Fit Body Club: Where Health Meets Happiness!
A health-tracking app for tech-savvy women
Context
As a part of Springboard's final capstone project, students were tasked to work on a given scenario and develop an evidence-based design solution for a given problem.
Problem
Decreasing user engagement and high app deletion rate.
Their health-tracking app is facing issues with retaining users and keeping them engaged with the app over time which leads to a decline in app usage and ultimately results in users deleting the app. The proposed hypothesis to tackle this issue is to incorporate messaging features within the existing app to enhance user engagement and encourage repeat usage.
How might we seamlessly integrate a messaging feature within the existing features of the app, while understanding user needs, to increase engagement and retention rates?
Solution
"Welcome to FitBodyClub, the holistic health tracking app where your health and happiness come together!"
Stay connected through chat groups.
Share your progress and compete with friends
Track your daily activities
Personalized workout and meal plans
Research to understand the user's needs and pain points.
An accountability partner can significantly increase the likelihood of achieving a goal by 95%.
- American Society of Training and Development
During the secondary research phase, I found a study conducted by Stanford University found that only 28% of Americans meet the physical activity guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Another interesting study shows that incorporating even a small amount of social support and the power of nudges, such as having an accountability partner can create a lasting impact against physical inactivity.
During Competitive analysis of Nike Run, Workout for Women, and Adaptive, I identified a gap in the market for health and fitness tracking apps for shared accountability and group chat features. This presents an opportunity to develop a new feature that emphasizes social engagement, enhances motivation, and appeals to users seeking a collaborative approach to fitness tracking.
User Empathy and Validation for Messaging Feature in a Fitness App
After conducting secondary and competitive research, my next goal was to validate the decision to design a new messaging feature for this existing app so, I conducted semi-structured interviews with target users to gather insights into their fitness-related habits and concerns.
These are the research questions that I asked my 5 targeted users:
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Can you tell me about your current fitness habits?
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What type of exercise do you typically do, how often, and for how long?
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What’s your motivation for exercising?
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Do you currently use any fitness apps or tools(notebook) to help you track your workouts or progress? If yes, what do you like and dislike about it? (any negative experiences with that?)
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How often do you struggle to maintain a fitness routine?
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What features or tools you would like to see in a fitness app?
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What would be the most helpful in motivating you to show up every day and work towards your fitness goal?
Sketching
Keeping Hick’s law and cognitive load theory in mind, I started creating low-fidelity wireframes to define content on each screen. After several scribble sketching sessions, I chose some designs that matched my requirements. The goal was to design a clean, quick, and intuitive navigation for users to reach their end goals.
Based on various feedback from 5 users & my mentor, I continually iterated my design, and once confident that my designs are focusing on the essential elements and functionality of the app, I moved to high-fidelity designs and further refined my designs based on the feedback.
Final Design
Design
Based on my research insights, I decided to ideate on a chat feature integrated with challenges to encourage users to invite more friends and stay motivated, ultimately increasing app engagement. I began with creating user flows to visually map out the sequence of actions users will take to achieve their goals within the app. This helped me communicate my ideas and app functionality to my mentor and ensure the product design aligned with the user's needs and goals.
Translating raw user data into actionable insights to inform design decisions.
Affinity Mapping + Insights
Timeline
March -April 2023 3 Weeks
Team
Solo Student Project
Tools
Adobe XD, Miro
Role & Responsibilities
Design- Sketches, Iterative Wireframing, low-fidelity prototype, Interactive High Fidelity prototype & Usability Testing
User Research- Secondary Research, Competitive Analysis, User Interviews, User, Affinity Mapping
Main insight
Users expressed the need for a motive-based community platform for enhanced engagement.
Through affinity mapping, I discovered that users desire a community platform to connect with others who share similar fitness goals and to stay motivated. However, a chat feature is not enough to drive frequent app usage. To encourage engagement, users desire a compelling reason to participate in conversations, such as challenges or competitions, and the ability to track and share their progress and activities with others for further engagement.
Design Prompt
A well-established company launched a health-tracking app for tech-savvy women that allows users to track their personal goals as well as how other members are doing regarding health and fitness. Currently, there is no messaging feature within the product and the company is interested in integrating a new messaging experience for users to message each other with health and fitness goals/ achievements.
Project Learnings
Here are a few things I’ve learned from this project-
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User Research is Crucial: Conducting user research is critical to gain insights into the user's needs, motivations, and pain points. This information is vital to designing a user-centric app that meets the user's expectations.
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Validate and Iterate: Regularly testing and updating the designs based on user feedback is essential to ensuring the app continues to meet the user's needs and meets the business goals.
Potential future step:
Testing the new chat feature with challenges and competitions with a small group of users to gather feedback and refine the feature before launching it to all users.