critical and/or cost-effective solutions.

For our second round of ideation, we decided to invite our primary stakeholder, the startup’s founder, as well as the project’s Lead Developer to participate in a brainstorming workshop.

Our strategy here was two-pronged. First, we challenged ourselves to come up with solutions otherwise missed or glossed over during round one. Second, collaborating with management helped in getting buy-in on the UX process. In order for stakeholders to trust our recommendations, Researchers and Designers cannot operate behind veiled design practices. Our aim is for upper management to integrate UX into corporate strategy and not disregard it as an expendable creative branch of the business.

Our collaborative sessions gave us plenty to work with and many new ideas to validate (or invalidate) during prototyping. Some of our new assumptions included:

• Using a drawer during videos may improve the viewing experience for users who want to workout, while still allowing watcher's to engage when they want
• Providing all the necessary information users need on the trainer profile may lead to more informed purchase decisions
• Providing users with a personalized Home & My Sessions page may increase the user's sense of control and improve overall trust
• Booking should have its own unique flow with clear call to actions and language
• Replace onboarding flows and excessive notifications with in-app loading screens can serve as an effective tool to teach users about the app's core features

Are you still with me? You're almost there.
Vision / Discovery / Define / Ideate / / Conclusion

Our goal with the initial round of prototyping was to ensure that users intuitively understood how to book and to give them the ability to enter the booking flow from multiple touch points across the app at the appropriate time in the purchase cycle.

Pushing users to enter the flow too early would not give them enough time to thoughtfully evaluate the app; enter too late and the business suffers.

The research revealed decisive opportunities in the user journey where users consider entering the booking flow. These included the trainer’s profile, the Watch page, and our new My Sessions page.

I conducted a study to assess the booking flow of our High-Fidelity prototypes. We aimed to improve the overall ease of use and simplicity of flow of the Fitness-Live mobile app by reducing user misclicks, using clear and understandable language, and inviting users to learn more about the app's features.

We want to give our users the tools they need to make informed purchase decisions at the perfect moment in time.

Some questions explored during interviews included:

1. What do you believe is the core feature of this app?
2. What do you expect to see on a trainer’s profile?
3. How would you proceed to book a session from this screen (trainer profile, watch screen, and home screen)?
4. What do social and private sessions mean in the context of this app?
5. What do you expect to happen when booking an instant session?

For my interview script & full list of questions, please see my Prototype Testing Script.

For additional insights, please see my User Insights.

In its current state, the Watching screen is visually underwhelming and technically complicated. During our initial usability testing, none of the participants tested successfully booked from this page.

Our updated version aims to solve this by including a drawer on the screen to group important calls to action. Those watching can enjoy an uninterrupted video interface, while anyone wanting to engage can easily do so. By opening the drawer, users can now access booking, learn more about the trainer through a bio snipper, and navigate to their profile to explore.

The trainer profile presented another decisive opportunity to nudge users into the booking flow. Users naturally choose to learn more about an individual trainer before deciding to purchase a workout session with them. However, the app's current design fell short of addressing the needs of its users.

Users cited social proof, trainer specializations, and profile image quality as the top 3 qualifying factors for booking.

The updated design focused on:

In addition to providing users with the information they require to make informed decisions, we also performed a quality of life update on the page. Color accessibility was an issue and the language used confused users. Interviewees were unsure what the "Train Now" and "Train Later" buttons meant and were fearful of being thrown into a session unprepared.

Users want a degree of control over their past and future training sessions. They need a clear way to quickly enter the booking flow without having to query the app first. We hoped to accomplish this by introducing the personalized My Sessions page. This newly added option invites users to flexibly control their training appointments and fitness schedules. The upcoming session cards give users all the necessary details about their purchased workouts and includes the option to edit or cancel appointments.

Our recommendations led to:

Within the My Sessions page, users now have an understandable call to action, the Book Now button, for easy entrance into the booking flow. Standardizing the booking language across the app with strong CTA's, resulted in a clear grasp of button functionality and the elimination of the fear associated with misclicks observed during testing.

Additionally, the new sessions hub gave us the opportunity to optimize the actual booking flow for clarity and simplicity. Breadcrumbs were added to help users identify their place in the booking flow. The calendar feature visually indicates which days are available for booking reducing time spent on the scheduling step.

One of the present challenges that the app faces is educating new users on its core features, particularly the social fitness and monetization features. Fitness apps currently on the market, like Peloton, offer live and recorded classes but only offer one-way viewing. Trainees are simply able to join "group classes" and watch their coaches teach a class.

Fitness-Live not only adds the personalization of creating a FaceTime-like connection between the trainee and their coach, but then allows that video interaction to be broadcast and streamed to an audience. That audience, the Watchers, can then choose to workout with participants or cheer them on through likes, comments, and donations.

This raised the question: How do we educate users on these social features?

During testing, I asked users what they understood to be Fitness-Live's social features and zero testers got the answer correct. This was a problem... and our solution needed to be multifaceted to tackle it.

Improvements made included:

First, we observed that natural breakpoints existed in the app between screens. We decided to make use of these moments and replace the current opaque buffer screen with Did You Know delighters that educate users on the app's features or that offer health tips.

Next, within the booking flow we introduce an intermediate step where users can select whether they want to book a social or private session. When booking, users need to select their session type before proceeding to scheduling a date and time. This presented as a natural place to educate users on a core feature of the app. Information would auto-populate on click of a button switch.

Finally, the app also offers instant sessions where interested users can book a session on the spot with an available trainer. In its current state, this feature took the form of the Train Now button that confused users. In order to accomodate this on-demand feature, we added an Instant Session option on the calendar page with a similar explanatory section below.

Nice! Thanks for sticking with me.
Vision / Discovery / Define / Ideate / Prototype /

• Research Plan
• System Usability Scale (SUS)
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Fitness Survey
• Video Preview Survey
• UX Audit
• Usability Metrics
• Prototype Testing Script
• UX Study
• User Insights