Timeline: September 2018 - December 2018
Tools: Adobe XD, Figma, Balsamiq
Table of Contents
1. Context
2. The Problem
3. Research Methodology
4. Affinity Map
5. Research Insights
6. Ideation and Design Considerations
7. The Idea
8. Low Fidelity Prototype
9. Medium Fidelity Prototype
10. Usability Testing
11. High Fidelity Prototype
12. Reflection
1. Context
After I began exploring the field of User Experience in the Summer of 2018, I knew that I wanted to continue down this path in the future. However, before I could even hope in making a career out of designing User Experiences, I knew that I needed to get more experience in the field. So, in the Fall semester of 2018, I took a student-led class on Human-Centered Design in order to gain the experience that I needed. This was my final project for the class.
2. The Problem
When it comes to living a healthy lifestyle, fitness is essential. Staying fit provides individuals with a noticeable method of controlling their weight and warding off disease. Staying fit also provides other benefits, such as reducing stress and improving overall mood. The benefits of fitness are present everywhere, from the media to real life. As a result, a very large amount of people know how important fitness is in everyday life. Yet, these same people never have fitness as a priority. In fact, some people have fitness as a mere afterthought as something they don’t care about at all. This presented me with a very interesting challenge:
How might we encourage people to stay fit?
Research
3. Research Methodology
For the research section of the project, I worked in a team of four. Each team member was responsible for three user interviews for a total of 12 user interviews. The team did not set strict requirements for the user interviews. They could happen at any location at basically any time. The important characteristic of all of these interviews was that they were all individual, meaning that a single individual was interviewed each time, and that they were all in person, which means we did not use any surveys or alternate convenient methods for our interviews.
My team and I crafted a discussion guide that we would follow during our interviews. We gave opening and closing remarks and gathered consent to record information during the interview for analytic purposes. Our interview questions were created with several goals in mind:
1. Understand what fitness mean to the individual
2. Discover how the individual incorporates fitness into their own life
3. Uncover what encourages the individual to stay fit
4. Reveal what discourages the individual from staying fit
5. Market Research: finding out what products they already use and how to improve upon them
4. Affinity Map
After each team member completed their respective user interviews, we all met up to synthesize our research. First, we collectively constructed an affinity map, which I created a visual of below:
5. Research Insights
Based on the affinity map, we were able to form some key insights:
- Fitness is beyond just exercising. It includes eating healthy, sleeping, as well as physical health.
- Exercise is important for our health, but people choose not to spend their free time doing it. It is not the forefront of people’s priorities.
- Instead of exercising, people like to do simple and light activities or control their eating patterns
- The main reasons for pursuing fitness are improving physical appearance, socializing with friends, and staying healthy.
- Time is valuable; academics and extracurriculars take precedence over fitness.
- People like to use apps to track metrics, not to achieve a fitness goal. People will use apps that are already available on their phones to track their fitness.
- Mental attitude about fitness also factored into the active lifestyles.
- At the end of the day, people just want to relax, not strain themselves more through physical activities.
- Consistency with fitness goals is hard to maintain.
- People will use apps that are already available on their phones to track their fitness.
6. Ideation and Design Considerations
After the research section of the project, each person would work individually. So, once we finished synthesized our research, my group split up. There were several routes I could take in an attempt to encourage fitness:
- Making fitness applications more reliable and efficient
- Creating a feasible exercise schedule for the user
- Displaying metrics in a more user friendly way
- Gamifying exercise
- Finding daily routines that increase a user’s fitness (such as taking the scenic route to class)
- Increasing the user’s motivation to stay fit
- Tracking all aspects of the user’s physical health
However, based on the research, only one of these ideas would be truly effective. During my team’s research, we found that 10 of the 12 people did not regularly exercise. And, when asked why they didn’t exercise, there was one common answer amongst all of their responses: they simply lacked the motivation to stay fit.
Most of the ideas listed above are useful when trying to increase the fitness of those already attempting to do so. Even if I were to create a product that would give the user a good exercise schedule or walk to class instead of take the bus, it wouldn’t matter if the user isn’t willing to consistently do those things in the first place. Every idea except for “increasing the user’s motivation to stay fit” provides methods and solutions to increasing fitness.
7. The Idea
The route that I am taking is “increasing the user’s motivation to stay fit.” However, how would I go about doing that? Fortunately, the research addresses this concern as well. Although most of the users were not motivated to stay fit, many still participated in weekly fitness activities, such as dance clubs or intramural sports. They said that their main motivator for staying in these types of activities was the socialization factor. Additionally, some users said that they were “uncomfortable exercising alone” or have “no friends to work out with.” Because of this, I decided to create an application that helps users find “fitness partners” or friends to do fitness activities with (or to help keep them in check).
Design
8. Low Fidelity Prototype
Using Balsamiq, I created a low fidelity prototype of the application.
9. Medium Fidelity Prototype
After receiving some informal feedback about the design of the application, I created a medium fidelity prototype using Figma.
10. Usability Testing
After creating the medium fidelity prototype, I did some usability testing to gauge the effectiveness of the application. I asked four users to perform several tasks on the application:
- Log into the application
- Using the application, find a new partner to stay fit with
- Schedule a new activity with the new partner you just made
- Check your new partner's profile and see their interests and availabilities
Once each user completed all of the tasks, I would ask them follow-up questions based on their usage of the prototype. I would also ask them for feedback on what can be done to improve the user experience. Listed here are some key quotes and key points that I received during this questioning period:
- “It functions good enough. I can find basically everything that I would want in an app like this.”
- “I like the idea of being able to find friends to exercise with. It makes me want to exercise, not like I ever did *laughs*”
- “Kind of upset about the low quality content” (referring to the prototype’s lack of clickable actions)
- "I'm a little concerned about the safety of this. Like, what if some of them are creepy people?"
- Like the idea of finding fitness partners and relying on social methods to get fit
- Like being able to find people who are willing to work out near me
- Layout is good enough, easy to navigate to what is expected
- Add location and frequency
- Weekly availabilities to make it more clear
- User reviews and comments (late, on time, fun, etc)
11. High Fidelity Prototype
After the completion of my usability tests, I moved on to the high fidelity prototype. I took into account the feedback and potential improvements I received from the tests during the creation of the high fidelity prototype.
12. Reflection
I believe that most of the process went smoothly. Unlike with my previous project, Technology Reducer, I was able to complete the whole process from start to finish. And, unlike my previous project, I was able to complete the whole process correctly. Because my last project, was taken from my online, I was not able to interact with my teammates in person. Additionally, we did not do interviews or make a high fidelity prototype. So, by going through the whole process, I was able to fully learn what Product Design is about, and how important it is for making something people want to use.
This project helped me gain some knowledge that I would have never been able to gain without going through the whole design process. For example, when I first received the prompt of encouraging fitness, I assumed that the main pain point would be the process of staying fit itself. Maybe the user was having trouble finding out the most efficient and effective exercises that suit their needs. Maybe the user disliked the state of currently existing fitness applications. Maybe the user was having trouble just exercising in general. However, that turned out to not be the main pain point at all. I turned out to be completely wrong. Turns out that the greatest and most significant pain point is that many people did not care about being fit at all. And, most of the people that did care about fitness did not have the motivation to continue. Here, I learned just how effective user research actually is in finding the problems that need to be solved. If I were to continue with just my own intuition, what “feels right,” I would have been developing a solution to a problem that didn’t really need to be solved, at least relative to the average person. In my future projects, I will put even more effort into user research because I know it will give me more in return.
If I could to anything about this project over again, it would be the high fidelity prototype. Although I added most of the features that myself and others wanted to add, I did not get to everything. For example, instead of making partners contact each other through external means, I would have added a basic messenger system within the application so two or more partners can easily message one another. Additionally, I did not finish implementing the options in the hamburger button. I need to put in options such as settings, about, profile, etc. And, finally, I would vastly improve the appearance and aesthetics of the prototype.
Additionally, I would perform a more thorough usability test. In my previous project Technology Reducer, my team and I had a very structures user test plan. We set up concrete tasks that allowed the user to explore the full functionality of the application and displayed any problems with the application. We had a list of follow-up questions that would reflect what the individual thought about the user experience. We even recorded the tests and received their consent to use it for analysis purposes. For FitFind, I did not create a structured user test plan. My usability tests were pretty loose and informal.
Regardless of the potential improvements I could have made, I was overall satisfied with my work on this project.
