Fitness app to Encourage people to exercise

The Problem

Aminat is a young mother who gave birth four months ago and would like to get back into shape. Her problem is that she always feels unmotivated to exercise and longs for easy to follow routines. I decided to create a smartphone app to fill this void and thereby create an unconventional fitness app in the market for users like her.

The Solution

Beginning with a fresh outlook I set out to interview Aminat to discover her needs which led to multiple deliverables such as an empathy map, storyboard and a paper prototype.

My Role

I handled the entire project which began with conducting a user interview, developing a Storyboard and later created a paper prototype of the app.

One of the things that plagued my mind as I began my design process was how to create an app that would meet Aminat's needs specifically and still compete with other fitness apps in the market. I settled on using the iterative 5 phases of design thinking - empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test. Here's a breakdown of how it went.

Interview

Firstly I conducted a User Interview with Aminat by asking her simple questions to understand fully her goals, routines, behaviors and motivations towards exercising. I then compiled my findings into an empathy map.

User Definition

Secondly, I proceeded to develop a Point of view(POV) - Problem Statement to provide a scope of solutions to my design challenge. I did this simply by identifying Aminat as my user, extracting her needs from my findings and developing insights to match each need. At this point the design process wasn't so scary anymore but I found it hard to settle on a promising idea.

Ideation

My POV statement led me to ask 'How might we?' questions to explore range of ideas I needed to help solve the challenge. I list them below:

1. How might we measure the progress of the user as she makes her exercise journey?

2. How might we ensure that the exercises prescribed are non- injurious?

3. How might we motivate the user to continue exercising until she reaches her goal?

4. How might design an experience that is both engaging and exciting?

5. How might we structure the exercises to develop the whole body of the user?

I used some other brainstorming techniques like Worst Possible ideas and Challenge Assumptions to come up with more possible ideas for the app development and as such my confidence began to grow.

Eventually after a rigorous ideation exercise I settled on this rather simple idea that almost caused had almost eluded me. Here it goes: if the app is meticulously and beautifully designed, the user would be motivated to go the extra mile.

It just got better from here onwards. I pulled my artistic talents together and decided to illustrate my idea with a storyboard. The storyboard was developed by creating a character based on my user's needs from my earlier findings and developing a user journey. The user journey and storyboard are displayed below:

I revised all my initial designs before settling on the final rendering of the app for example I initially created the app for a variety of users that is athletes in general but upon receiving feedback I resorted to designing for New Moms specifically. I also presented the workouts in a list but later changed it to grid format. Ad so, after various design iterations, I produced a paper prototype to show the interaction sequence of the app. Here are my preliminary sketches.

Conclusion

Results and Impact:

The prototype as you can see highlights an unconventional easy to use exercise app for young mothers and I am sure it will satisfy users like Aminat.

My design journey had me panicking at the beginning and I tried to rush thinking that only speed would solve the problem. I had conflicting thoughts throughout the process hoping for the magic solution to fallout of nowhere but eventually I realized that it's all part of the process because Design is not a smooth road so you have got to trust the process and never overcomplicate things.

If I were to continue the design process, I would produce a high fidelity interactive prototype of the app and then direct it to a software developer.

I worked on this project as part of my coursework in the Design Thinking course offered by the Interaction Design Foundation. At the end of my course, I earned the Course Certificate below.