7 Minute Workout Challenge App | Meena Mukherjee Desi

7 Minute Workout Challenge

Adding social media sharing capability to mobile fitness app

Project Role: UX Designer - Team: Solo Project - Duration: 4 weeks, 80 hours - Tool: Figma

Background

Social media is helping people to get fit. Studies prove that sharing fitness goals on social platforms makes people more likely to stick to a fitness regimen. There is strong evidence to suggest that when people share their fitness story, they stay motivated longer. People are increasingly starting to track and share their every move.*

The 7 Minute Workout Challenge (7 MWC) is a fitness app by Fitness Guide Inc. that includes workouts of 12 exercises that can be performed in 7 minutes and can be performed anywhere. This app is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. It’s features include:

Full video, audio, image and text instruction for every exercise
Activity tracking
Weight progress monitoring
Recommend to Friends (where you can recommend the app to friends on social media)

Currently, the 7 Minute Workout Challenge app has a free workout included and 4 other workout packs that can be unlocked by paying a fee or earning achievements. According to the App Store, this app is ranked #82 in Health and Fitness.

*Source: www.mediablazegroup.com

Project Overview

One feature that is not included in this app is the ability to share fitness achievements and progress on social media. In contrast several more popular competitor fitness apps do have this feature. The scope of this project will be to design social media sharing capability for the 7 MWC app. The project will be focusing on the iPhone app interface. (The iPad app interface appears exactly the same as the iPhone).

Research (1 week) - Primary/Secondary Research, Competitive Analysis & Persona Development

Competitor Analysis Key Takeaways:

1. Easy to navigate UI and clear CTA to donate is important.

2. Stories make cause more relatable

3. Donors like to choose which projects their money is going to.

My primary research involved conducting remote interviews with volunteers who have social media accounts and who may or may not have shared their fitness journeys on social media.

Insights from the in-person interviews (research questions revisited):

1. What motivates people to exercise?

Everyone knows that exercise is important and some people are able to exercise more than others. There are many motivating factors including vanity (ego), sense of accomplishment, to see progress, to stay active, self-esteem, to stay healthy, to get stronger and to keep up with kids.

2. What tools do people tend to choose to aid them in their fitness goals?

Lifestyle apps, workout apps and websites, YouTube videos as well as devices like Fitbit and Apple watch.

3. Do people have pre-conceived notions of whether sharing fitness data on social media is positive or negative?

Mostly neutral to positive. Seeing others accomplishing their fitness goals is inspiring and helps motivate people to stay on their fitness journeys. Some people, however, may think negatively about social sharing seeing it as a way to inflate the ego.

4. If they choose to, why do people share their fitness journeys on social media (what are their

motivations)? If they don’t share, would they consider doing so? Why or why not?

If they choose to share it is because they are proud of themselves and hope to inspire others to continue their fitness journeys. Social media is also a great tool for documenting progress. Others may not choose to because they feel too self-conscious or feel too much pressure to achieve results.

5. What do people like to share on social media? (e.g. weight loss progress?, new accomplishments?, new

challenges?, etc…)

People like to share on social media some of their greater fitness accomplishments (great weight loss or completed challenges). For more minor accomplishments like having completed workouts or getting small achievements, they like to share with a small group of friends.

6. What are the most popular social media platforms people are on where they can share their fitness journeys?

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The provisional persona (target customer) developed as a result of the research is a person who is interested in fitness and is active on social media. She enjoys sharing her fitness journey. She likes to provide positive encouragement to others as much as she likes to receive positive reinforcement.

From a design perspective, it is important to have a UI that can provide an easy, intuitive social sharing experience.

To develop a new social sharing feature for the 7 Minute Workout Challenge (7 MWC) app, I first needed to define the research goal and determine questions that need to be answered.

Goal:

To understand best practices of social sharing fitness. How can I use those insights to create social media sharing capability on the 7 Minute Workout Challenge mobile app?

Questions:

What motivates people to exercise?
What tools do people tend to choose to aid them in their fitness goals?
Do people have pre-conceived notions of whether sharing fitness data on social media is positive or negative?
If they choose to, why do people share their fitness journeys on social media (what are their motivations)? If they don’t share, would they consider doing so? Why or why not?
What do people like to share on social media? (e.g. weight loss progress?, new accomplishments?, new challenges?, etc…)
What are the most popular social media platforms people are on where they can share their fitness journeys?

I began with secondary market research to better understand the the fitness app industry and also how social media has affected the use of fitness apps.

1. Market Research - to familiarize myself about fitness progress sharing on social media

2. Competitor Analysis – SWOT analysis of direct competitors (other fitness apps) and indirect competitors (health-related apps with social media sharing)

Here are some trends regarding fitness apps and social media:

1. Fitness App 2019 Global Market Net Worth US $14.7 billion Forecast by 2026 and anticipated to grow at 23% CAGR through the forecast period - Marketwatch

2. Revenue in the Fitness segment is US $16,857m in 2019 - Statista report.

3. Some fitness trends: HIIT, increased wearable tech, training with peers, pro fitness gurus, mindful drills, yoga

4. By sharing a few healthy activities, one can get applauded by a huge audience with positive comments uplifting confidence and self-belief, two biggest elements for success - logs.rdxsports.com/top-fitness-trends-2018/

5. Social media is helping people to get fit. Studies prove that sharing fitness goals on social platforms makes people more likely to stick to a fitness regimen. There is strong evidence to suggest that when people share their fitness story, they stay motivated longer - mediablazegroup.com/blog/fighting-fit-social-networks/

6. Ways social media has changed health and fitness: motivating factor, intimidation factor, accessibility,

Instagram fitness models, viral-ability, support groups - aaptiv.com/magazine/social-media-fitness

7. Basic fitness app features - user profiles, notifications, social sharing, geolocation, result tracking, education

8. 3 types of mobile healthcare apps - activity tracking apps, diets and nutrition apps, and workout and exercise apps - theappsolutions.com

9. Top 5 social media platforms for personal trainers: youtube, pinterest, instagram, facebook, and twitter - afpafitness.com/blog/top-5-social-media-platforms-for-personal-trainers

Main takeaways:

1. The fitness app industry is growing.

2. Social media is helping people get fit - encouragement from the social sharing of fitness journeys motivates to stay with a fitness regimen longer.

3. Top social media platforms for fitness sharing are facebook, twitter, instagram, youtube and pinterest.

My competitive analysis includes direct competitors (workout apps) and indirect competitors (fitness apps that include more tools such as nutrition tracking).

Ideation (1 week) - Sketching & Mockup Development

Based on the information gathered from the research phase, I decided on which features to be added to the 7 MWC app.

• Sharing of fitness tracking data on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Be able to choose which data to share.

• Sharing of achievements after a workout is completed on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. (On Facebook, should have the ability

to share achievements with a small group of fitness friends)

• Sharing of achievements from the Achievements List on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

After deciding on the new features, I started ideating with sketches and then created high-fidelity mockup screens.

Iteration and Implementation (1 week) - Prototyping and Usability Testing

To make sure the new social sharing features of 7 MWC were intuitive to use and made sense based on the project's goals, I created a high-fidelity prototype in Figma and conducted 3 usability tests. With these tests, I was able to observe how participants navigated through the different screens of the app, whether they were able to successfully share fitness data on social media and whether they had any feedback on the features' design.

View the Usability Test Plan

The results of the usability tests gave valuable insight into how the design needed to be updated. I did get comments that the new features integrated well into the app's existing UI design. I received feedback regarding the design layout, interaction and text features.

• Design Layout: On Sharing Unlocked Achievements screen, move share button to the top to always be seen during scrolling & On FB and Instagram sharing screens, add buttons to share pictures for a more personal experience.

• Interaction: After final “share” button, going back to original sharing screen instead of home screen would make more sense & Add confirmation screens to show user that posts are successful

• Text: On Sharing Unlocked Achievements screen, heading needs to be larger to make it more consistent with font size seen throughout app.

After receiving feedback, I updated the prototype.

View 7 MWC App Prototype

Next Steps

Now that the design has been through more iterations, I can conduct additional usability tests and then hand it off to a development team at Fitness Guide Inc.

Finding and Reflections

Designing new features for this fitness app was interesting and enjoyable. This experience has opened my eyes to the facts that whenever there is a new feature on an app, it is probably backed by a great deal of research and implementing a seemingly simple feature can be quite time-consuming.

My favorite aspect of this project was the challenge of applying new design features to an already existing UI. It was exciting for me to get feedback that my new features looked like they were always in the app.

The biggest challenge for me was making sure there was enough data available that would justify my new feature ideas. This project was a great experience because it helped to gain insight on why UX research is important for product development.

I hope to use this experience as a springboard for working on future product development projects.